We live life in an effort to constantly ensure and build safety on all levels: emotional, financial, material, environmental, relational and physical. We strive to form a sense of familiarity, and nourish attachments to things, people and routines to create a feeling (which, in reality, is an illusion) of stability and protection in the face of a mad world, ever-changing and constantly threatening our little bubble.

As creatures of habit, deeply attached to a fixed idea of self, others and the world, we don’t like change, even when it’s necessary. We know when something must be changed in our lives, but all too often, the comfort of our habits and beliefs is somehow more appealing.

 Usually, we use the past as a reference, and settle into toxic routines and set ideas of self, which end up defining our future along the same old story lines.

Until one day…we break down.

When our whole world shatters despite our best efforts to maintain the status quo, we break down and lose it all: our sense of safety and the investments in the future we’ve made. We’ve protected ourselves, because change was never the plan. When this happens, we experience it as devastating. Each and every time, we fight, resist, and consume ourselves with changing others or outside circumstances instead of ourselves. Often, we pick ourselves up and manage to get back on the horse—sometimes with new eyes and a fresh attitude, other times with the exact same blindfolded vision.

If life still feels to you like a never-ending series of breakdowns, pains and dramas, you have not awakened to the miracle of brokenness.

You have not yet risen into the light that ultimately brings permanent peace and sets you free.

Moments of drastic change in our lives force us to immediately face ourselves. They throw into question all of the concepts we’ve tried to forge or preserve over the years, and shatter our expectations of the future and of others. We suddenly become powerless in the realm of a new, this-doesn’t-make-sense universe. We’re insignificant entities on the surface of a planet that continues to go around and always will, regardless. The motion of life carries on, and we can’t do anything about it, even though we want it all to stop so we can grieve in peace, with universal acknowledgement of our pain and signs of salvation popping up everywhere. They don’t always appear when you need them. You may be so overwhelmed that you can’t see the signs. In these shattering moments, though, there is hope: from the most unexpected place, salvation comes. That place is brokenness.

When you are broken, lying there in pieces on your bed or your bedroom floor, you actually have a rare opportunity to see things as they really are. You can see that you have spent your life feeding an illusion or avoiding reality. Everything eventually ends, and we do not get to decide when.

All that has a beginning, by necessity, must end. The very nature of life, of existence, of the manifested world IS change.

Life cannot exist without change

Your happiness and beautiful experiences would never have been available to you had you not experienced change in the first place.

Change and destruction allow the flow of life’s energy to maintain itself. They are the drive of creation, and the universe is constantly renewing, creating and breaking what is, just to allow new possibilities and opportunities to arise: within ourselves, the choices we make, the types of relationships we choose, daily habits, new facets of ourselves, and, ultimately, how we decide to bounce back again.

If you are drowning in profound grief, inevitable questions emerge. Who am I? How can I move forward? You’re searching for answers because you desperately need to know who and how.

Actually, the answer is right there, immediately available to you as soon as crisis knocks you down.

You are no one. No one in the world of form and impermanence, where everything vanishes at some point—even the idea of ‘I’ and whatever we have made of it.

When your reality is destroyed, nothing is truly lost but your illusion of self.

The notion of a separated, individual self, defined essentially by physical aspects, achievements, personal history and an imagined or well-planned future, inevitably crashes and shows its true, ephemeral nature.

 On a universal level, whenever you are in the flux of change, you are flowing with the essence of life.

On a universal level, whenever you are in the flux of change, you are flowing with the essence of life. You become part of its energy and subject to it at the same time.

Flowing with change, rather than resisting, is the wisest thing you can do. When you flow with it, your imaginary pain vanishes. When you are embracing change, you realize that beyond your problems, beyond your perceived world of gain and loss, your formless essence is pure, permanent life energy.

Interestingly enough, in Hindu Mythology, Shiva, the God of Destruction, works on equal footing with Brahma, God of Creation, and Vishnu, God of Protection. The three represent the most important deities in Hinduism. 

Shiva is venerated for bringing insight into our blind attachments, overindulgent habits, and the wants and illusions of the ego. Shiva destroys the ego, which represents false identification with form (or the manifested world) and reminds us to live fully in the present moment.

Live the moment to the fullest, and let it all go the minute after. In this way, every moment offers a fresh start, a new richness and intensity without the entrapment of delusions.

SHIVA, the God of Destruction, an archetype of inspiration

Brokenness can be seen as a blessing. It acts as an incredibly powerful moment when we can start all over again, but this time completely afresh, freed, and more alive than ever before. Ultimately, grief and loss are necessary; and this must be known to appreciate the value and meaning of love, of others, and the beauty of the present moment.

Suffering also becomes an extraordinary chance to understand others, empathize with their pain and come closer to the meaning of love and tolerance. One gains the chance to show solidarity and become community-orientated rather than self-absorbed with existential problems.

In your brokenness, when you cultivate empathy for others, you become able to connect meaningfully and deeply, while at the same time mitigating the effects of isolation.

We all experience grief and loss, and everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. As you open your heart beyond your grief and shattered self, your pain may seem very small compared with what others may be going through.

Brokenness humbles you, and turns you in the direction you truly belong: toward others. The same essential emotions and life energy flow through everything that is.

