The Lie That Keeps You Small
I subscribe to Steve Chandler’s e-mails (you should too).
Because I’m not feeling terribly inspired, but unwilling to not write a blog post, I am just going to pass along something recent from Steve:
Selling myself on “the way I am” keeps me locked in my own fearful childhood. I become heavy with a false claim of permanent personality. Heavy with the lie. That’s why becoming enlightened and growing up feel like the same thing.
Enlightenment seems to mean making yourself lighter. Many people actually lose weight when they become enlightened. As each lie is let go, we rise up, feeling lighter and enlightened by the process.
To throw aside the heavy lies we are struggling to carry around with us is to become free. Which is everything. It’s growing up. It’s growing lighter, higher, freer.
Immanuel Kant said that enlightenment is a person’s emergence from “self-imposed immaturity.” Self-imposed immaturity is when we deliberately lie to ourselves about being frightened children in the face of adult challenges. Instead of becoming brave men and brave women who are simply challenged by the tasks ahead. We do this because it feels easier, it feels more normal for us. In truth it is far more difficult and it is abnormal. If only we knew.
So, the question is: how do you lie to yourself?
How do you frighten yourself?
Let those fears go.
You’ll be fine.
You’ll be lighter.