HITTING THE WALL

By Niki Billingslea

If you have been on your journey to realizing your purpose or pursuing a life-long goal, you know what it feels like to hit the wall.  That proverbial wall that stands between you and all of your hopes and dreams.  The one that you stare at for hours wondering what to do about it.  The people who get things done simply go through the wall, around it, or over it.  There are a number of people, for whom I write this article, who seem to think this wall is real.

    When you think you have it together this wall erects itself right in the middle of the path to your dreams.  What is up with that?  It keeps you from completing tasks you identified, it stops your flow and is a blight in your life altogether.  While you  wait for it to go away, you distract your self with people, activities and thoughts that have nothing to do with your vision.  The wall is not real.  You are lying to yourself.  You simply do not want to admit the truth to yourself.  That could be a number of things:  you have not fully committed, you are pursuing world-class goals  with small-town effort, or you are simply not doing the inner work necessary to activate that God potential in you.

    Everyone on the path experiences that period of elation and bliss with our first breakthrough.  Life is magical and we are levitating through life.  It is the best high ever.  Then that level of existence becomes normal.  The shine wears off and, if you do not continue to do the spiritual work, you fall off.  Falling off feels like being left behind or becoming detached.  If you happen to have a spiritual practice that sustains a connection with your higher source, then you at least maintain some of that blissful feeling.  Even that can become routine and something you create a blind spot to.  Kind of like that stack of papers on the table that has been there so long you do not see it any more.  That is the plateau that can turn into the wall.

    This is the point in your process when you  have to work to sustain the excitement and enthusiasm that will take you to the next level of your practice.  Some relationships are like this.  When you want to keep the passion alive, you have to make a conscious effort to put yourself in situations that elicit the energy field you want to pick up on.  I have an audiobook set that  I keep on constant rotation especially on those days when I just don’t feel like it.  There may be a time when those days turn into weeks or, God forbid, months.  You do not want to let that precious time slip through your fingers so you work to hold onto your vision.  You work to keep your goals intact.

    For me, it was like fighting for my life.  I listened to the CDs, I journaled like a crazy person, I sought out all the positive people or productive people in my phone.  I sat in the lectures and the churches soaking it up.  I forced myself to sit in meditation whether it was five minutes or thirty.  Eventually, and without my realizing it, my blahs turned into a-ha.

Getting through a tough period was not always like that.  There have been times in my life when the days turned into weeks, the weeks turned into months and the months turned into years.  To get out of it and get back on track took an equally grueling amount of time.  I got tired of it and the older I have become, the less I am willing to keep starting over from scratch. I may have a great excuse to be down and sad; however, these days I don’t allow myself the luxury of wallowing in personal pain.  I have come to enjoy proving to myself how divine I am by standing in my power.  It is exhilarating to look insecurity in the eye or fear, or whatever other obstacle and walk away with a smile and my joy intact.

   The most effective weapon against the wall is the one thing most people give up when they see it--your practice.  When obstacles erect themselves in your life, that is not the time to lie down with your belly up.  That is the perfect opportunity to become a spiritual warrior.  If you have been doing this for a while, you might have to upgrade your arsenal.  Find new tools, draw a new teacher into your life, be more open to being led.  Most importantly, DO NOT STOP prayer and meditation.  Do not stop your practice EVER.  

You may experience a bad day.  It is ok to have a bad day.  It happens to the best of us.  Take a time out, replenish, renew, relax.  Once you get a reboot, upgrade that practice and get back to it because there is no wall.  There is only your vision waiting for you to embrace it.