Why personal transformation often fails!

Change... filling the feeling of emptiness... finding yourself “again”... Finding your inner gold, and so on. These are all transformations that everyone wishes to experience at least once or several times.

It seems to be more prevalent at the moment. Both in my (online) practice and in my private life, I see more and more people struggling with this. They take courses or therapy, read books to learn how to manifest, but despite the occasional glimmer of transformation, that desire remains unfulfilled. And before you know it, you're back in your old patterns, stuck in your old ways of thinking.

Why is this? It's simple: one thing is often overlooked.

The piece of consciousness!

There are many reasons why inner transformation fails.

Although the reasons vary, they all fall under the same umbrella: the principle of life-death-life. This principle is necessary for transformation to occur. It is precisely the unconsciousness of ‘death’ in this principle that is why personal transformation often fails!

Let me use the example I also used in the podcast. You are probably familiar with the Pirates of the Caribbean films. In the third installment, called At World's End, the story of Davy Jones and his beloved Calypso is told alongside the main storyline. Calypso is a sea goddess with power over the ocean. Davy Jones and Calypso fall in love, and in order to make Davy Jones immortal so that they can be together forever, he is given the task of guiding the dead at sea to the afterlife.

Every 10 years, they would meet on land. However, Calypso does not wait for him after these 10 years, and Davy Jones abandons his task. Instead, he returns to his old life as a pirate. Calypso is imprisoned in a human body, and Davy Jones... He becomes increasingly one with his past and ultimately one with the ocean.

In this example, you can see the failed principle of life-death-life. And although this metaphor seems to be about love, it is just as much about transformation.

First of all, there is the wish, the desire. We have created a certain image of this for ourselves. This is the part of life. The rose-colored glasses that both Calypso and Davy Jones wear and that make him take on the task. However, symbolic death comes, and the rose-colored cloud crashes down. Calypso is not present, and this is different from what he had expected.

This is often exactly what happens on the path of transformation. We are on our way, but there always comes a moment when symbolic death comes into play. This can take the form of different expectations, from ourselves and from others, and our ego comes into play. Fear of the unknown that lies ahead. 

It is, as it were, the same as the fisherman who fishes up the skeleton woman and runs away in the fairy tale of the same name, ‘Skeleton Woman’. What Davy Jones should have done in this example is persevere, so that he could find life again and thus complete the transformation. What we as humans often do is that, precisely in this difficult phase, we fall back on the symbolic death into what is already known and therefore safe, just like Davy Jones does. You fix the ego in earthly existence and forget the divine within yourself.

The most important thing is that you become aware of this period of symbolic death and learn to accept it, see it, and feel it. This will enable you to know when you can persevere and bring a transformation to a successful conclusion.