Soul Growth Through Surrender - L,L,&L W/ Glenn Ambrose

The quote that spawned this episode is by Henry David Thoreau: The soul grows by subtraction, not addition. I dive into the 1st 2 stages of spiritual growth where we can use tools to help us interact with life in healthier ways in order to get to the place where we can let go of things and really connect back to our soul.

Transcript

Welcome to life lessons and laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hey welcome to the show everybody.

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Talk to me,

Don't leave me hanging.

So today we're gonna talk about soul growth through subtraction.

Interesting huh?

So what spawned this was I saw this quote by Henry David Thoreau.

It said the soul grows by subtraction not addition and I was like yeah that's concise and beautiful.

So I posted it and got a little feedback and was conversating with some people in a another group that I have and you know it's just I think it's a very important dynamic to understand because it's it's counterintuitive to how we normally learn.

I mean normally we we try to learn from acquiring knowledge you know acquiring something from outside of us and bringing it in whereas with the soul growth it's you know sometimes we we we do learn things from external sources but that's not what really changes us.

It's those are just tools that we can learn and and if we use those to subtract things then our soul grows.

So we can gain perspectives but the perspective does isn't the thing that actually changes us it's implementing the perspective that changes us.

So and this is you know like this is one of one of the difficulties of linear thinking and the information age.

We have so much information you know around us that we have access to and it's so easy and I've talked about this in other podcasts it's like our body gives us positive feedback when we're doing something positive.

So when we're feeding ourselves spiritual food through information as a general rule that is a good thing.

It's expanding our mind exposing us to different ways of looking at things so therefore we receive positive feedback we feel a little bit better.

The problem is is people will get addicted to that and people think that that's it and then if people aren't where they want to be spiritually they'll think it's because they haven't learned enough yet.

