Hi there,
We shun the concept of sacrifices, but there is no growth without them. We sacrifice longer mornings in bed to meditate and exercise, or we refrain from attending a social event to work on that project.
Don’t like the word sacrifice? Fine. Life is about making choices. Exchanges. Trade-offs. Opening one door and thereby closing a few others. This or that. We sacrifice delicious junk food for healthy meals — or sacrifice our well-being for a tasty deep-fried onion ring. Whatever it is, we give something away to get something else.
If someone expects to grow, spiritually or in any other layer of existence, only with flowers and rainbows, think twice. Sure there are flowers and rainbows, but also spikes, stretch marks, rabbit holes, and labyrinths. It is what it is — not bad nor good.
Given how many decisions we take every day, we rarely have any issues with it. In moments of clarity, where we know what we want, we don’t even see the sacrifice. After all, we are merely going for what we want. This salad, not that one.
Everything has its price.
The thing is, sometimes we are totally ready to pay for it, detached from what we are asked to let go of — we get excited before going on a new retreat, and look forward to that weekend course. Other times, the apple we are to let go of is not that ripe yet, and it will take some effort to let it drop from the tree. Want to be lighter? Let go of that endless anxiety. If only it was that easy. Prices differ, every time.
The point is: how badly do you want what you say you want? Or do you only want it when it is convenient?
“Attachment constrains our vision so that we are not able to see things from a wider perspective.” Dalai Lama
Yet the word sacrifice shows us that we are daring to make a choice that is not the most natural one, that requires us to use our energy to shift our situation. Oftentimes our natural state would lead us to nothing but stagnate and sleepwalk. This means that what we are truly sacrificing is our convenience.
The way we are doing things will only take us so far. Want to get stronger, fitter? Exercise more, exercise differently, exercise smarter, change your eating habits, and so forth. Want to grow your business? Think more strategically, make new connections, focus on impact, and have a higher impact on more people’s lives.
To expand we have to often change our ways, habits, mental models, and perspectives, which entails leaving old ways behind. Growth requires an inner rearrangement — in other words, flexibility to reinvent ourselves.
Oh but the attachment, the fear, the not knowing what, how, when. Many people seem to expect things to simply come to them, without any work, in a sense of entitlement. To get, we give.
Many times we are not aware of the price we are paying for things, and things seem to come as if by magic. Sometimes what we give is the work that we did for our own personal development, which allowed us to be more joyful, more attuned, and more open- and so we receive more because we have brought a higher vibration into the world. People might give us things because we touched them — without us even being aware of it. It's an easy and pleasant giving — yet, it still is a giving. A giving that required us to leave old attachments of hoarding and fear behind, of daring to be our better selves. We are the source of everything.
Being yourself is to constantly give yourself to life. To grow is to constantly serve, even if we are unaware of it.
Still, by taking conscious choices we walk forward, get out of inertia, and get unstuck. Choose to not change anything, stay paralyzed, in inertia, and well… stay there.
To Receive More, We Have to Let Go More
There is so much time, energy, and mental availability in one’s life. Anything we want to receive requires something else to go away, whether we realize it or not. It is like we walk around Earth as full vessels, with full schedules and habits. To get something new into our lives, we need to make space for it — which means, letting that old couch go.
Wanna learn to play the guitar but have no time? Read fewer books, reduce your time on your phone, cook easier meals, sleep 15 min less, or kill Netflix. Something’s gotta give.
The feeling of overwhelm we get in desiring to do too many things comes from our inability to let things go.
We want more but refuse to change enough. In other others: we want things for free.
Conscious sacrifices are important and positive.
We sacrifice something so that we can release the time, effort, and energy that we would use for it in a way that serves who we are becoming best. And so we free the time and energy of Netflix, and put it into playing the guitar.
We can let go of daydreaming and worrying, and channel that energy toward being more present.
The energy that we release by letting go, by making sacrifices is like a down payment for what we want. A signature of commitment.
“The art of moving forward lies in understanding what to leave behind.” Seth Godin
Because we gain so much when doing conscious sacrifices, I much rather use the expression offerings of devotion. Because truly that is what we are doing: we are giving away something that is limiting us to walk forward, in exchange for something we truly want. And that is why many people who are constantly expanding and living in joy don’t connect to the word sacrifice: because truly they are simply devoted to their path.
Devotion requires discipline and commitment from a heart level. Not a sentimental heart, but a diamond heart of unconditional love and understanding. In a society attached to temporary feelings and needs, the path of the heart can be somewhat abstract.
To only do as one pleases at any time, constantly following the flow is to be a slave of the ego, its mood swings, attachment to instant gratification, unable to master oneself. Self-mastery is an art that takes devotion.
