Pruning

As Neal Donald Walsch tells us: “Always remember: Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” If we’re profoundly uncomfortable, we’re in exactly the right place. And here’s the metaphysics: the fastest, most enduring way to become a master of our own “stuff,” is to carry it with us through the meat grinder. We are guaranteed to lay it down somewhere on the journey. The quickest way to learn empathy and compassion is to face our own fears, climb across the debris of our mistakes, coming to the self-forgiveness required to regain our balance as a conscious human. And yes, the shortest route to growth is to endure the pruning away of what is no longer useful. That is not easy to do, but it’s required, as Anaïs Nin reminded us when she said, “And the day came when the risk to stay tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
— Judith Gayle, Notes from the Dog Days