They haven't learned the the the right knowledge they that they must be missing something you know it's and we're so conditioned to doing this it's because again we're linear in our thinking because that's how earthly things are so we're linear in our thinking and we think that and this is how we've been conditioned to learn you know through school if that they expose you to something that you've never been exposed to before and then they feed it to you over and over until you get it until you memorize it and then and you know maybe there might be even a certain aspect of understanding it you know some teachers which I think is more important and some teachers do do that others don't but regardless it's you know whether you're whether you're just memorizing it or memorizing it and understanding it it's taking information outside of you and kind of making it part of you in a in an intellectual way it's an intellectual exercise so once you understand it intellectually and or can repeat it intellectually you know through memorization then you get a pat on the back and if you do it enough they they let you go to the next grade and do it more so we are conditioned to learn like this for the first you know 12 years of our lives or well 17 18 whatever but at right at the beginning of our life we are taught to learn things this way so then when we start leaning into spirituality of course we're going to do the same thing now in the beginning yeah we have to take take information in but taking it in is step one it's in is step one it's not the end game so even if you understand it like it does like understanding it is better than not understanding it but that's not the end game either it's not about taking in information and understanding it it's about implementing it it's about using it to do something so and then you know this is where we lean into even more counterintuitive stuff because it's like i just said using it to do something well a lot of times we're actually supposed to be using it to not do things which which brings me right back to the and to the subtraction not addition right so that it's like our soul doesn't grow by adding things in it can be a step towards our soul growing but our soul doesn't grow when we memorize or understand things our soul grows when we implement them and that's what changes us that's how we be that's when we start interacting with life differently that's how that's when we start actually thinking differently like on a on a deep level and therefore interacting differently so it's you know a lot of our internal growth is about forgetting our conditioning forgetting the idea that things are all linear forgetting that we were told we're good if we if we can regurgitate what other people say back to us the correct way or forgetting the idea that we're not good enough if we can't sit still at a desk for six hours when we're a kid you know you know that that was a big one for me i mean that that you know i was told that i was problem my whole life like just every day for 17 years you know after a while you're like well the you know and you see other other kids being able to do things that you can't do just like for me it was still and pay attention and and you don't understand why you can't and then everybody tells you you're bad because you're not doing it and then you try and you still you're just incapable of it so then and but you see other people capable of it other kids capable of it so then you're like well you know there's only really one conclusion that you can come to you know you are bad so that's you know that's when i broke hard left in junior high you know after by the time i hit seventh grade i just couldn't take it anymore i was just like okay you you guys got me you know you're right you guys get all the evidence um every single one of you has been saying it over and over and over and over and over again and i look around and it seems like a lot of the other kids can do it and i can't so yeah there must be something wrong with me you know like i get it and no matter how hard i try i can't do it so so like i'll just i'm gonna stop trying to be who you want me to be i'm just gonna because i i can't anyway and you're frustrated and i'm frustrated and i have no control over whether you're frustrated but i do have control over what whether i'm frustrated so if i stop trying to fit in then i'm not going to be frustrated that i can't fit in you know so that's what i did i was just like i'll just do whatever the hell i want i'm in trouble all the time anyway might as well have some fun you know and i did i had lots of fun um unfortunately it was from a foundation of poor self-esteem so you know that's gonna crash right but so but we were taught that if we listen to our parents even if it goes against um what our body is telling us to do um what we know to be right and wrong um like how to fit in what we're supposed to like what we're not supposed to like like if we do what we're told then we're we are given love and approval and if we don't then we're given punishment and disapproval so you know there's some forgetting we got to do man you know like we have to forget our conditioning let go of what holds us back you know once sometimes some intellectual things are helpful for this you know like those that might be the other part of this podcast or another podcast depending on how this goes but like we can use these tools as we're learning spiritual tools we can use them to help our soul grow by like um letting go of what's holding us back like so in the beginning when we start on these paths it's like we have all these thought patterns and conditions that are holding us back and we'd love to just let them go oftentimes people tell us to um which is just about impossible to do like really until you have a deeper spiritual connection letting go basically is nothing that that's all it is because and because that's what we're conditioned to do you know we're taught you know we're taught to stuff you know i mean i mean i guess you know while men and women do it differently um but sometimes sometimes we do it the same but you know emotions it's even