It’s time to question EVERYTHING.
DO NOT MAKE ANY DRASTIC CHANGES IN THIS STAGE! Your best course is to try and not do anything stupid during this phase – no major purchases, no new debt, no job changes, no relationship changes, … until you make it to Stage Eight and have stability and a clearer mind. Stage Seven is all about tearing down everything that everyone else told you life should be and what you should do, questioning that, and deciding for yourself what you want your self and your life to be. You will want to define that clearly before you make any major changes other than nutrition, exercise, and meditation or prayer. Get through this stage as fast as you can but COMPLETE it so that you will not be pulled back here very often.
This is by far the hardest stage. If you have baggage from your childhood, or past experiences that you have not addressed before, this is where you will have to deal with it. If you can be a bit of a hermit during this stage you may thank yourself later.
This stage is also where you are most likely to be depressed and to feel hopeless or that life is pointless. Existential crises are normal here. Understand that this is a natural part of your development and it will pass with time and effort.
Because of the existential nature of this stage, it is more important than ever to maintain connection to your mind, body, self, others, needs, etc. Keep up your efforts to save money, improve your nutrition, maintain some kind of exercise or movement, and all the other skills you have gathered so far and keep your mentor CLOSE.
Here is your homework…
- Connect to your faith through questioning
- Question everything
- Heal your scars
- Identify and replace your limiting beliefs
- Connect to the infinite silence / divine in you
Here is exactly how to do that…
Connecting To Your Faith Through Questioning
In this stage, you question everything. That includes your religion or faith. This stage is often called the dark night of the soul. It is important to understand that questioning your faith is something that every human experiences at some point in their lives. It is a natural part of the cycle of human development. If you believe in a deity that made humanity, then this questioning must have been their intent. Why would any deity want to be questioned? To bring you closer.
This natural phase of your human existence is an opportunity to get to know your faith in a new and deeper way. Understand that questioning your religion is not going against it – questioning your religion is deep exploration that can bring you closer to your beliefs, or refine them in ways that will bring you closer to the divine. Just as a child must grow up and establish a new, deeper relationship with their parents, so too must you now evolve and establish a new and deeper relationship with your faith.
This new relationship will take some time to fully develop. The first step towards that new connection has already happened. You are starting to question. You see the cracks and you are not completely comfortable with them. You can remain in this uncomfortable state with your faith indefinitely, or you can actively walk towards better understanding and deeper connection.
Allow yourself to question all aspects of your faith, but keep it to yourself. This is your own private exploration. Question customs, beliefs, rituals, teachings, historical accounts, etc. Read the history for yourself. Read all the scriptures for yourself. Allow for their historical context and make your own interpretations. Allow your own understanding to evolve with these direct experiences. And for now, just keep exploring, researching and respectfully questioning.
With each aspect that you choose to explore, ask yourself…. how did it come to be that way? Would you interpret that the same way? Should it still be that way? And most importantly, what is right for you?
Connecting To Doubt – Questioning Everything
As you question everything, remember to include religious teachings, social standards, political stances, societal norms, life choices, your lifestyle, your work, future plans, nutrition, exercise, sexuality and literally everything else… let nothing be immune from your exploration.
Question if it is true, or right for you, or what you really want, or what parts align with you or not. To fuel your thinking, read and explore what others have found the answers to be, but focus on what the answer is for YOU.
As you explore and question things more directly, and form your own interpretations, you will have some challenges…
You and your spouse, family or friends may end up in very different places. You may come to conclusions that are different from the people around you. As a result, your family and friends may change dramatically. But if you can, let it be. This is an opportunity to practice being connected to others who have different ideas. Can you let their beliefs be theirs and let yours be yours? If you are so different, that it causes conflict or if they are in Stage Five and feel the need to attack you for feeling differently, you may need some time away. If you discover that certain relationships are abusive or certain people in your life are dangerous, remove yourself quickly. For more subtle toxicity, fade away slowly and quietly. Time changes us all and one day you may want to reconnect, when you have both evolved. Avoid drama in either case.
Equally challenging, you may find that areas of your life need reshaping based on your evolving beliefs. Because this stage involves rapid and continual evolution, try to keep changes to a minimum until you are through it. If you make changes too early, you may evolve yet again and find yourself in a chaotic race to keep up with your own changing beliefs. In general, if safety is not a concern, wait until Stage Eight to make any drastic changes in relationships and careers.
