Part 3 of the series
If the real danger isn’t what’s coming against you… what have you tacitly agreed to?
I’ve been sitting on this question more than usual lately, especially since I’ve been deep into the final manuscript episode of Daily Demons. There is something about putting language to these ideas, bringing them out of their quiet place and into the light, that has stirred up… let’s call it an interesting pattern in my life.
I’ve noticed that every time I sit down to write, or even when I start sharing these pieces of work publicly, things start to happen. Not figuratively.
clearly
The light is flashing for no reason. Meeting people who feel… off. Not in a dramatic, dramatic way, but in a way that’s hard to explain if you’ve never experienced it. Eyes that are unusually dark, almost hollow, yet seem intense. Energy that is heavy, pressing, penetrating. Moments that, if taken individually, can be closed. But when they stack, back to back, in direct alignment with what I’m working on, it becomes hard to dismiss.
And I tried to dismiss it.
I told myself it was nothing.
tiredness
Perhaps overthinking.
And then, almost immediately, something else happens. another encounter Another disruption. Another moment that feels like a quiet interruption, “pay attention”.
So, I have.
I’m paying more attention from a place of awareness, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life and in writing this book, it’s that not everything is random or even coincidental. And everything is not yours.
When you start bringing light into places that operate in darkness, there is often a reaction. Not always loud. Not always clear. But the present. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong. If anything, it often means something is being revealed.
And that brings me to what I want to say today.
You don’t know the deals you’ve made.
Because this is where most people miss it.
We tend to think in terms of attacks. We have to protect against something external, something coming towards us. But what I’ve seen time and time again, the real foothold is not in the attack. It’s in the contract.
We don’t just experience patterns.
We participate in them.
We don’t just listen to thoughts.
We accept them.
We don’t just feel emotions.
We introduce them.
And slowly, without realizing it, we begin to form a relationship with the thing that is limiting us.
One of the lines I wrote in Everyday Demons speaks directly to this. We don’t just fight the darkness, we ally with it. We repeat its language, we guard its presence, and eventually we mistake it for our own voice.
It’s just our daily life, isn’t it?
“I’m just an anxious person.”
“I’ve always struggled with that.”
“I’m just like this.”
This statement seems innocuous. even honest. But what they often do is contract. Agreement with a pattern that may have started outside of you, but has now been brought inside and given a name, a place, and a sense of permanence.
And once something seems permanent, we stop challenging it.
We stop questioning it.
We cease to be separate from it.
Shaman Durek speaks to this in Spirit Hacking when he says that the mind will create identity around pain in order to maintain familiarity, even though that familiarity is harmful. The body and mind will choose known discomfort over unknown freedom almost every time unless there is a conscious barrier.
That is the mechanism.
That’s the pattern that we’ve adopted. And patterns, left unchecked, become identities.
From a psychological point of view, it is conditioning. neural pathways. Repetition. From a spiritual perspective, this is alignment. contract Opening a door and leaving it open long enough that something starts to settle.
We like to think that we wouldn’t choose something that harms us.
But we do.
Not consciously.
Not intentionally.
But consistently.
We choose familiar thoughts. Familiar responses. familiar beliefs. We reconsider it. We strengthen it. We give space.
And over time, it stops feeling like a choice and starts feeling like the truth.
Awareness alone is not enough.
You can sit in therapy for years, unpack your past, name your patterns, understand your triggers, and still find yourself in the same cycle. Not because therapy is ineffective, but because understanding without disruption does not equal transformation.
At some point, there has to be a break in the deal.
There has to be a moment where you say, “Just because I’ve experienced it doesn’t mean I’m going to continue to identify with it.”
You need to reclaim authorship over your own inner world.
The Bible speaks more directly than most realize. In 2 Corinthians 10:5 it says, “We bring every thought into captivity.”
Every thought.
nothing
Which don’t feel good.
Every thought.
It means prudence. It implies that every thought is not meant to be kept, entertained or believed.
This implies that there is a separation between you and what goes through your mind. And that separation is where power resides. Because if every thought is yours, you are at the mercy of your own mind. But if thoughts can be examined, challenged and even rejected, you are no longer passive. You are active.
You are choosing.
And this is where I turn to the experiences I had while writing this book.
What’s going on there?
I can’t say with absolute certainty, and I won’t pretend to.
But I can say this.
When you begin to break down patterns, when you begin to question long-standing conventions, when you begin to bring awareness to things that go unnoticed, there is often resistance. Sometimes internal. Sometimes exotic. Sometimes both.
And resistance isn’t always a stop sign. Sometimes this is a sign that you are getting closer to something important. The question is not whether you will encounter resistance. The question is will you recognize it for what it is, or will you go back to the old covenants because they seem easier.
Because they always will.
Comfort is not an indicator of truth.
Familiarity is not an indicator of alignment.
And just being with you for a long time doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong to you.
This is the basis.
It’s the beginning of learning to separate what’s not yours, what’s true from what’s patterned, what’s aligned from what’s been repeated long enough to feel real.
Over the next few days, I’m going to go deeper into this topic. How these contracts are formed, how they are reinforced, and more importantly, how they are broken.
Stay with this for now.
Where in your life have you stopped questioning something because it always was?
And what if you did?
Be honest, have there been things in your life that you’ve accepted as “just who you are”… that might actually be a pattern you agree with?
throw it down I want to hear what you see.
And if it opens something up for you, send it to someone who needs to see it too.
Always loving and praying for you and our world,
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This post was Previously published at medium.com.
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Photo credit: Rene’ Schooler(author)