Some of my sacrifices include leaving countless friendships and social groups behind, mostly sleeping around 21:00 so I can wake up between 4 and 5 am for my daily rituals, drinking no coffee and alcohol, not having a home so that I can serve as Spirit guides me, leaving my established ground endless times, doing 4–5 hours of spiritual practices daily. Some of these were easy and natural (like no alcohol) whereas others weren’t (like not having a home base). Sometimes the price is low, sometimes it is high.
What Do You Want?
Sacrifices are positive if we want what we are sacrificing for. Obvious, right?
At times it feels the world is full of masochists sacrificing themselves with no intent, and people are upset with their situation but not willing to get out of their convenience. What is going on?
Lack of clarity is going on. Lack of self-awareness and honesty. Lack of a healthy inner warrior.
Clarity
Sacrifices are commitments we make to ourselves. When we commit to something from within, in inner alignment, we are acting from a place of clarity about what we stand for, and the direction we want our lives to take. All commitments we make mean we are the authority over that commitment, and where we have the power we also have responsibility.
Many people who say they are confused and lack clarity but not really; saying so to themselves is a way to evade the responsibility that comes with clarity, for clarity brings self-empowerment.
Yes, now we got two devils, sacrifice and responsibility walking together. Ready to continue reading? The more we stand for the commitments we make, the more clarity we get, for clarity comes from action. The more we act on them, the stronger we get, as we re-affirm our commitment. Anyone can commit to something for one day. Sacrifices require recommitment. The more conscious choices that we make and stick to, the more clarity and stronger we get.
Now, this is not a call for masochism. Are you doing something that is not working for you as intended? We are all free agents to adjust our course. It’s only through the results of our actions that we can learn if they are good or not. Before we see the fruits of our actions, we are acting on a personal hypothesis. Each time we take action we get to learn a bit more about ourselves and our steps. That is why commitment is so important. Change is the only permanence — the only thing is, are we changing because it is time to change, or are we evading responsibility? Nothing beats awareness and using our discernment.
The Practice
What do you want? Whatever you want and don’t have yet is an invitation for a new set of habits, ways of operating, mental models, that you don’t have yet — otherwise you would have what you want already.
All the potential in the world might exist within you, but it still requires you to tap into it. Just like the potential for electricity was always there, we had to figure it out first to tap into it, and then build things that can operate on it. That is the price. Price is mostly effort, which is channeling our energy in a different way than we do today.
This brings me to what truly matters: if we want something in our lives but are lost in how to get there, a helpful piece of the process is to identify what we are to let go of. What is it that we are giving away in exchange?
If you want more friends or more meaningful relationships, are you ready to be more social, more outgoing, more giving, more real, more honest, in full authenticity — even if it causes you to lose some misaligned friends along the way?
The exercise is to ask yourself:
What do you want?
And, for each thing you want, to ask yourself:
What do you need to get what you want? (e.g. to be healthier would be to do exercises and eat better)
What do you need to let go of? (e.g. being a couch potato, having dessert every day)
Now, the cherry on the top of the cake is to, instead of seeing this as a painful cross-bearing sacrifice, can we make this sacrifice into an offering? An exercise in devotion and respect for what we want? A training in commitment to ourselves?
It is a matter of how we establish our inner dialogue and frame it in our minds and hearts. “I want to play the guitar and I am offering my long night tea break for it.”
This way, we can go from a place of anxiety and suffering to a place of giving something away from the heart.
An offering. For that is what a sacrifice is.
The Thought Process
We focus so much on things we don’t want in our lives — the negative. Not feel so tired, so lonely, so confused, so unsatisfied, so serious. Don't smoke nor drink so much.
But what about the things we want to replenish life with, filling these gaps?
It is not uncommon for someone trying to quit a habit to fail for lacking clarity about what to do instead. So I don’t want to spend time on my phone or Netflix, but what am I going to do instead? Without that clarity, it is easy to fall back into old habits. I give Netflix away to dance, meditate, or write a book. Deal.
This is an approach that focuses on what we are creating, instead of what we are destroying.
When we destroy something we just leave a hole, which is a problem when we don’t know what we want to fill that hole with. Just like saying yes to something means saying no to something else, then saying no to something else means saying yes to something — but what is that something?
Sacrifices are first and foremost acts of devotion, and devotion is something we do with our hearts, for something we believe it is worth it to stand for.
Devotion is not something you can fake until you make it. It is either in your heart or not.
And so it goes we see every big sacrifice as bad, but that is because we are constantly making trade-offs based on fear, feeling low, and what we are fighting against instead of connecting at a heart level with what we are standing for.
What is it you want, and what is standing in your way?
See you next week,
Aline
More of my work: linktr.ee/alineram
One of the best pieces of obtaining alignment that I’ve ever read. This is “manifestation” to me. Beautiful. Provoking. Life changing.