Unearthing The Diamond

Are you knee-deep in the mud of yourself? I hope so. If you really want out, there’s no way around it...you have to dig. The same patterns have haunted you for years, nothing changes, and the more time passes, the worse it gets. More anger. More depression. So when you catch a scent of a way out, you follow it. You cling to it. This isn’t surface-level soul-searching. This is the real work. And it doesn’t happen overnight, no matter who tries to sell you a shortcut.

When you get serious about your inner journey, it’s much different than when you were just scratching the surface. It comes in stages. So, no matter who tells you that it can be done quickly, I would want to see proof if I were you. Because uncovering who you are through all the layers of lies, manipulations, and suffering that have been inflicted upon you can go deep.

The instinctual brain is wired for survival, not truth. It doesn’t care about your growth, it cares about keeping things predictable. That’s why the first time you uncover something real, something ugly, your own mind will tell you it’s a lie. It will sound foreign, unnatural, like you’re making it up. Because facing hard truths threatens the identity you’ve clung to for so long. And that identity...whether you love it or hate it...has kept you alive. The mind sees change as danger. It will manipulate, dissuade, and throw every excuse in your path to keep you in the same old cycle. Because a ‘strong mind,’ according to instinct, is one that holds onto its beliefs at all costs.

So when you uncover the first layer, and you say it out loud, it will sound strange and foreign, like you are lying. But you are not. You are seeing things the way they actually are. But that survival instinct doesn’t want you to see those negative things about yourself that you’ve always been convinced you’re nothing like at all...the kind of traits you despise in others. When you see it in yourself, it’s a rough thing to deal with. Your instinctual brain wants you to believe that it’s a lie.

Now, just to be very clear, I am not talking about what other people say to you that they see, I am talking about what you yourself see. Because, as we all know, there’s no shortage of people who will tell you you’re something that you are not, and try to convince you of that. Mammals are designed to be blind to themselves. It is instinctual. A fight for survival. The brain sees our own truth as being dangerous. It thinks ‘a strong mind is one of strong beliefs’…about everything.

Each truth about yourself that you uncover can feel like a fight to the finish. Your mind will pull out all the stops, all the excuses. Many times, it will use every manipulation tactic in thought to try to dissuade you from stepping into a new reality. But of course, that’s what we’re striving for…the new reality. You’ve got to be patient and compassionate with yourself through this whole thing. It’s often the opposite, though. Being brought up in an emotionally and mentally abusive household makes for a mind that has been trained to attack itself. Michael Unbroken says it like this: “If anyone said to you the things that you say to yourself, wow, you would probably punch them in the face!” He’s right. We are abusive to ourselves because our instinctual brain is accustomed to this, and it wants to stay on the straight and narrow of same old, same old.

The next layer can take quite a while to get to. For some, it takes years. I know it did for me. And then when you go through the exact same thing that you did the last time, it gets a little easier. You become a bit more accepting that, yes, that is the truth that you just uncovered. And with each layer, you will get more accustomed to the truth, but that does not mean it will be easy. Because the same thing is going on and will be for the rest of your days. Your mammalian instinctual brain will still lie and manipulate you, trying to “protect” you from upsetting the balance that has kept you “alive” as long as it has. I put “alive” in quotes because this stinking thinking that you are uncovering often makes for a pretty bleak existence. Think of the instinctual brain as the little devil sitting on your left shoulder while the valiant you angel sits on your right shoulder.

So what do you do? You keep going. You watch your mind play its games, and you call it out. You get used to the discomfort. You remind yourself that resistance doesn’t mean you’re wrong...it means you’re getting close to something real. And when the next layer comes, and the one after that, you’ll recognize the pattern. You’ll know the voice of your own survival brain when it tries to pull you back under. And you’ll keep digging… because somewhere beneath all that mud, there’s a diamond. And it’s you.

Image by Job Savelsberg from Unsplash