more pushed on men to stuff our emotions women it's it's more important to stuff say something like um how we feel about ourselves or or or our women a lot of times are more taught to stuff more about what they really want right that's part of the oppression so it's like no just you know be quiet and people please what you want isn't important you know so but we're all taught to stuff all this all this stuff it's just you know the the culture pushes certain aspects of it a little bit more with men and a little bit other things a little bit more with women but we we've all been taught to stuff so letting things go is basically stuffing you know when is letting things go not stuffing well that's when your your process of um the process of processing um that doesn't sound right uh your process but i don't know anything else to say at the moment so process of processing information the way you process information when that changes then you can actually let things go because in the beginning like basically everything bothers us in the beginning when we're living non spiritually like everything bothers us um everything that's not in alignment with the with the way we think the world is supposed to go bothers us and if somebody we take everything personally we're very victim oriented and i know people don't like to hear that but just relax with that but just relax with the i'm not a victim like just put down your sword okay it's okay we're we're it's just the beginning point we're like basically if you have not done self-work 95 percent of the people who haven't done work on themselves are in victim mode as a general way of interacting with reality and it's it's not that oh you're a victim it's not it's not that it's it's a whole way of looking at the world like it's it's it's how we're taught to look at the world we're we're not taught to control what we're in control of which is ourselves and how we perceive things and and um our ways of processing information and stuff we're not taught about that we're just taught that life is happening and a lot of times it sucks and you know this is one of the reasons why i don't like people like complaining about adulting all the time because it's like such a horrible message to your children that like basically you know you're a kid for a short period of time and you're an adult for a very long period of the time and basically what you're saying what we're we're implying to our children when we complain about adulting is that like you're screwed basically for the rest of your life like you're going to be an adult around 18 or early 20s or something and then for the rest of your life your life sucks because it's about adulting so that's a version of victim mentality it's socially acceptable everybody runs around saying it um everybody running around saying that they're stressed and they're busy like they don't have the ability to process information and circumstances in a way where they don't get stressed or their stress is minimized no people perceive stress as an external force being pushed upon them that they can't do anything about that's a victim mentality you know so this is what i mean it's it's it's inundated in our society like oh it's so busy so busy like you made your life that busy you don't have to be that busy oh well i got bills to pay that's an excuse like there's lots of ways to pay your bills now i'm not saying that that that we can all skip through the daisies for our entire life and we're never going to be busy that's not what i'm saying why you know especially in the developed countries life goes very fast and and there are going to be times that we're going to be busy i did a real i did a lot of work trying to stay out of victim mentality stay in control take down time take care of myself rest but you know when i was a single parent and i was starting my business i was busy you know and it was difficult sometimes so i'm not gonna i'm not saying that we're going to do it perfectly and as you know that that's the egos painting a picture why to try to prove that we're not in control you know so i mean there will be times in our lives that are busy and some of it is within our control well all of it's technically within our control but we have to make choices what we want like i could have been less busy and not started a business right that's my choice so see that's the difference that's what we have control over like i knew that i was choosing to be busy i knew that i was a single parent responsible for everything going on in my son's life and had basically no help i i understood that so when i took on um coaching his soccer teams i knew that i was going to be busier but i made that choice consciously because i wanted to do that i wanted to be there now all the soccer games and all these practices and be involved i wanted that so the trade-off it was worth it so therefore i didn't feel like a victim of it i wanted to start my own business so i consciously choose that so i wasn't running around going oh my god i'm so busy life sucks it's not my fault oh my god no i went like yeah my life's extremely busy i and i chose it to be like this if my goal was to not be busy then i wouldn't have put all these things on my plate right so that's just an example of how we're coming out of as we lean into spirituality and and uh taking responsibility for our lives we start leaving that victim mentality behind and we start interacting with life a different way so when i know that stress is just something that i'm inducing upon myself mentally then i can adjust that right and i can i can make sure that i'm my my mental perspective is looking at this appropriately and then yeah so okay it is then then when i feel the the the the stress that i'm feeling the stress and i want to go oh my god this is so unfair i don't allow myself to do that because i'm like oh wait glenn you you put you consciously chose this it's not happening to you you're not a victim of it it's not some external force pushing stress on you you chose to put these things on your plate and yes you're busy because of it so just accept the reality that you're busy and do what you can