If you feel like you’ve been backsliding lately, there’s something you need to know. It’s supposed to happen. Eckhart Tolle explains that consciousness does not simply rise year after year, in a neat line. It progresses and then regresses. You can see it in history and you can see it in your own life. Think of a time when a challenge came, a marriage ended, money was lost, your home was lost, and you reacted. He was discouraged. Angry. Yelling, you’re loud in your head. Making life unpleasant for yourself and those around you. It was a step back, and almost no one would admit it to them. But regressions are not failures. They are part of the pattern and are required. There is a French expression that Eckhart likes. Reculer pour mieux sauter.
Step back to jump better. Here lies the secret. It seems that the very thing that creates your growth is inhibiting it. Consciousness has to face something. The gardener deliberately piles more soil on a germinating seed, because pushing it through makes the plant stronger. A plant grown in a greenhouse, protected from everything, remains weak. He never needed the power, so he never found it. That’s why many of us wouldn’t be who we are if it weren’t for challenges that we would never have chosen.
