The Awakening process is undertaken with the greatest of courage. It is courageous to look directly at thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, to face suffering, fear, the arising of the ego while peering over the edge of the unknown.

Awakening is the time for conditioned mind-emotional patterns, egoic patterns, to intensify. As denial cracks, the ego’s dysfunctional status quo is rocked. As Awareness expands and sharpens, there will be less tolerance to continue doing the same ole thing, the same old way. Although this is good news, change is on the horizon, fear will arise because the ego mind only knows how to do the same ole things in the same old ways. Turbulence arises as ego asserts yet cannot fully mobilize because Awakening’s change has arrived.

This is the time when the old pattern of complaining becomes intolerant. Awareness recognizes how painful complaining is,
how much suffering is generated. We might recognize an aspect of childhood pain, the yearning for unconditional love which
we thought could only come from the outside source of our parents. We might see how this dependent child state is still active in our adulthood, demanding “others” remove our pain by fulfilling our assumed unmet needs.

If past childhood pain is not a motivator, we might simply become aware of inner turmoil. Recognition may dawn that egoic mind is arising. We watch ego attempt to control life events. We watch ego, hungry with desire, grasp for things which cannot truly satisfy nor bring long-term, unchanging peace. Awakening uses whatever perception exists for expanding comprehension needed for the next step of expansion. Relief is on the way.

Suffering is simply what humans go through during unconsciousness, it’s what the ego-the misunderstood mind-does.
It recoils from pain, misunderstands the longing for Wholeness, it goes outwards to search for satisfaction and fulfillment.
It misunderstands, it stomps, throws tantrums, cries and complains. These are the growing pains of expansion, the transition from unconsciousness to consciousness.

Why does egoic mind complain? What else can an innocent mind under the influence of misunderstanding do?
The egoic mind suffers in ignorance. We can look at ego’s misunderstandings and compassionately see why suffering exists:

A) “Pain is scary, needs to be avoided, covered up, removed, or gotten ‘rid of’; it is of no benefit”
B) “Happiness will bring peace and this desired object/thing will give me happiness!
I need ‘it’ so finally I can have peace!”
C) “Outside, that’s the place to find ‘it’, that’s the direction to go, ‘outside’ is where to find ‘it’!
D) “Oh no, here come feelings of vulnerability and powerless, they must be real! Who feels these feelings, ‘I’ do, so ‘I’ must be vulnerable, ‘I’ must be powerless.”
E) “Pain is here so ‘others’ must be responsible for causing it;
‘they’ can/should/must do something/or change so ‘I’ can feel peaceful.”

Awakening’s intensification of complaining breaks open its very momentum. We realize we are suffering, we see complaining
to be causing our suffering, we realize it’s attempts to bring peace simply don’t work. We surrender the pattern. We open.
We yield. Awareness dawns to reveal both the illusion of control and the victim mindset fueled by powerlessness spearheads complaining. Perhaps for the first time we might wonder, am I truly powerless? Is powerlessness real? Who am I? Who or what feels powerless?

There may be words, there may be no words but there will be a dawning or recognition of struggle, of fighting, of resistance, some impediment blocking Life’s flow. The fire of curiosity is lit: what is this struggle, why is there a battle, who is battling,
I feel resistance, resistance to what?... Deep internal questioning signals receptivity, the pattern of momentum is interrupted. Awakening cannot resist willingness and will move with comforting guidance.

Every complaint is resistance to What Is. The ego’s fight for control is on, it desires to change Life-as-What-Is.
We can check our own experience: at the heart of each complaint, where is the resistance to What Is? We can investigate
any negative emotion - where is the resistance to What Is?

If jealousy is present, there is a fight to “have” what the ego mind sees “out there” which it fears it does not have “here”.
If anger is present, ego mind resists What Is by using demand+force to change What Is.
If sadness is present, ego mind resists What Is by pulling away using hopelessness and despair.
If grief is present, contracted defense resists in the attempt to hold What Is at bay, “stay over there”.
Criticism resists through the attempt to destroy What Is through denigration while attempting to “get” what is wanted instead.
If rage or aggressiveness arises, force is the resistance used to overcome What Is through dominance.
If fear is present, withdrawing, freezing, fawning passively resists What Is.

The root of complaint’s desire to resist What Is holds a thought which says “I can’t do this”, “I don’t want this”, “I can’t handle this”, “I won’t accept this”, “I’m not doing this”, “I won’t/I can’t/I don’t”. A victim arises to resist What Is by refusing what Life offers. Ego mind, innocently ignorant, misunderstands Life’s gifts/blessings to be unwanted, incomplete, not enough, not right, threatening, boring, etc. None of these fights for control through resistance are wrong, they simply “hurt”, they causes suffering.

