Life Crisis and the Nature of Personal Transformation

Posted On September 5, 2015 / Written by Dr. Linda Gadbois

Many people turn away from or choose to not undergo the process of personal transformation required as soul growth through the means of birthing your higher-self through the use of choice and will within the everyday life of their normal consciousness. This is because it can be very disruptive and completely change the way you live your life, and who you are in the most essential sense. It takes a great deal of courage and mortal fortitude to brave and endure the process of the life you’ve built your identity around completely falling apart, crumbling beyond repair, and leaving your life, often giving you a painfully deepened sense of isolation and abandonment. While being completely alone in life can be one of the most painful experiences there are, leaving us constantly searching for meaning and purpose, being devastated financially, raped of your dignity, and outcast by those you once loved and thought loved you, brings about a new kind of pain that can bring you to the brink of total destruction.

Because of this tendency to resist it at all costs and not being willing to consciously choose it, many who have made a soul agreement to undergo the transformative process where you enter it consciously and are aware of it, think about it, have premonitions of it coming, experience it instead as happening to you without choice or control. We often even initiate it through unconscious behaviors and emotional turmoil that are sabotaging and actually work to set the inevitable into motion. What we deem self-sabotaging behaviors may not be a bad thing, but actually a necessary part of our evolution where we unconsciously act out in situations we’re not happy in and often feel tormented by in the essential sense, even though they might appear quite fortunate and comfortable on the surface.

 For those destined for complete transformation of the body and souls as a form of spiritual mission or dedication that comes as a turbulent inner struggle and decisions, chances are we undergo many forms of transformation as challenges and hardships that seem to be cast upon us without choice or desire, that we find the strength to manage in some way, that ends up growing and developing us, while perhaps drastically changing the direction of our life because of them, that seem to be preparing us through practice for the larger transformations that to come at a mature age where their effects are more drastic and prominent and the patterns of our life more set and fixed. Yet, even in these smaller, life-altering events, we may find, looking back on them, that we participated in bringing them about through some form of inner struggle that they seemed to resolve, or lead us into because we knew we had no choice morally.

These experiences started for me early in life, and so I became accustomed to them in a strange sort of way where drastic and constant changes became the norm. My childhood was very unstable, and I ended up running away and living on the streets, not because I was abandoned, but because I chose to. I wasn’t willing to compromise myself or allow the events to take place that were inevitable if I continued living at home, so I left because I felt safer on the streets than I did at home. At least on the streets I had some control, and could, through my own decisions and actions keep myself safe. Though this led into a traumatic time in my life of tremendous hardship and uncertainty, I also grew in strength and confidence, and was able to set up a life where I not only took care of myself, but continued to go to school, be placed in advanced learning, and graduated high school two years early with a college scholarship. All without nobody realizing I wasn’t living at home.

 Later, when my son was born, he had health problems that I had to go through extreme lengths to get diagnosed, because even though I was intuitively picking up on it, the symptoms were common and subtle, and no one believed me. When I finally got help with a diagnosis, it was within hours of saving his life, and brought on a year long process of multiple surgeries, living in the hospital and out of my car, being ruined financially and devastated emotionally. I had to draw on a part of myself I didn’t know was there, and came into the full realization of a higher consciousness that I could access at will, and use to make calculated decisions and perform operations that would later be seen as miraculous. I came to know the meaning of unconditional love, total surrender to the creative process of life, and the incredibly powerful sense of myself that came from realizing that I would die for my son. This experience changed me at the deepest level of my sense of self, matured me exponentially, and gave me incredible moral strength and complete confidence in my intuition and my ability to handle anything. Through this experience I built a working relationship with the higher power that’s active in my life and available as willpower.

 Years later, after going through financial bankruptcy, and struggling to keep a failed marriage together, flirting with drug addiction and encountering the darker side of seemingly normal things, after a series of premonitions, my husband was abruptly killed by being stabbed through the heart while in the stall of a bathroom, set my life into a tailspin prolonged by a year long trial in our home town of 2,400 people. Needless to say, it was the event of the decade, and got constant media attention. His death brought me face to face with the reality of what happens when and after we die. I developed an insatiable sense of wonder about our true spiritual nature, the meaning of life, and how all things serve a purpose in terms of the experiences and life lessons they set in motion, in which we are lured and drawn deeply into as the point of no return. This event and everything that ensued from it completely changed the direct of my life, set into motion a whole new set of questions and a deep desire to know the true nature that underlies and orchestrates things. At 30 years of age, my true spiritual quest into the unknown fully kicked into motion and changed the course of my life and how I looked at things.

Even though I continued to experience other events that continued morphing and changing the direction of my life, most seemed rather easy and void of real pain after this. As my path steadily led into a serious and devoted study of spiritual sciences, a decision to return to college, and when approaching my thesis for my Ph.D. in Spiritual Sciences, both of which centered around personal transformation, I began realizing what I called my soul agreement in regards to mastering this process, not by having it seemingly thrust upon me through what seemed like tragedy and trauma in which I had no control or conscious say so in, but as a willed experience that I cooperatively engaged in.

 My true dedication became apparent when my college insisted I write about it as a clinical study or form of research project, that used and cited other professionals work as a means of proving or validating my ideas, which of course would have been a spin-off of what’s already been done, instead of writing about it from experience, which is what I was proposing. I wanted to undergo it in a completely conscious manner so I could capture the experience of it, and know through the experience what we have to access as a means of making it. And not letting it overcome us or do us in . . . which of course, it can. I felt so strongly about this, that when I couldn’t get it approved, I declined the Ph.D. program, and went for my Doctorate instead. Upon graduation, after I got over the tremendous feeling of relief and congratulating myself (it’s a lot of work), a voice inside of me calmly said . . . now its time to practice what you’ve learned theoretically. A serious feeling came over me as a form of dread, and I knew the real work had only just begun and that my life up to this point served only as a preview for what was to come. And from that point forward my life as I knew and built it, began systematically falling apart and leaving.

