The beginning of a personal growth path can be very exciting .
Very often it all begins with questions , to which we seek answers: we have doubts, problems that we cannot solve by ourselves and we seek the solution through books, websites, courses.
When we find a book or a teaching that moves something inside us, we throw ourselves headlong into the certainty of having found the solution to our malaise and the definitive answer to all our questions.
This is what happened to me when I discovered Giacomo’s site ?
I listened to one lesson after another, everything seemed so enlightening, easy, exciting .
As I went on, I realized, with amazement and enthusiasm , what were the real reasons why I had failed everything up to that moment, why I had never been able to be truly happy.
In some moments I had even tasted true happiness, I was sure of it.
When you find yourself in front of “true” happiness you feel it, you cannot have doubts, it is that feeling of profound well-being , which is not linked to external people or situations, but comes from within you , and you carry it with you, wherever and with whoever you are , even in situations where it would not have been conceivable to you until then to be able to feel good.
But it didn’t last.
It came back periodically, but it didn’t last.
I realized it was happening because I hadn’t been able to feed it.
Because like fire , happiness must also be nourished , nourished.
Every single day, with patience and love.
As I progressed on my path, I began to gain more and more awareness .
My emotions, my thoughts, my own actions.
Of my judgments, towards myself and others.
And so I started to feel bad , really bad.
Starting to “see” is not always pleasant, indeed.
Most often it is painful.
Fear of change: when you put on a new pair of glasses
I still remember, with a big smile, the first time, at thirteen, I put on glasses.
I had a strong myopia but until that moment I had managed it, even if I didn’t see the blackboard well at school and I struggled.
I often made a fool of myself because sometimes from a distance I did not recognize my father or my mother who came to pick me up from school and I went to meet strangers (except to understand, once I was close, that I had the wrong person ?).
I undoubtedly felt discomfort, I felt that I was missing something, even though I got used to it. But with myopia worsening, I started to protest and point this out, until they finally took me to the ophthalmologist: I already had five diopters missing.
When I first wore the glasses it was evening, and I was in my room, from which I often observed the Strait of Messina.
I had always loved looking out the window to look at the lights of Calabria, the colors of the sunrise over the sea, and that evening my expectations were high.
Who knows what the world was like with the eyes of a person who sees well?
But the disappointment had been great.
The lights that I was used to seeing huge, because they were blurry due to myopia, were now tiny, very sharp dots, the shapes that I used to see blurred, were now clear and precise, there was no more room for my imagination, no more I could more dream and fantasize about what I couldn’t see well, now I really saw it .
And, when I turned to my family members who, curious, were around me to ask me “what did I think of the world” my first comment, which came spontaneously, was: “how ugly you are !! You are full of spots on your face !! ” ?
It is like starting to observe our thoughts and call them by their real name, without veils, without sweeteners.
What could previously be disguised, ignored, removed, now through the light of awareness appears clear and sharp to us and it can be really destabilizing to look “the spots” in the face.
Especially ours.
And we have no more excuses.
Afraid of change? Stop judging!
We think we have already become better people, for the mere fact of having set out on our path of growth, and taking note of some of our thoughts, which we now recognize as “wrong”, if not downright mean, the result of our fragility and fears, of selfishness, can make us feel extremely vulnerable and lacking in identity.
That identity that we had built for ourselves, that image of ourselves with which we had always identified.
Yet, if we really want to change, awareness is the necessary first step, albeit often uncomfortable, even if unpleasant at first.
If I do not identify the disease well, I do not give it a name, I do not look it in the face, for fear, I will not even be able to cure it.
If I want to put new rules at the center of my life, I cannot help but start by learning to understand and identify those I have had so far, observing how they were born, how they acted in my mind.
The first very important lesson I drew from it was “don’t judge me”. Moreover, it was the first thing Giacomo told me, the first time we spoke on Skype: “ First of all: don’t judge yourself ”.
If we judge ourselves, we can only experience negative emotions, frustration, anxiety, discouragement.
We will be afraid to continue to observe ourselves, understand the mechanisms that lead us to think and act in certain ways, and we will not be able to understand the true motivations behind it.
If we give in to fear and judgment, we will inevitably freeze.
We will stop .
And we will foreclose on the precious opportunity to improve and grow in the direction we had taken, and that would be a real shame.
Recently I read a sentence that struck me a lot: “ The darkest hour of the night is the one before dawn ”.
It not only contains a message of hope for me, telling us that any night ends with dawn, but it is also an important reflection on the fact that sometimes it can be essential to go through difficulties and dark moments, in order to really progress and see the light.
There are no shortcuts if we really want to get stronger than any problem, if we really want to become happy.
We must follow the path in its entirety, resisting the temptation to stop and surrender in the face of our fears.
But to go through them, to allow them to carry out their task, to fulfill their function as a wonderful opportunity for understanding.
On the other hand, what is more frightening, to face what we fear to move on, or to remain imprisoned in our rules of always that cause us suffering?
We simply have to understand.
Does our thought, gesture, seem petty?
We are not mean.
Are we wrong? No.
We’re just scared.
We are afraid of not being able to get what we think we need, and we try to get it in the only way we knew until then.
But starting to fearlessly observe and understand the fears that lie behind our behaviors, thoughts and mistakes, is the first important step to start welcoming, loving each other and starting to build on new foundations what we really need.
