There comes a time in everyone’s life where we have to face some hard truths in order to grow. Well, you don´t HAVE to but the price of not doing so is very high many times.

Growing up in denial is a form of barrier we carry almost like having our head in the clouds while we know that a rapid-fire is burning under our feet. If we feel powerless to change, put the fire out, we come to the conclusion that if we simply ignore it must certainly put out itself.

Now, we all know how fireworks right? If it is not stopped it spreads and oh boy does it spread fast.

Facing shadows and hard truths about any situation is not fun and it is very uncomfortable. We grow in the feeling of discomfort, we grow from looking at the things we did not know or in this case, we know we just wish we didn’t know. That is the case with denial.

The relationship we have with ourselves is and should be maintained and worked on for the remaining of our lives, from birth up until death. Because when we die we go alone..

If a part of you is in denial there is another part that is in full-blown exposure so to say. It knows and it will keep nagging for your attention.

You see, running from something takes much more energy than facing and accepting it. And every time we run we create more and more distance with our inner selves.

This is a big sacrifice, and it´s something that we do as a collective all the time. This is one of the reasons our world is ruel and selfish many times. Everyone is off running from the problem and very few are trying to solve the problem. And this is not in any way to say that one is better than the other, I don´t believe in that kind of comparison. It is simply an observation of the patterns that are currently being played out.

The boogie man is inside of us all. The shadow and pain is part of our existence here whether we like it or not.

Only accepting one does not make the other go away, and we know this but still, the fear runs deep enough to convince us otherwise.

The first step is to stop running. Just stop. To do this we require courage, but it is not combative courage like the kings of our past ready to go into the great wars and battles to defeat an enemy. It is courage in the form of great love. Where we recognize that which we fear as part of ourselves and part of all there is. Knowing there can be no mistakes, only happy accidents as our dear Bob Ross would say.

Getting out of denial is scary, it is almost like coming down from a high induced by drugs. But if we manage to practice it little by little, slowly it turns into trust. Trust in the universe at large, our role in it and most importantly, trust in our own selves.

The price of not accepting reality , the good bad and the ugly is simply that we will never be able to change that which we don´t acknowledge.