Even in the moments when I desperately tried to grab onto some form of security and stability long enough to get my bearings, I couldn’t. Nothing worked. And all I seemed to see and encounter was the incredibly false nature of things; of people, relationships, communities, companies, government . . . everything around me seemed to be revealing a hidden nature that while I knew and suspected it was there before, didn’t really know for sure. Then I began realizing that everything else was changing because I was changing, and as what I thought was my true nature began falling away and I was no longer able to use it to create my reality, the equally false nature of everybody and everything began dissolving and all I could see and sense was who they really were at their deepest, most essential parts. And it all but devastated me. Even though I thought that I knew the true reality of things through my extreme intellect and well developed intuition, I quickly came to realize in very abrupt terms, that this was not the case!

 As I lost just about everything and who I was by way of what I owned, the job I had, the amount of money I made, and the image I presented and experienced myself through, my relationship with everything else changed also, and the ones based on the false image I had so successfully created and the confident dynamic persona I had perfected, changed, revealing an entirely different side to things, and everything I had become accustomed to and dependent on left my life. I came to know extreme forms of humility, abandonment, surrender, sacrifice, unbearable insecurity, and the depths of anguish encountered at the bottom of what seems like the bottomless pit of the dark night of the soul, when we find ourselves in a place the eye does not see, where we can no longer grab onto things, ideas, roles, people, situations, relationships, or jobs to pull ourselves up with and provide us with some form of hope and relief, we come into another realization, one that at first is foreign to us and even awkward to contemplate, we begin noticing and sensing a feeling deep within us that seems to be reaching out to us, longing for our desolate gaze, which the moment we become truly aware of it, begins taking hold and growing in us, while everything else fades away. As it grows inside of us it begins fortifying us with a new sense of life and energy. As we begin drawing on it out of the depths of despair, we’re filled with a renewed sense of hope and moral comfort. The more attention we give it, the more it swells inside of us, softly seducing us with its soft penetrating glow.

 In this final moment of drawing on our inner strength, free from the confines and affects of the material world, we begin realizing our true identity as being in this world, but not of it. We surrender and give ourselves over, not to an external force, but to an internal one. One that can’t be lost or taken away. One that resides in us eternally and unconditionally. One that’s always been there and never leaves us, but requires our recognition and invitation. Once this happens, and we begin settling into a new kind of spiritual wealth, where simply lose interest in material wealth, no longer crave excess or nonessential ideas and things, and begin experiencing a newfound freedom born out of a lack of attachment to material things, and we begin working consciously to simplify and streamline our life. We lose selfish interests and turn our attention instead to helping others by contributing in a more meaningful way to benefit others on their own spiritual journeys into self-healing through self-recognition and realization.

We come to realize that forgiveness itself is an illusion, because those we imagine have betrayed or forsaken us, honestly don’t know what they do because they’re caught up in the illusion of their life and feel warranted and justified in their actions. No one can attack or hurt us unless we’re invested in the same illusion and therefore deem ourselves hurtable or attackable. When we separate ourselves from the illusion we normally share with others as a primordial form of ignorance, we no longer react to them. They can no longer cause a reaction in us in response to them. They exercise no control over us. They no longer affect us. We no longer share the same reality that’s producing their behavior towards us. We realize with great clarity and absolution, that their perception and behavior has nothing to do with us, and is simply an expression of who they are and the reality they live in as a projection of their own mind. Through this realization we come to realize there’s nothing to forgive, because they don’t have the ability to harm us. They have inflicted no pain on us, and we have not suffered at their mercy. We no longer share the error of their thinking, and so it doesn’t become a part of our experience.

 When we shift our very perception of life, what things mean, how they appear to us, the true nature of reality and what’s happening in the true underlying sense, we move to a higher vibration and cultivate a different kind of awareness that no longer relates or partakes in the lower levels of consciousness still shrouded with the veil of unconsciousness. Once you know, you can’t not know. Once you see and realize the true reality of the material realm that disguises ideas with outer appearances, you don’t even notice the outer appearance anymore, but experience directly their inner nature instead. You begin seeing people as they are being distinctly separate from you, and therefore unable to affect you because you’ve changed how you enter into relationship with them, and everything else changes accordingly. People who used to upset you, cause you to feel anger and hatred or disgust, you now view with compassion because you realize fully that they are consumed with ignorance and basically unaware of what they’re actually doing, and more importantly, because their consciousness no longer resonates with yours, and therefore doesn’t enter into you and produce an effect in you . . . so they can’t hurt you or even disturb your internal peace of mind, because they exist outside of and apart from you.

 When we’re no longer affected by the emotions and mental projections of others, not prone to addictions and cravings that command our will, and we become passionless in terms of worldly pleasures and success, we detach from material possessions as the means of providing us with our identity and sense of self. We detach from external outcomes, and maintain our sense of self from an internal source that’s eternally peaceful and only affected by the consciousness that inhabits the internal plane, which is benevolent and selfless. Our journey into our true nature is a transformation that moves us from being determined by the material world which is built out of a shared illusion, to being determined by the power of our own souls consciousness and true connection to the spiritual realm of immortality, eternal strength, and all pervading peace and compassion for those still lost in the illusions of their own making, without ever even realizing it.

 Dr. Linda Gadbois

Transpersonal Psychologist, Personal Transformation Coach, and Spiritual Teacher