Five Stages

A man’s journey will be in five stages. At each we must do the work to move to the next. We will perhaps come around to each of these stages again and again. And we will be at different stages in different areas of our lives. This is not a sign of falling back - it is because we are moving forward in a spiral, not going around a circle. We must have the humility to recognize where we are, the courage to step into the work, and the relentlessness to keep coming back to it.

• Stage 1: drowning. We are not ok on the inside, and not ok on the outside. Perhaps our marriage is failing because we can’t seem to communicate with our wife. We are in the struggle.
• Stage 2: treading water. We are not ok on the inside, but things look ok on the outside. We are powering through. We keep going, maybe we’re doing fine at work but inside we are depressed, anxious, scared, we know something is wrong.
• Stage 3: swimming. We are ok on the inside and ok on the outside. But we feel constrained, or stuck, or groundless. We don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing next. We’ve woken up somewhere we don’t recognize. We start to look up and search for what it is we are supposed to be.
• Stage 4: flying. We break the surface and take to the sky. Now we know who we are and what we are doing, and we are fully engaged in the work. We soar toward the stars, energized by clarity, purpose, and vision.
• Stage 5: radiating. We embody our pure being, bright and free. We no longer move for ourselves alone — we return to help others on their journey. From this seat of truly being fully ourselves, we can go anywhere, bringing wisdom, compassion, and strength wherever it is needed.

Shifting our secret world, from being fear based to love based changes absolutely everything about our experience - our emotions, our thoughts, and our experiences in the physical world.

This work is deeply powerful, and the great wisdom traditions contain an enormous body of work telling us how to do it. We “simply” have to relentlessly choose into walking the wisdom path. In the Awakening Dragon work we will dive into the practices and translations of this ancient wisdom.