and don't put the the external pressure on yourself to be perfect at everything you know there was times in my life around that period where i stopped working out uh there was times where i stopped um i stopped trying to cook home cooked meals all the time because i was just like i can't do everything you know there was just certain things that i had to decide had to go by the wayside because i wasn't going to be perfect and i couldn't do everything so i did and i'm sure some people might choose the same things i did some people might choose differently we're all different right so my point is is as we as we evolve spiritually like in the beginning these are all tools we learn all these tools how to look at things differently so we're not victims and take responsibility for our lives and then once we start once we learn all that stuff and we're like oh okay we're we're kind of getting a new feel at how we're interacting with life and and it starts becoming more manageable we're like okay yeah yeah i got this and then we start seeing like that we're not victims right and and that this pressure that we're putting on ourselves we're just doing it and we don't have to so then we cannot put that pressure on ourselves or at least minimize it oh yeah okay so now we're interacting with life differently and we have different um different outlooks because we implemented them not because we understood them because we put them in real life situations this is why like when i talk about spirituality to me it's life like this is you know in recovery they say we are maladjusted to life i believe everybody is maladjusted to life we learn it through our social conditioning we just don't look at life in in a way that can induce peace contentment and happiness within ourselves this is why we have a you know arguably a 75 unhappiness rate on the planet like what that's ridiculous well it's because the majority of people which represent the majority of social conditioning which represent the majority of what is socially acceptable don't are maladjusted to life they don't they don't navigate life in a way that induces contentment peace and happiness therefore they are unhappy right you know you just follow the line of logic so it's like okay well then i then it would make sense that i don't want to do what most of the people are doing so when i see myself falling in line with society you know it's it's full circle like when i was a child i used to want to fit into society i just wanted to be like everybody else because i wanted to be accepted and i tried so hard to be something that i wasn't you know and then now like and and it was so frustrating because i couldn't that i blew a gasket and turned into a troublemaker you know so and then now full circle i'm right back to where i started i don't want to fit into society now though i still don't just like i didn't when i was a kid but now i understand why i don't and i'm happy that i don't because you guys ain't got it figured out like you guys are mostly unhappy why the hell do i want to be part of a group that is mostly unhappy right so now i'm happy i don't fit in and if i see myself starting to fit in that's a red flag that i go whoa wait a minute am i looking is this some old conditioning that i haven't removed yet i haven't forgotten about yet you know and sometimes it is like whoa that was close thank god but once once we get out of that victim mentality and we understand that we are responsible for our lives and we are more in control of how how we adjust our sails and how we navigate life and how we interact with life in a healthy way then all of a sudden we start getting the keys to the kingdom we start getting getting like oh okay all right i got this and we start understanding that not everything is we don't have to try to control everything like it's everything isn't so important right so once we start understanding that not everything is so important then then we can start subtracting we can start letting go is he you know before we needed to control everything now we're like we're starting to see like a lot of the stuff that we used to get all upset and freaked out over really isn't even that important we're like oh all right so we drop into this place so we drop into this place of peace right and and when we're we're you know not all the time but when we're experiencing when we're walking around experiencing a certain level of inner peace on a regular basis it's because there's space in between us and so-called reality transitory reality because that's what's happening on earth it's always changing it's transitory never nothing ever stays the same so it's a transitory reality that's happening here on earth and we can use these tools that we learn in the beginning if we implement them and learn to look at life a little bit differently to create space between us and what's happening you know i usually explain this like a movie screen it's like you know there's a little space of consciousness in between us and the movie screen so we can watch a movie we can get caught up in the emotion of it and cry and laugh and get scared and action having our heart jump and all that stuff but we don't dive under the seat when somebody pulls out a gun because there's a conscious space in between us and what's happening on the screen where we're like yes i'll allow myself to get emotionally invested in this to some degree as an escape but it's not actually happening i'm still safe so when we drop into that that's where we land in that seat of safety and we we have that space in between us and what's happening then we can consciously choose what we're going to act instead of unconsciously reacting to situations constantly which is how most people go it's like you know something happens and there's a reaction you're a jerk no not like that's a that's an unconscious reaction and i'm not saying that if you thought about it you wouldn't say the same thing maybe you would maybe you wouldn't but there's not enough space for you to know it's a it's an unconscious reaction if somebody like let's just say somebody that's a little bit more conscious and and somebody