For the Rest of your Life...

Do you ever truly grow into the person you're going to be for the rest of your life or is it just a stream of constant phases that roll in like a wave and retreat after touching the shores?

I remember being a person who was hot tempered, angry, unhappy and downright negative to be around. Never really happy with life, frowns and grimaces. I remember that changing too. Two years of Yoga got that one. I also remember thinking, "This is who I am always going to be." And then that changed.

Two years of yoga gave me more than that though, it taught me something. It taught me about growth, not personal or spiritual growth because right now I feel like too much of an amateur to distinguish between the two, but yes growth. Situations arise, you swim through them and when you resurface you're not alone. Attached to you is a strength you didn't have before. Sometimes the strength is your knowledge of survival, sometimes its a new found faith and sometimes its something that surprises you with it's sheer novelty. The beauty of these strengths stun you into a disbelieving silence that almost always in turn, strengthen your faith.

Here comes the thought, "The person I'm finally going to be..."

Wait..! There was still more to come.

My next lesson was that of reason and causation. Nothing happens without a reason, you just have to figure out what the reason is. Once you go through doubting the world, doubting yourself and then eventually doubting God, questioning religion and faith you hopefully get lucky like I did and learn to see past the invisibility cloak your faith has been wearing and embrace whatever you see and find yourself at the doorstep of something new yet again.

After that phase I thought again, "This is who I'm going to be for the rest of my life." Alas, wrong again!

Surety and complacency. This is what came to me while sitting in the red glow of my lava lamp, Iron and Wine music wafting through the air, bouncing off my mirror and coming back to touch me. I was once sure that spiritually I was growing, but I began to wonder if it was my intellect growing. My intellect seemed to be battling with confusion, because if I had reached my spiritual self there would be no room for confusion in the heart of constancy.

I asked my mentor, "Growth or phase?"

She said, "Is not continuous movement from one phase to another growth? Then are the not the same? If you remain still and passive you stagnate."

I thought, just like I had so many times before, life is growth, complacency is stagnation, stagnation is decay and finally, decay is death.

Searching for more, i sought for more and found from the mind of a Guru, "You are either depending on what you believe.. like the light which is a particle or a wave, depending on how it is viewed."

I got to thinking again, Light is constant, not complacent, like growth. And Waves change, progress, like growth. So then does it really matter if you finally grow into who you are going to be for the rest of your life or go through a stream of phases that roll in like a wave and retreat after touching the shores? The person you are going to be depends on whether you chose to grow or to stagnate. You could chose to live with only the growth already achieved or imbibe the waves of escalation. If you chose the latter ,you chose to grow into the person you're going to be for the rest of your life, you're going to be Progress. If not then it wouldn't really matter because a lack of Progress is Stagnation, and Stagnation, Is Death.