Conclusion

In conclusion, brokenness comes with many gifts and valuable wake-up calls. It gives us a chance to reassess our values, priorities, attachment styles, and mistakes, and see more clearly what truly matters. It points out our toxic habits, relationships, and detrimental or addictive activities—essentially, all that needs to be let go of because it has drawn us into something, we never really wanted in the first place.

How to sublimate your emotional pain and set yourself free from Ego

As much as suffering can be a blessing, unfortunately, like anything else, it is also temporary. I say unfortunately, yes. You read me well… and it doesn’t mean I am a masochist.

In fact, what I mean is that once the state of brokenness and vulnerability is far behind us, we run the risk of falling back into the old traps, picking up the same habits and making similar mistakes all over again. We may become ungrateful, complain, or get attached to the wrong people.

Human beings are not good learners—we all know that. We can hit the same wall a hundred times, yet we stand up and run right back toward it.

We are extraordinarily self-sabotaging creatures by nature. Even when we want change badly and strive to break old habits – bang! We are back to them in no time.

Are we masochists? In essence, no; but in the ego’s terms, yes. We are ruled by our unconscious (the ego) and our past wounds, and tend to re-enact the same old dramas in a desperate attempt to resolve and confront them. This, of course, is completely inappropriate, and irrelevant to the present. The ego is schizophrenic, a very proud ‘bastard’ obsessed with fixing that which no longer exists, i.e., the past.

We successfully pick ourselves up, and after a while, just as we begin to find joy and balance in life again, the gains and insights of our shattering moments—the promises we made to ourselves—mysteriously evaporate. We reach a point when we badly miss these first, insightful moments of our good resolutions.

Here’s a trick to avoid the ego’s trap of unnecessary suffering:

Never go back to ‘whole’ again.

Just stay broken.

And love, truly love, your brokenness.

Travel though life broken.

Exist in a permanent state of brokenness; not the weak, helpless, or frightened kind of broken, but the open-hearted, humble and vulnerable kind.

Never seal a wound that has been opened. Instead, leave it half-open as a reminder of what truly matters to you, of what you need and strive for in life, as a crack across your heart left exposed to maintain a deep connection to your true self and authentic relationship with others.

Leave the cracks of brokenness wide open, so the wind and light can come in and clean away the dirt the ego always gathers around your beautiful, glowing self.

Whenever pain becomes unbearable, strangling your heart and wrecking your body, it may be just a random thought that is generating fear and worry or a sudden state of panic and angst. Just surrender to it, each and every time.

 Surrender completely, religiously, confidently and gratefully. Kneel in front of Shiva and thank him for the terrifying feeling you are going through…really thank him, and acknowledge your ‘nothingness’ in the manifested world and its greatness in the realm of the infinite Universe. Hand your ego over to him generously, with wide-open palms, and I can assure you, he will create the miracle for you. He will listen, and set you free.

All you need to do is let the feeling come to you for a few seconds, wreck you up, overwhelm you, and shiver through your entire body. Let it see that there is nothing within you to destroy any further. Your heart is already broken, but your core essence, your lively spirit, is indestructible.

Know the following: you WILL survive. In seconds, and I mean just a few seconds, you will be set free. When you let a wound open, when you invite it to flow through your whole body, you are about to sublimate your ego, your bodily pain, your inner enemy—whatever has been keeping you in fear, terror and ongoing distress.

Know, then, as you surrender completely, willingly, and physically to the feeling, that you’re about to defeat it permanently, and you will soon embrace lasting peace.

Why self awareness vital for growth

As a baby you and I were born with what behavioral psychologists call: a tabula rasa. Tabula rasa means blank slate in Latin and refers to the absence of build-in mental content at one’s birth. Any knowledge is thus achieved only through experience and perception, although neurobiologists point out that there is a pre-programed mental structure to receive and organize information, which is naturally genetically pre-determined. 

Nevertheless we are born with no consciousness, no judgement abilities, no critical sense and no objective observation abilities. Unless learnt, the latter are unlikely to develop through one’s life time, remaining thus subject to their mind pre-conditioning.

During our growing-up process, as a result of this pre-conditioning, but also in order to survive, we have incorporated automatisms, habits, beliefs and defense mechanisms, to protect ourselves, and respond to potentially harming situations. These habits have remained strongly embedded in us and continue to be blindly enacted during adulthood (when the false-self or the Ego is at work).

Although, in the early days, these mechanisms had an effective and specific function, today, for the most part, they serve no purpose: at best we stagnate (by repeating the same drill, same habits, same defense mechanisms and going nowhere), at worse, we destruct ourselves (and others) by getting sabotaged by unwatched and unquestioned automatisms (behaviours, beliefs, feelings) as they distort the reality of the present moment and lead us to inappropriate behaviors.

Watch yourself and assess what habits/automatisms serve you today and what no longer doesn’t. If you decide to keep the old habits and thinking patterns, then bravely take responsibility for the life you are leading, for the choice you make each day and simply deal with the consequences..

‘Everything in your life is the result of a choice you have made. If you want a different result, then make a different choice.’

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, it is wise not to blame anyone; change and life are truly up to us. We may not have been able to choose in what family/social/cultural configuration we have fallen in, but we always choose the manner in which we live our lives and what we do with the presenting circumstances. Stay mindful, stay self-aware.