goes you're a jerk they might choose to go they might choose to take into consideration the source of who just said it and possibly the energy they're in are they upset you know so they somebody says you're a jerk they might go you know this can happen in a like a millisecond in your head you might be that person might be able to go well you know they're obviously upset they probably don't mean it i'm not going to take it personally sorry you feel that way and then they might say sorry you feel that way and walk away like they can consciously choose how they're going to act in a situation so this is what happens when we can consciously choose how to interact with life instead of unconsciously reacting to it so this is another gift that that space creates it's consciousness it's it's the ability to choose so then we can choose what we're going to take seriously and what we're not going to take seriously this is one of the things that benefits us with letting things go so then all of a sudden you know something can happen you know maybe even very similar to the example that i just used we go you know somebody says you're a jerk and you go yeah they're just upset i'm going to give them some time to cool down sorry you feel that way and walk away and then now they're not walking because of the the way they consciously chose how to process that they're not feeling like somebody's victim whereas the person who reacted unconsciously you're a jerk no i'm not screw you now they want like most likely it probably gets inflamed and even worse things are said and then they walk away and they walk away usually with a resentment now if they why because they're taking it personally so so it's a resentment the way they processed it they're a victim of that person that person said they were a jerk and that's unfair and it's they shouldn't have said it and blah blah blah blah blah so so now they've got all that energy that's created as a result of processing the interaction that way and then somebody goes oh they're not important just let it go and they go yeah you're right i'll just let it go and you can't let that go it was processed in the form of a resentment you can't let resentments go where do you think they're going like you have a resentment inside of you resentments don't magically go away like you ask anybody i mean you know like i mean there's people pissed off at people that hurt them in second grade so like resentments don't magically go away that's stuffing okay so do you see how when you react unconsciously and you take things personally so so you're processing life in a way interacting with life in a way that causes resentments you this is what the tools are for to change the way you're processing that information so it doesn't create the resentment in the first place once you've created the resentment you're gonna have to deal with that you're gonna have to reprocess the information you're gonna have to see it in another way you're gonna have to be like you know and and actually believe it you can't lie to yourself but you know because if you go oh well yeah yeah i guess i shouldn't take it i guess i shouldn't take it personally yeah you're right and then you walk away 10 years later you're still gonna have that resentment because intellectual understanding doesn't do a damn thing you have to implement that that intellectual understanding so knowing that you shouldn't take things personally and not taking things personally is two different things you actually have to implement not taking things personally you actually have to process information in a way that you don't take things personally therefore it doesn't create the resentment therefore you're not walking around with the resentment so if i don't have a resentment already and all it is is just some factual interaction that i'm not feeling a victim of it's just somebody called me a jerk but i already know that it was stuff they're going through and it had nothing to do with what i was going through and i processed it that way then i could go uh you know i could let's say i'm talking about it with somebody they go oh yeah i heard they called you a jerk you go yeah but you know i'm i didn't take it personally i'm just letting that go and you actually can let it go you can let it go why because it's not generating um resentment energy that's what we carry around with us the resentment energy so if it if it's not if it's not if it's not creating resentment energy well sure then you can let things go it's like happy stuff you can let happy stuff go why because it's not creating negative energy within you that you're stuffing and pretending isn't happening you know happy emotions we often don't stuff we allow ourselves to feel them and that's energy's job to be felt that's our emotions job to be felt happiness is there to be felt and usually we allow it um negative emotions are there to be felt usually we don't allow it so you know but they work the same way it's like if you have a positive experience with somebody and like you know you meet this new person and they're like oh man i heard about you you are amazing you know like your friend so-and-so told me about you and told me about that time that you helped this person and i really was looking forward to meeting you you know you're one of the good eggs you know kudos to you on that that was really a really a nice thing that you did you know i really like that and you're like oh wow thank you very nice of you to say and then you guys you guys part ways now how do you think you're going to feel the next time you see that person the same way right not as strong because maybe you're not having a conversation with them but you could see them drive by in a car and you're like oh that's that person and you'll like feel good why because it was a good feeling interaction now we don't have to do anything with that like that's not harming us it's actually enjoyable right but the opposite is true so if we have a negative experience with somebody and it and it generates negative emotion within us if we don't shift the way that we we're processing that then all of a sudden you see that person