I haven’t figured out why yet, but every time I’m around my family, it feels as if my spiritual growth screeches to a halt. I don’t abandon my active inner projects, I just seem to shelve them. When I catch sight of them again, I swing my finger around trying to pop the bubble that has become their temporary home in hopes of retrieving them, but the air current from my swing accelerates their movement away. They always return to a slow float, visible, but just out of reach.

My inner projects are not the only thing that becomes a hostage of family time. The synchronicities and breadcrumbs left for me related to my life mission typically stop. Both the projects and breadcrumbs enhance my life experience, but the latter is FUN. I love solving puzzles and following clues, so life has chosen a perfect way to show me my path. Why does it pause while I am in the family container?

My mom is an excellent decoder of messages I receive and a channel as well, on top of having her own special skills. Even still, when I am around her, she is not a source of synchronicity or a source of clues.

One of the great sources of spiritual growth for me has been becoming reacquainted with my family as this always-evolving version of myself. I lived away for 8 years so they only had memories of me from age 0-24 to reference. I have watched time and time again as their expectation of how I may act does not match the reality of who I am now. I remember one time someone suggested we go for a walk (at age 15 the mere suggestion would inspire an internal protest, then I would sulk and drag my body down the path 15 feet behind everyone else) and immediately in a defense, my brother reminded everyone that we should avoid that since I may complain. It surprised me, because I don’t mind walking at all and I don’t complain anymore. So, slowly, their perception of me has been reframed and reorganized.

I spent so much time studying my reactions and theirs to learn how to be successfully independent and have a relationship that allowed everyone to do things their own way. A relationship out of desire instead of obligation; to have fun with them.

The work has paid off, but there is so much more to do, so this should be the perfect setting to let go of more of my own…garbage. Perhaps the growth feels like it is on hold because there is still a lot of foundation to be laid here. Maybe I’ve had so much experience growing on my own that I haven’t integrated the skills in a way that supports presence with family and individual growth. Neither really makes sense though.

I continued to spend time in my latest work environment once it proved to not be what I wanted for several reasons: fear of doing something new, I really considered that place to be home, and I knew I had more to let go of and it was a perfect place to do that. Patterns I drew forward to the present from the past manifested there often. Conflicts with co-workers, trying to what I wanted regardless of the rules, old relationships unresolved, etc. While it felt like a gold mine of growing opportunities, the point at which I had to move on felt really clear. I was growing fast and there was only so much I could do around the same people who weren’t changing. It was like moving through levels of a video game. The theme is there the whole time, but you encounter it in different characters and missions. Only at the end do you have to face the Boss.

So, it isn’t that my family isn’t changing, but maybe I’ve hit a threshold of how much work I can do in their company (at this stage anyway). I’m not attached to this rationale, but I’ll keep watching to see how things evolve and keep working at it. I want inner peace and abundant compassion in my relationships with them.

I’ve still continued to play my little games of growth as much as I can. Another avenue that has provided ample growth has been to simply do things differently than I have in the past. This includes the way I tell a story, if I even tell the story, the way I walk home, how I cut my food, the time of day I exercise or read, etc.

My cousin told a story related to a biking trip in Asia. While in Tokyo, a friend of his danced his way out of the bar they had been in and finally returned to the hotel after two days. I felt a pant of fear in my chest when he told it. As a result, today I made sure to run the opposite direction of where fear-of-getting-lost wanted me to go. Such great fears over such unimportant things, but they need to be acknowledged, not stuffed away, to be released.

Two days ago, we stopped in a cafe for lunch. At cafes I always find the table to be very low, so I hunch over my meal like the food has a positive charge and my face a negative. In an effort to demyelinate more pathways, I sat tall and brought the spoon to my face. Yes, I spilled some, but it felt good to be out of a pattern (hands pulling reflex).

Today, I realized that myself, and everyone else, lift their arms over a wave when it crashes into them. I put my arms down. Momentary fear came. The wave hit me. Nothing different happened.

These examples are just one aspect of what I have been doing over the past one and a half years to accelerate my spiritual growth and therefore access to abilities beyond the typical.

It is possible to open your mind to receive “upgrades” in so many ways. Anyone can do it. What a fun experiment it could be to simply change the routines and physical patterns you have chosen to use all of your life just to see what happens. You may realize being a “creature of habit” isn’t your destiny after all.