Recently, I thought of a former colleague and how she unnecessarily overwhelmed herself. I remembered that I took her story as an example for a post, which I would like to share again:

Don’t we all have times when many things go through our minds and hearts at once? So many different thoughts which escape the moment they seem within reach. At the same time, it’s obvious that everything has a common denominator. It can be frustrating and feel like you’re just going in circles with no way out. And while you think you have all your problems together now, to finally put everything in order or sort it out, life adds something else to confuse you.

It can all feel overwhelming and lead to despair or resignation. But maybe it all just means we want to understand more than we have to. I had an employee who we hired to the front desk of our business center, and to provide simple administrative support. She had no experience with finance or compliance tasks, which we also provide. Finance is a huge and complex field that you have to like and/or be open to. However, she felt the need to understand all the details of what we do, but at the same time felt overwhelmed with it. We tried to explain that we didn’t expect her to learn it all. If she were interested and open to it, she would grow into it, learning by doing. But it is impossible to understand everything in just a few weeks, while others spend years at university or gain professional experience. Still, she overextended herself and was frustrated because she was “not the finance guy,” but “the need-to-understand-everything guy.” Again, we tried to explain that she didn’t need to put pressure on herself because she wasn’t even hired for that field. In the end, she was completely insecure and overwhelmed. She thought of herself as a failure. The problem for us was that she was trying to fit into something we didn’t need, but what we needed her to get done, she was neglecting…

Her example explains so well how much we overwhelm ourselves when we try to understand everything that is happening in our lives. But in reality, we’re not even ready to see the bigger picture. The harder we try, the less it works. That’s because we’re just grasping at a detached thread of the rope, while thinking it’s already the rope. I’m not saying we shouldn’t look at what’s happening in our lives and the role we play in it. But at some point, we have to accept that we are not yet ready to see the complete whole. Maybe more needs to happen, or maybe we just haven’t reached a certain point in the process. We can trust that one day we will understand, or at least we will understand that part that is necessary. Recognition always happens retrospectively. How many times has it happened to us that we thought: Hey, now I understand! And shortly after, something happened that made us feel like we were pushed back to the beginning. Sometimes, the strong will to understand can bring much more confusion.

We will probably never know definitively when we “got it”. Ultimately, all the lessons we learn here are only individual components of the great truth. Many incarnations are necessary, and through these, we encounter numerous individual challenges that lead to partial realizations. Perhaps a part of this great truth is that we develop humility, trust, and serenity in ourselves so as not to overextend ourselves. Because that’s exactly when we block our way and our vision and become blind to insight. As long as we let the mind decide where to start to understand, we will always end up at dead ends. How can the mind grasp the wisdom that created it?

Allow yourself to want to understand, but not to have to.
Trust that you will understand as soon as you are ready.
That way, the process will go smoothly and your soul will be at absolute peace.

In Love and Light