When Life Falls Apart: Why Awakening is Destructive

(This post differs from the usual approach I’ve taken to my articles here on lonerwolf. It’s a more simple, contemplative, and reflective piece, with no necessarily “actionable tips.” Let me know if you enjoy this format in the comments, as well as your own reflections.)

In my attempt to try and make peace with the seismic shift that joyfully destroys all semblance of the old that is new parenthood, I was recently reading the book When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. Pretty apt name, wouldn’t you say? ;)

This verse struck me – and I managed to capture it in a photo complete with a magical-looking sunbeam and everything:

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.

Take a moment to re-read that quote again, more slowly this time.

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.

When I read this sentence, I immediately paused. It felt like striking gold. This is at the heart of the awakening journey, I realized, yet it’s so often glossed over, bypassed, or not even known.

The truth is that awakening is destructive. Growth is destructive. Expansion is destructive. 

For a muscle to get stronger, its fibers must be damaged and injured first.

For a chick to hatch from an egg, it must peck free from the shell that was its original home.

For new stars and planets to form, old galaxies must collide.

For potato chips to be edible, they have to cook at absurdly high heat. 

There’s very little discussion in the spiritual or psychological spheres of the topic of creative destruction. I think that’s because we’re scared of the thought, and it’s certainly not marketable or appealing to capitalism.

But the fact is that on the awakening path, we will all face creative destruction in the form of an existential crisis, a spiritual emergency, a dark night of the soul, or some other challenge that shakes the foundations of our reality sooner or later.

Life falling apart feels like:

• Not knowing the answers anymore
• Feeling disconnected from yourself and others
• Difficulty knowing “who you are” or “what you want” anymore (aka., identity crisis)
• Having the sense that you’re falling or the ground has crumbled beneath your feet
• Losing interest in what once excited or motivated you
• Finding that the things that once comforted you no longer have that impact
• Feeling lost, aimless, and adrift in life

If you’re experiencing any of these feelings or sensations, I want you to know that they’re a normal part of the awakening process.

Pathologizing this experience, in many cases, only tends to make things worse.

Ruminating on this experience, trying to resist it, or desperately trying to change it, also tends to add salt to the wound.

This is a friendly message today to say that awakening is not only destructive but it is inherently and fundamentally destructive, as the old must die before the new can emerge.

So relax a little. 

Don’t take the process so seriously. Be a curious observer of this experience knowing that it too will pass. The only constant, after all, is change.

Of course, if you’re completely crippled by anxiety and unable to function, please seek help. Find a 1:1 trauma-informed guide or counselor, and be conscious of the amplitude of dodgy spiritual guidance out there.

However, if you simply have that unnerving feeling that things are falling apart – that your old strategies of self-protection, your finely tuned self-image, or your previously straightforward approach to life are no longer working – know that it’s going to be okay.

While it’s unpleasant to stand within the fire of transformation, to watch as the floor collapses beneath you, it is an essential part of the spiritual wanderer’s journey. (I explore this more in our comprehensive Spiritual Wanderer Course.)

There are so many people out there who will dramatize this experience and use it to fuel a sense of ego-centered victim mentality. It attracts a lot of likes and followers, you see. ;) 

But in the end, that approach gets us nowhere. 

This obsession with dramatizing creative destruction was incidentally one of the reasons why I was extremely protective of my mind and what entered it during pregnancy – a notoriously sensitive time where life often tends to fall apart in one way or another – and managed to stay relatively calm and healthy throughout as a result.

So embrace the in-between state of creative destruction. Poet John Keats called it Negative Capability, which in a letter from 1818 he defined as:

… when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason …

Here are a couple of questions you might like to contemplate or journal about right now if you’re going through a period of creative destruction, or things falling apart:

• What is being destroyed within myself or my life right now? 
• How is that empty space offering a chance for me to awaken and grow more deeply and fully?

Do you have any thoughts or perspectives? I’d love to hear them below.