What Is This Experience Trying to Show You?

Over many years on my spiritual journey, I have discovered that we all go through periods when life is shaken up in ways we do not expect. I never enjoy these times—they are rarely pleasant—but I have come to see that they often serve a higher purpose.

After they pass, I usually realize I have learned something important from them. Yet in the moment, it can feel as though everything is shifting at once, and it is hard to see clearly what is actually happening.

Our natural instinct is to make the discomfort stop. We want to fix the problem, regain our motivation, quiet the anxiety, restore our energy, or return to whatever version of ourselves felt more stable.

But what if there is another way to meet these periods?

Instead of immediately asking, “How do I make this go away?” perhaps we could ask, “What is this experience trying to show me?”

What If Life Is Giving Us Clues?

I sometimes think of life as a kind of treasure hunt.

Not because everything that happens contains a hidden mystical message we are meant to decode. And certainly not because every painful experience happens simply to teach us a lesson.

Sometimes life hurts because life hurts.

And yet, our experiences often still contain information.

Exhaustion may reveal that the way we are living is no longer sustainable. Resentment may show us where we have been saying yes when we really wanted to say no. Restlessness may reveal that something we once accepted no longer reflects who we are becoming. Fear may show us where we are still trying to control what cannot be controlled.

These experiences may not be problems to eliminate as quickly as possible. They may also be clues.

Don’t Decide Too Quickly What Something Means

We tend to label our experiences very quickly.

Good or bad. Success or failure. Progress or regression. Right path or wrong path.

But we are usually making those judgments while standing in the middle of the experience. We have not yet seen where it leads.

Something that looks like an ending may become a beginning. A rejection may redirect us somewhere we would never have chosen. A period of uncertainty may reveal an inner strength that certainty never required. Feeling lost may finally loosen our grip on a path that was never truly ours.

We cannot always know these things while they are happening.

From ground level, we see disruption. From a higher perspective, we may eventually see movement.

The event has not changed. Our perspective has.

The Energy of Great Potential for Change

When we begin to see our experiences as clues rather than simply problems to solve, it becomes easier to recognize that periods of disruption may also carry the potential for something new to emerge.

Shaltazar often says that humanity at this time is living within an energy of great potential for change.

The word potential matters.

Difficult experiences do not automatically awaken us. Rapid change does not automatically make us wiser. There is an opportunity, but there is also free choice.

We can meet disruption with fear, defensiveness, and resistance. Or we can meet it with curiosity, awareness, and openness.

We can cling more tightly to what is familiar, or we can ask whether something new is trying to emerge.

The circumstances may create an opening. What we do with that opening is ours to choose.

Awareness Creates Possibility

This is why awareness matters so much.

We cannot change what we cannot see.

If I am exhausted but never question how I am living, I will likely recreate the exhaustion. If I feel resentful but never examine my boundaries, I may continue blaming the world around me. If the same relationship patterns keep repeating and I only focus on the other person, I may never see my own participation in the pattern.

Awareness allows us to notice.

And once we notice, something within us becomes available to choose differently. When we choose differently, something begins to shift.

Awareness. Choice. Change.

It sounds simple, but it is not always easy, because awareness does not only reveal what we want to see.

Sometimes it points toward a conversation we need to have, a boundary we need to set, a habit we need to change, something we need to grieve, or a version of ourselves we have outgrown.

This is where consciousness stops being an idea and becomes a lived practice.

Stop Trying to Get Back to Who You Were

One of our strongest instincts during change is to return to what felt normal.

We say, “I just want to feel like myself again.”

I understand that feeling.

But sometimes I wonder whether returning is really what life is asking of us.

What if the old version of ourselves has taken us as far as it can?

What if the discomfort we feel exists partly because something within us is no longer willing to live in the same way?

Then perhaps our task is not to go back. It is to move forward consciously.

We can ask:

What no longer fits?

What am I tolerating that I have outgrown?

What am I being asked to see differently?

Who might I be becoming?

We may not receive immediate answers, but these questions help us participate in our own evolution.

Climb Higher Before You Decide

When we are hurting, our perspective naturally contracts. We become focused only on what is directly in front of us.

That is human.

But when we can step back even slightly, something changes.

We may still dislike what is happening. We may still wish it were different. We may still feel pain.

But we begin to leave room for the possibility that this moment belongs to a larger landscape.

Maybe what feels like losing direction is an invitation to find a new one.

Maybe what feels like falling apart is the loosening of something that has become too small for us.

We do not have to force meaning onto the experience. We simply allow space for meanings we cannot yet see.

That is the mountaintop view.

Not denial. Not positivity. Just a wider perspective.

What Kind of Human Being Is This Asking Me to Become?

Perhaps one of the most useful questions we can ask during times of change is:

What kind of human being is this experience inviting me to become?

More compassionate? More courageous? More honest? More patient? More boundaried? More trusting? More authentic? More able to live with uncertainty?

Free choice means we get to participate in our own becoming.

Source provides the landscape. Life provides the clues. Consciousness allows us to notice. Choice determines what we do next.

Perhaps This Is How Humanity Evolves

I sometimes wonder whether what we experience individually reflects something humanity is also being asked to learn collectively.

Our world is changing quickly. Technology, relationships, institutions, communication, and long-held beliefs are all shifting.

Many people feel overwhelmed, uncertain, and divided.

We can respond by becoming more fearful and trying to recreate a world that no longer exists.

Or we can climb a little higher.

We can ask what kind of humanity these times are inviting us to become.

More conscious. More compassionate. More connected. More responsible for the energy we bring into the world.

Perhaps Source does not change humanity.

Perhaps Source creates opportunities through which humanity can choose to change itself.

That is why there is potential rather than certainty.

The choice remains ours.

Activate the Wisdom

The next time something in your life feels difficult, uncomfortable, or unsettled, resist the urge to immediately define what it means.

Instead, become curious.

Ask yourself:

What might this be revealing that I have not wanted to see?

Is something in my life no longer sustainable?

What am I being asked to release or reconsider?

Am I trying to return to an older version of myself when something new may be emerging?

If I looked at this from a higher perspective, what else might I see?

And perhaps most importantly:

What kind of person do I want to become through this?

You may not receive an answer immediately. That is okay.

Treasure hunts rarely begin with the treasure. They begin with a clue.

Follow the one in front of you. Stay open. Stay curious. Choose consciously.

And do not be too quick to decide that something has gone wrong.

You may simply not have climbed high enough yet to see what is being created.

August 14, 2026