Next, do not try to make others join you in this questioning if they are not ready. This is YOUR journey, not theirs. They might see your questioning as a threat. They might fear losing you from their lives as you evolve. They may feel lesser because they are not questioning. None of these possibilities leads to anything good. So keep your thoughts to yourself for now, or share them with your mentor.
Remember that in this stage, you will cycle though many ideological changes. Try not to settle on any one belief set too adamantly before you have explored all of its cracks and inconsistencies. For a while, you will be jumping between new beliefs like stepping stones. Do not cling to any one of them too tightly. Just think, “This will do for now.”
So how will you know when you have landed on the right, magical combination of religious, social, moral, political and other beliefs that fit you ideally and you can finally move on to Stage Eight? You will have completed Stage Seven’s questioning when your ideology is a simple set of overarching principles (rather than specific rules and issues), and these principles are the same as those at the heart of all religions, all societies, and all humanity.
Now get out there and explore everything. Ask yourself what is common to all religions? What is common to all societies? What is common to all humanity? What principles can you find there that work for you?
Connecting To Yourself – Healing Your Scars
No one makes it to adulthood without scars. Our bodies and minds are scared from our experiences. This is not an excuse to be a victim. This is a fact of human existence. And the scars do not stop coming just because we reach eighteen. Life keeps happening. And it drapes onto us emotional baggage; scars that ache when triggered by what feels like the past. How did they get there? It is a simple amygdala response. If ever anything scared you, threatened you, or simply landed you in a bad situation, your amygdala responds by creating a permanent record; a scar in your mind. Every time you encounter a similar situation, that scar will activate, warning you to avoid repeating the same mistakes. It sounds like a great system.
The problem with this built-in survival mechanism is that it makes us act irrationally. It makes us treat our new spouse like they are the old partner every time the new spouse does something that reminds us of some distant past situation. It makes us feel unsafe when we really are safe now. Worst of all, it makes us preemptively lash out at just the hint of the possibility of past similarity. It makes us assume the worst, expect the worst from others, and it blinds us to the beauty of our current reality. It keeps us living in the past, and worrying about the future.
However, you can heal these emotional scars. The process is simple, but not always easy.
First, practice being mindful of your thoughts and feelings. When you feel any strong negative emotion, recognize it. Name it. You might find that your baggage has a signature way of appearing. For example, do you notice a trend that if you are yelling, or crying, that baggage is at the root?
Then, detach from it and explore it for what it can teach you. Ask yourself …
- What am I feeling?
- Why?… why?….. why? …. keep asking until you find the real cause.
- What am I afraid of? (Fear is at the heart of all negative emotions. Ultimately, you are afraid of some situation that happened in the past and you are afraid it will happen again and afraid of seeing the same consequences.)
- What baggage is this from my past?
- Is this relevant? Is this really likely to happen here and now? If the answer is no, then breathe deep and release it.
Thank this fear for protecting you but you don’t need it anymore.
If you do not like the idea of waiting for your emotional baggage to pop up, and you would like to accelerate this process, you can actively dig deep to uncover your own pain from the past and work through it. In other words, trigger your own baggage, so you can release it.
There are many ways to do this… you might find a good counselor or therapist. You might find a friend who wants to do the same and help each other. Or you might work alone with a journal.
The trick is to find where the scars might be, and focus on that incident to reveal any leftover issues you have not yet let go of. Think back on your past from day one. What major incidences do you remember? What was your childhood like? Tell your counselor, friend or journal about your friends, what made you angry, what were your parents like, what made you sad? If you were crying back then, what was the most likely reason? What was school like? What traumatic events did you endure?
It is important to remember that traumatic is a relative term. If the child in you thought it was traumatic, then it likely created a scar in your mind. Don’t ignore it.
Emotional scars and baggage typically form from our relationships with friends, parents, and significant others in childhood and beyond. Related to this are limiting beliefs and self sabotaging behaviors which are addressed in another set of tasks. For now, focus on trauma and other very negative experiences and how they might have created fears in you about specific situations. Include everything right up to your current age.
Unpacking your emotional baggage is like peeling an onion. As soon as you think you have resolved the last bit, something new reveals yet another scar that needs to be healed. Obviously, the more trauma you have endured the more work you have ahead of you. This will be an ongoing effort that lasts beyond this stage, but it is easier and occurs less often with time.