drive by and you're like oh and i was a person that called me a jerk and we feel it again resentment comes from with i forgot where i heard this i haven't thought of this in a long time resentment resent comes from uh the root centire and re it means again right so re is again and then sent sent comes from centire which means to feel so resentment literally means to refill or to feel again we can't just let that go until we get rid of the cause the cause is the way we're processing the information okay okay so let me uh just double check this this thing make sure i'm not going too far yeah well i you know i just said releasing resentments um through deeper understandings and empowering perspectives these are the things that reconnect us with our soul so so yeah this this is our our you know what once we start understanding this and interacting with with life in different ways then we can just let it go oh it's not that important i'll just let it go you know but we have to we have to learn the tools okay implement those tools into our implement those tools into our everyday life into actual circumstances in which we're living to shift the way that we are interacting with the world going from maladjusted to life to well adjusted to life so we're processing life in a way we are where we are not a victim where we are in control of our own inner space and how things work and probably not perfectly i still get upset sometimes people still people so amazed when somebody spiritual gets upset like like we're not human anymore and like nothing's supposed to upset us and if we get upset that that means we're not spiritual yeah i don't i don't it's it it's honestly a little bit sad that people see it that way but whatever it is it is what it is of course we want to minimize it you know that's what peace is but we're still human you know like i was talking with this person that was a reporter many years ago and they said one of their favorite memories was that they were able to see the dalai lama i believe it was in providence rhode island and their favorite part was that the dalai lama got upset while he was on stage doing something i forgot if somebody asked him a question or whatever but he got upset and it was one of this person's favorite memories because they're like oh my god like that it was so cool seeing the dalai lama get upset because it showed his humanity you know and it's like it's see if we don't fully understand something unconsciously we kind of create an understanding of it and this is one of the most miss the the biggest misconceptions in my opinion is what being spiritual looks like you know we look at like eckhart tolle just you know tolle is very monotone and very you know not overly animated but one of my favorite parts is when he does get animated i love that because this humanity to me comes out you know but he's just got a different personality than me when i first started out i wanted to be like him you know like i was like oh i thought that was that's what spirituality looked like you know you're just peaceful all the time and yeah man it's all cool you know like that's not me that's not my personality that's not who i am that's not i'm never gonna be that guy you know so i stopped trying fortunately but um yeah i forgot where i was going it's really you know it's really about um i'm gonna try to get back there uh implementing this stuff into our daily lives so we interact with life um in a healthier way and we can let go of things that no longer serve us so yeah that's another actually important part understanding that like the way we are served us in some way you know like for me it was to fight you know you generally it's fight flight or freeze so those are our go-tos you know and fight is it's not a good one man it's not a good one because i mean none of them are good all the time this is what we're supposed to do we're supposed to be able to fight we're supposed to be able to flee and we're supposed to be able to freeze and as if we learn how to use those three in different situations that's kind of a well-balanced um defensive arsenal if you will a fight is is a tough one because it's more external than the other two you know so when people people don't like we choose these when we're children and you know people who freeze and flee they can see how freezing all the time or fleeing all the time causes problems in their life because not one of them works in every situation so if you freeze all the time and you flee all the time it's going to cause problems in your life so you need to work on that if you fight all the time it's obviously it causes more obvious problems because it's more external so it affects other people right and it's easier to see so i don't know so so it's hard but you know i've gotten to a point where i don't judge myself for that so much it's you know the way i explain it it's like okay you you try to never ever freeze again when you feel uncomfortable you try to never ever flee again when you feel uncomfortable would that be possible no nobody that you know i mean maybe after years and years and years of work but my point is is most people whatever your go-to is you're going to go to your go-to unconsciously whether you want to or not because it's your go-to and fighting is like that so you know and i don't mean physical fighting i just mean arguing or getting emotional that's a version of fighting so you know so but we we have to minimize these as much as possible and learn to interact as much as possible and learn to interact with life and we can let these things go but we have to that's what i'm saying we have to understand that these things served us at one point you know that i didn't start fighting because like i was bored on a tuesday it's i started fighting because out of necessity you know i was walking around scared all the time i mean i was starting to have panic attacks i was breaking down curling up in a ball crying in my room and just on a daily basis because i couldn't handle the fear every time i left the house it was fear going to school getting ready for school fear going to school fear coming home from school fear walking