When we find a complaint’s resistance to What Is, we can look deeper to find complaint’s belief in powerlessness, fear or separation. “Where is the fear? What is the fear? Where is the belief in powerlessness? Where is there a victim belief?
Am I separate? Can I find where power is projected “outside” onto someone or something else? Is there a perceived unmet need? Is it true that this need is unmet? Is this need really not provided right here, right now in this Present Moment?

Gardeners know that snipping the top few inches of a weed will not accomplish the task of weeding. They know they need to dig deeply to pull the weed out of the ground from its root. This is the way to weed so weeds don’t grow back. Fear lies at the root of complaints for fear creates powerlessness. We can trace any negative emotion back to its creator, Fear – in the form of a fearful thought. We can trace the fearful thought back to its creator - a personal “me”. We can trace the “me” sense of powerlessness to the fear that “lack” exists in the form of an assumed need that is going unmet. We can discover what we thought was missing is here right now.

Without fear, where is powerlessness? Without fear, where is separation between a “me” and “other”? Without powerlessness, what remains but the Inherent Power of the Truth of Who We Are? All roads lead back to the Source, whether it’s through emotion, thought or action.

Letting go of our belief victimhood and powerlessness feels like letting go of the cracking branch to which we’ve desperately clung, as our feet swayed in mid-air and our body dangled over the edge of a cliff. What remains is feared …a fall.
The fall is to look directly into fear without turning away. The fall is nothing else but facing fear without resisting.

Victimhood is an innocent reluctance and unwillingness to face the pain and fear driving resistance to What Is. We project the “cause” of our pain/fear onto someone or something “outside” of ourselves whom we then attack. If we did not believe in the powerlessness of a “me”, where is the “survival” that is feared to be at stake?

We trade our inherent Divine Empowerment for fear. We’ve imprisoned ourselves. We’ve limited ourselves. We’ve mistakenly believed in vulnerability, in powerlessness. Ego then blames others or situations for “having done it to us”; having made “me” vulnerable and powerless. We deny the ego’s accountability, the innocent ignorant belief in fear, separation and powerlessness.

For a while, this denial feels satisfying. The attack of blame feels powerful to ego’s powerlessness. The seeming cleverness of deceit, manipulation, deception, mischief, sabotage and all egoic defensive strategies are designed to feel powerful to the victim-mindset and become a source of pride for the martyr. Like any addiction, victimhood, once pleasurable, becomes unbearably painful.

We wake up along the way, we realize complaining is not righteous, is not powerful, is not clever, is not justice, is not
strength but a cry of powerlessness. This is the equivalency of spiritual infancy, where we’ve assumed that our needs
are unmet. We innocently believe the illusion that attempts to exert control are not only necessary but possible.

If we were to let go of “who did it to us”, we might realize we have mistakenly believed in powerlessness and this belief has created a “victim”. Divine Power has been traded for fear. By believing in the illusion of powerlessness and its illusion of control, a “me” -as the innocently ignorant misunderstood aspect of mind called ego- has created a “victim” and the crushing weight of suffering is upon us.

This will be quite a shock to realize that we have suffered without true cause. To realize no one and no thing is to blame, not others, not events, not even “ourselves”. We see the desire to be in control and realize, finally, control is the illusion which supports powerlessness. Courage arises buoyed by magnificent Power. We face the fear of not being in control, never having been in control and never being able to control anyone nor anything, not even the experience of the ego’s projection
of a false self, a “me” which we ‘ve mistakenly called “ourselves”.

We face surrender, we choose to fall, to yield to That Which Is. Ego will surely counter, asserting that surrender is weakness,
that surrender is death, that yielding is letting down the defensive guard which holds annihilation at bay. Attempts of illusory control may try to return. Complaining, like all egoic strategies, may continue until its momentum is spent, yet they no longer hold a “full charge” and can no longer be fully believed. Attention will no longer be pulled completely into complaining’s momentum.

Awareness will “see clearly” , remain detached, to watch the complaint with neutral observation. Awareness will see the negative emotion, will find the negative thought, will discern the fear, will find the mistaken belief of an unmet need, will disbelieve powerlessness. Awareness will awaken to Its Inherent Power.

Unconditional Love, the Truth of Who Are will inform Awareness that surrender is simply opening to receive the Power from the Truth of Who We Are as Unconditional Love. This is when spiritual infancy lays down the toys of childhood to step into maturity. Awareness reveals That which cannot ever be victimized. The nightmares of spiritual childhood, full of monsters and zombies are seen to be dreams.

The illusions of survival and unmet needs felt to be true, believed by a false powerless “self” mistaken to be a “me” are revealed to be an innocent error, a misunderstanding of temporary ignorance…nothing more. Relief has come.

With You as Awakening Unfolds