Don’t Fall Off a Cliff
When choosing your path, sometimes you reach a cliff it’s best not to fall off of.
When you decide to take control over your destiny and walk a path of your choosing, there are many obstacles you’ll encounter along the way.
Some will be external. People, places, things, and such – both tangible and intangible. They might be major obstacles and roadblocks, or minor. While outside of your control, how you interact with and react to them is on you.
Others will be internal. Disbelief, lack of faith, outdated beliefs, and habits buried deep in your subconscious in need of replacement. These are entirely in your control. Applying mindfulness for conscious awareness of their impact opens you to control them.
This can be bends in the pathway, literal and figurative obstacles, unplanned and unexpected detours, and numerous other challenges. Yet when you have a path you believe in and desire to traverse, you will become familiar with the obstacles and obstructions as you work with the process.
While choosing to walk your own path might or might not go against the grain of “the norm”, there is another consideration I’ve not discussed before – but can’t be ignored, either.
Sometimes the obstacle is not a wall, traffic cone, or unexpected twist in the path – sometimes it’s a cliff.
What does a cliff represent?
A cliff represents a few potential things beyond mere obstacles or obstructions. The cliff may be an insurmountable obstacle, a major detour, the need for an external connection, time to take a leap of faith. or the end of the path you’ve chosen before you reach your goal.
These can be mixed together. What’s more, I’m certain there are other ways to express and conceive of this idea.
But it’s important that you don’t fall off the cliff. Doing so means you have ceased pathwalking, and in all probability are experiencing something deeply unpleasant, uncontrolled, and undesired.
Falling off a cliff implies a lack of control. Which is what it represents. Recognizing a cliff and facing it tells you what you must do to overcome it – or turn away from it.
A cliff represents a new and inescapable need to step further out of your comfort zones.
Let’s take a closer look at this, shall we?
An insurmountable obstacle
I continue to maintain the belief that nothing is impossible. However, neither can you create out of the pure void.
What that means is that there needs to be a basis from which you build and/or create whatever you seek to via your path. Thus, if you desire to be a brain surgeon, you’re going to medical school – not just magically expecting to somehow *POOF* become a brain surgeon. Or – you would like to be an astronaut but aren’t involved in a science or military career that could get you into space. You get the gist, right?
With that in mind, what’s an insurmountable obstacle of a cliff look like? It might be an educational requirement you cannot satisfy. A test you either cannot take or are unable to pass. It might be an unexpected physical limitation preventing you from reaching the goal.
Whatever it is, the means to overcome it doesn’t exist. Maybe it looked possible at the outset – but now this cliff can’t be overcome.
Nobody wants to experience this. Especially in the pursuit of a dream. But it can happen. No star athlete wants their career ended by an unsurmountable injury – but it happens.
Maybe it’s an ending – but you can also use it for a whole new beginning and to choose a new path.
A major detour around the cliff
What this amounts to is a premature end to the path you were walking. Or rather, the cliff before you requires a rather major detour. You may need to backtrack quite a way to zig when you should have zagged or take a right at the fork where you took a left.
Chances are a major detour, to avoid falling off the cliff, is a wholly new strategy to get from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’. Your way is blocked, the cliff is insurmountable – but you’re not out of options.
This requires a lot more discomfort than just walking an unusual path, as well as freeing yourself of confirmation bias – specifically in the original surety of your purpose. And, like any detour you must take on a real road, this could add time you don’t desire to add to get to a given destination.
Unlike the insurmountable obstacle, a major detour still maintains the original intent of the path. But the how and sometimes where of the process changes drastically.
Build a bridge
You’ve reached a cliff. Scaling down it and climbing the cliff on the other side isn’t doable for numerous reasons. You need to bridge the gap.
What this entails tends to be external help. Now you need a person, a resource, or some other tangible or intangible things to keep going.
This might require an uncomfortable conversation with someone. Very probably, the help you need is going to take you even further out of your comfort zone. Hence why this is another representation of the cliff. It’s sudden, unexpected, and uncomfortable when reached.
But with the help you can seek from outside of yourself – whatever form that takes – the bridge can be built, and the external connection made. It might be a book that must be read, a class you must take, or an experience necessary to reach the goal at the end of your path. That external connection made is the only way to get past the cliff.
Thus you “hire” your contractor for external help to build the bridge to move past the cliff.
Take a leap of faith off the cliff
As you look down from atop the cliff, you can see it. Far below, that’s the goal. It’s there, so close – yet out of reach.
Your only choice is to take a leap of faith.
This is all about facing uncertainty. It’s taking a chance and diving into the unknown.
Unlike falling off a cliff – which is, as implied, uncontrolled – a leap of faith is a choice.
Many of these are probably quite familiar. You quit a stable job. Ask someone to marry you. You sign the contract to buy the house. All of these are technically a leap of faith.
This is a controlled dive. And while it’s possible you will crash at the bottom – you will survive. Falling off the cliff without control might break all the bones in your body or kill you – literally or metaphorically. That depends on the cliff in question.
A leap of faith off a cliff is scary. No question. But if that’s the choice before you so that you can continue on your path – it’s doable. As the Zen saying goes,
“Leap and the net will appear.”
The path ends abruptly
Finally, the cliff you have come to may represent an abrupt and unplanned ending of the path.
For example, let’s say you have an amazing invention you desire to bring to the world. All your heart and soul go into it, you walk the path to achieve the goal of making it real and available. Then you learn it cannot be done, was already done and you missed it – or someone gets there ahead of you and blocks you out.
All of these are plausible happenings that can be the cliff you reach that can’t be overcome to complete your path. It’s a forced acknowledgment of failure.
Nobody wants to fail. And failure will cause some people to toss themselves off the cliff as they give up.
But everyone has more than a single path in this life. When one path ends another can be started. But recognizing and acknowledging this fact doesn’t make the pain of its reality go away.
The cliff is an ending – not the end
The only absolute end in this life is death. Plain and simple – so long as you are alive, you can find and/or create new paths.
Some paths we walk are easier than others. But when one ends in a cliff, it’s important to be mindful of where you are, how you got there – and then decide how to proceed. Mindfulness opens you to conscious awareness here and now. This, in turn, will tell you if this cliff is an insurmountable obstacle, a major detour, the need for an external connection, time to take a leap of faith, or the end of the path.
Whatever it is, you are empowered to handle it.
It’s entirely possible this could destroy you. But conversely, this could also make you stronger than you ever imagined possible.
Have you come to a cliff on your path? If so, what did you do?
This is the four-hundred and ninety-ninth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are ideas for – and my personal experiences with – mindfulness and walking along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Additionally, I desire to empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-blog and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. My additional writing, both fiction and non-fiction, are available here.
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