to the the the neighborhood store to get a piece of candy fear or play video games fear i was in a perpetual state of fear and i went to the adults and asked them how to handle it and they nobody could give me an answer you know and they tried telling me some nice things i tried implementing them they never worked um and then you know at some point they said you know punched the biggest one in the head and after i got so sick of living in fear that i went i guess i'm going to try that you know so i did and it worked now i mean that's not it's it's not the proper solution i understand that now but back then as a kid it was the only thing that worked so i did it again and again and guess what i wasn't walking around not fear anymore so it served me i'm not saying it was the right thing to do i'm saying that in the particular situation that i was in after trying everything else i was a good kid i was a nice kid i didn't want to hit people i i hated fighting my whole life i hated fighting and i got in tons of fights and i hated it i always hated fighting people thought i liked it because i did it so often i didn't i did it because i like i used to kind of see where things were going and i was like this is you know they crossed the line so like this is going to end up in a fight because i'm not going to let them treat me like that and they're not going to walk away i can tell so we might as well just get this over with because because i'm not looking over my shoulder for the next three months waiting for it to happen so so like but it served me it the the problem was me walking in perpetual fear fear on a daily basis and it solved that problem so it worked so you know so i look back and i mean again i'm not saying that fighting is the right thing to do it's not um you know my son's never been in a fight in his life thank god it's you know so it's not like i teach this i don't think it's the right thing but at that time with with me doing my best that was the only thing i could find that worked so it worked so i'm not upset i don't think i'm a bad person for it it served me it just no longer serves me now and i haven't been in a physical fight in over 20 years ever since i woke up spiritually not one fight wow amazing you know now i've gotten pissed i've argued you know and i've done that less and less and less and less and less and less and less over the last 20 years too and i've implemented strategies of freezing i've implemented strategies of walking away getting myself out of situations am i still balanced or am i balanced yeah i mean no no probably no or maybe i am balanced maybe i'm balanced this is actually an interesting question um i like viewing things like this i'm learning more about myself i think i i i am close to balance between when i freeze when i flee and when i fight uh i think maybe the work that i still have to do is that when i do end up getting triggered and going into the fight uh the emotion still can can get carried away i can still get carried away with the emotion so i have to reel in the i'm a very emotional person and always you can tell just by the way i'm freaking talking now um so i think i need to you know that that's part of my work that i'm doing which i knew that was part of my work i just i didn't put it in the same um way i didn't look at it from this particular angle so um yeah so there's this little work i i can do but my back to my point again is that it served me you know all our our defense mechanisms served us so for we can acknowledge that and that actually helps us let them go because because you know when we think we're bad and something's bad within us that's shadow work right and and shadow isn't necessarily a negative aspect of ourselves it's just something that we don't accept about ourselves so if i accept the fact that my go-to became fighting and it helps me accept that fact if i see that it was out of necessity and it served me and i'm like oh okay i understand it when you have understanding you can have compassion including for yourself so i'm like oh okay i understand how it served me um and so therefore i have compassion for myself and understand why it's part of me and i accept that it's part of me okay cool so then then then i can let it go but i can't let go of something i'm resisting the more we resist the more it persists so once we can drop into a place of acceptance use these tools to get there and then we can let things go well i'm just going to look at this quote one more time to see if anything else pops up but i think that's about it um yeah i think i'll just i think i'll just end with with reading the post and then what what i wrote again i know i i think i did this in the beginning but i just want to end it kind of like a recap so the post is the soul grows by subtraction not addition by henry david thoreau and then what i wrote was internal growth is about forgetting our conditioning letting go of what holds us back and releasing resentments through deeper understandings and empowering perspectives these are the things that reconnect us with our soul and that's you know i love the non-action aspects of it you know it's it's uh like these all these are spiritual terms because they all imply non-action forget go in the corner and forget real hard let go try letting go harder release really hard like you can't effort these things it's about opening and allowing right and these are the things that reconnect us with our soul we can't go grab our soul and then and and pull it over to us and connect to it what we do is we let go and we let go and we let go we allow the blocks that are in between us and our soul to drift away and it automatically reconnects with us we don't have to force anything so it's not about efforting and force it's about love and letting go and allowing you know that's the that's the subtraction subtract the things that are in your way let go of the things that are in your way and you'll land and then and then what's meant for you just comes it's a beautiful thing all right peeps i'm gonna end there thanks for listening watching paying attention all that stuff blessings and best wishes to you peace