Connecting To Yourself – Identifying And Replacing Limiting Beliefs
While you are questioning your ideology and beliefs about the world, it is a great time to identify and question the beliefs about yourself and your life, put into your mind by your parents, friends, and society, and to decide if they are right for you. We are looking for limiting beliefs. These are beliefs that hold you back from doing what you feel compelled to do. Limiting beliefs are inherently negative. They are beliefs about what you are not, what you cannot be, or what you are not capable of. Limiting beliefs might sound like the voice of your parents, siblings, or childhood friends, labeling you as something negative.
Limiting beliefs can also come from just watching your parents as a child. How did your parents act towards each other? What beliefs might this have implanted in you?
Try this…
- List any beliefs that come to mind.
- Then, decide what you will replace them with. For each limiting belief, make a supportive belief that will support your efforts instead.
- Then, read your new beliefs every day for at least a month or more to retrain your brain.
- You might consider using a spaced repetition flash card system app, or posting your list where you can see it every day.
Limiting beliefs put in us as children can be VERY hard to get rid of. If you find that you have some limiting beliefs that you just cannot fully replace, try adding on to them, to make them positive instead of negative. For example, here is a list of common limiting beliefs and an additional phrase for each that makes it positive…
- I am strange or weird…. unique and amazing.
- I do not belong… among people who hold me back.
- No one will listen… if they are not ready. Don’t force them.
- I am self-centered… centered securely in my own soul.
- The way I want to do it will not work… unless I actually do it. So do it.
- Nobody listens to women… who do not speak up. So speak up.
- I am a silly child… playful and inquisitive like the purity of childhood.
- What I want is irrelevant… until I decide otherwise.
So if you have some limiting beliefs holding you back and you cannot seem to get rid of them, try completing them instead. Remember to read it often to retrain your brain.
Connecting To The Infinite Silence / Divine
There is, within you, an infinite silence. You might call it the divine, or God, or Allah, or The Tao or anything else. It is the divine presence within you. Every religion and philosophy (except maybe humanism) includes a concept that the divine is in our hearts, or that we should welcome the divine into ourselves. When the same idea shows up in every religion, it is often correct. Within your finite physical being is what can only be described as an infinite space of sentient silence or divine light.
Sitting in meditation or prayer, scan your body from the top down. Just explore what it feels like inside. Maybe there are some tight muscles, or pain here and there, or maybe you can feel your recent meal digesting or your heart beating. Focus consciously on what is happening inside your body. Take your attention from the top of your head slowly down all the way to your toes. This kind of somatic mindfulness is a great meditation by itself. But today, let’s take it further. Today, when you reach your belly, notice if you find one particular spot where, when you place your attention on it with curious openness, opens into a seemingly infinite space of silence and compassion and acceptance. This spot is sometimes referred to as the lower dantian (or dantien). There is a lot of interesting writing to explore about the upper, middle and lower dantians. Connecting with the lower dantian can have some fascinating effects.
If you can connect with and open this infinite space within you, you can imagine sinking into it like you are sinking into a hot tub. But here is the thing… To really connect with the infinite silence, you must come with nothing. After all, it is hard to connect with the nothing, if you show up laden with somethings. Imagine, as you scan down your body, that all the worries of the day are like backpacks and bags draped around you. Take them off and put them down. All the worries, all the roles we play, all the responsibilities and fears and expectations. Put them all down. Put down this person living this life. Take off this human existence. Approach the infinite silence as nothing more than your inner true self – the silent observer.
Meet this infinite divine space with only your divine soul. It is such a place of peace. There are no expectations here; no attachments, no roles, no responsibilities, no identity, no physical being. Nothing but pure consciousness in the moment. This is the perfect space to drop in a wish for anything you might want to bring into your life. Think of what you would like to happen in your life. Take the need for it, the desire or want for it, and give over that desire to the infinite divine knowing that, if it is in line with your purpose, of course it will be.
Many religions encourage their followers to, “Let go and let God.” – that is, to give over what they want to the divine and let the divine bring it to you, knowing that if you ask, you shall receive. Connecting to the infinite silence / divine is about understanding that the divine is quite literally within you and you can access it, make requests, and feel its infinite acceptance anytime you like. It is not out there in some nebulous place. The divine is right here, inside you, right now.
For the more scientific mind, it helps to think back to the big bang. At first, there was nothing, and out of that infinite silence came the universe. The universe is full of dichotomies. So it is only natural that all the something that we see around us came out of the nothing. And that within the something that is ourselves, is the nothing that created it all. Us in the universe and the universe within us. Sit quietly, contemplate that and see where it takes you.