Yesterday I was on the phone with a friend describing some turbulence I'd been experiencing in my life the past couple of weeks. I found myself saying, "whenever I'm on the brink of expansion, it seems there's this huge backlash of drama." This prompted her to tell me about Chuck Yeager, the Air Force pilot credited with breaking the sound barrier in 1947. She explained how the shock waves approaching the sound barrier sent many retreating in fear; but once the sound barrier is past, there's quietness and a smooth ride. Upon hearing this I felt a physiological release throughout my whole body. I LOVE metaphors and this was the perfect one for what I had been experiencing. I spent a few hours researching the experiences of Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager who's popularity peaked in the 1980's with the publication of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, and it's movie adaptation a few years later. The History Channel's Modern Marvels episode in 2003 gleaned some powerful insights from Yeager's adventures, explaining that "...by flying supersonic (faster than the speed of sound), the X-1 (airplane used in the expedition) was pushing through sound waves before they could return to buffet the airplane." This is why there was such calm on the other side of the sound barrier. One of the researchers describing the event noted that "...what we really had was not a sonic barrier in the sky, but an informational barrier." "The wall many thought was unbreakable turned out to be largely a construct of ignorance and fear," was another astute observation.
Looking at these physical forces as representations of thought forces has given me some pretty empowering information. Expansion often looms as an impenetrable sound barrier in one's life. As we approach it, there's an agitation that causes our circumstances and sometimes even our bodies to experience buffeting (being struck, forced, moved, or attacked by repeated blows). Thanks to many who have gone before, have overcome the resistance to expansion, we can know even while we're going through it that it isn't a physical barrier but an informational one - largely a construct of ignorance and fear. This awareness cultivates courage to continue stepping into the airplane of spiritual study and practices such as meditation (still or moving), prayer, time in nature, whatever dials you in so-to-speak, and lifts thought to higher altitudes and vibrations. This puts us ahead of resistance's buffetings and allows us to experience settled calm in the midst of expansion's wake.Steven Pressfield reassures with his benevolent understanding of the phenomenon of resistance in this way:
"The massive shadow that you’re experiencing is being cast by an equally massive tree—the tree of your dream, your vision, your calling. Resistance has no power of its own. It’s a shadow, nothing more. As soon as we learn to look past the shadow to the Dream that has cast it, the shadow loses all power over us."As each individual consciousness is educated beyond ignorance and fear, we, like the blade of grass, can comply with Nature's nudging to "grow, grow" and break the metaphorical sound barriers of our own lives however they appear. HAPPY FLYING!
