#35: You’re Not Afraid of the Unknown
The Lie That Keeps You From Awakening
Exhaustion can feel like failure. You’ve left behind the familiar, and what’s ahead feels heavy, unfamiliar, and lonely. You wonder if you’ve made a mistake.
I’ve been there.
I know what it’s like to fall back into old patterns, to confuse anxiety for excitement, to doubt the path.
But exhaustion isn’t failure. It’s a threshold.
Today, I want to share how to recognize it, how to meet it, and how to stay with yourself when you want to give up.
Truth Is Not Measured in Agreement
Agreement does not prove truth. Disagreement does not erase it.
What I share is the truth I have lived, witnessed, and come to understand through my own journey. You are always free to take what resonates and leave what does not.
When I speak about exhaustion and the urge to give up, I do not speak from theory. I know the cycle. I have fallen back into patterns I wanted to release. I have felt the weight of a clean slate that looked like freedom but carried the heaviness of the unfamiliar.
The silence of a clean slate that felt heavier than the past I left behind.
Disorientation, Not Fear
I came to see the truth: The weight of the new does not signal failure. It signals that you are standing where you have never stood before. The ache of becoming.
For a long time, I thought that heaviness was fear of the unknown. I judged myself for doubting, for sabotaging, for not being able to move forward.
But what I came to see is that it isn’t fear at all, it’s disorientation.
The body reads the unfamiliar as an imbalance. Just like in yoga, when you move from mountain pose into tree pose, you wobble. The wobble doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means your body is learning to orient in a new way.
Life works like that too.
When you stand on the edge of something unfamiliar, your nervous system flags it as danger. Not because it is dangerous, but because you haven’t found your footing yet.
That moment of wobble is what we mistake for fear.
That wobble is what we mistake for fear. Ego grabs hold, names it fear of the unknown, and convinces you to turn back.
This shift in perspective changes everything.
Exhaustion is not failure. Heaviness is not fear. They are thresholds. The raw space where you are learning how to stand in yourself in a new way.
Reflect:
When life places a clean slate in your hands, how do you meet it?
With fear, or with curiosity? What if that disorientation you’re feeling before stepping into the threshold wasn’t fear but an invitation to find yourself and your footing to discover yourself in the experience?
Excitement or Anxiety?
Learning to Discern the Difference
A clean slate feels heavy because it is unfamiliar. That weight signals possibility, not collapse.
For most of my life, I mistook anxiety for excitement.
The rush in my body, the racing thoughts, the urgency to act… I called it excitement.
Anxiety was what fueled me, what moved me forward. But it didn’t move me in the direction my soul wanted.
It moved me into reaction. Into chasing. Into choices that didn’t serve me.
This is Avidya (misperception). It’s when we confuse contraction for openness and mistake what is fleeting for what is true.
The Body Speaks
Excitement and anxiety live close together in the body.
Both can quicken the pulse.
Both can create a buzzing in the nerves.
Both can make you restless to act.
Excitement carries openness. Anxiety carries fear. One expands. The other contracts.
This is why presence matters. Without it, we confuse one for the other.
Discernment comes through pause, through feeling before naming, through listening deeper than the lower mind’s quick label.
The Practice of Discernment
Pause and ground.
Stop for a moment. Feel your body’s weight supported.
Orient in space.
Slowly scan the room with your eyes. Notice where you are, what surrounds you, and that you belong here. Let your body register: there is nothing to fear.
Drop into the body.
Place your hands on your chest, your belly, or your thighs. Sense the anchor of your own presence.
Let the feeling be felt.
Allow sensations to move through you before the mind defines them.
Ask from the higher mind.
From this grounded place, ask: Does this sensation open me, or does it close me?
Witness without clinging.
Stay with what arises. Discernment comes from witnessing, not from controlling.
When you approach discernment this way, the question doesn’t come from the mind that wants to manage or explain. It comes from a deeper place… the witness, the higher mind, the part of you that can see clearly without attaching.
When you’re clear, you don’t have to name it. You simply are. You understand.
Reflect:
How do you usually respond when a clean slate arrives in your life , with excitement or fear?
Can you sense when your “excitement” is actually anxiety in disguise?
What helps you clear enough space in yourself to tell the difference?
Slowing Down as Recalibration
Slowing down was one of the hardest practices for me. My perfectionism thrived on urgency. If I wasn’t moving, producing, or proving, I felt unseen.
But the truth is, it wasn’t the fear of being unseen. It was disorientation.
Who was I without the producing? Without the proving? Without the perfectionism?
The ego called that wobble danger.
It whispered: You’re invisible. You’ll disappear.
But really, it was a loss of orientation. I didn’t yet know myself without urgency to define me.
In my body, slowing down felt unbearable.
I always heard the program running:
You should be doing something better with your time. Be productive.
Even while waiting for coffee to brew, I filled the gap with washing dishes, unloading, or avoiding stillness.
This wasn’t laziness. This was programming.
Ego disguised as protection.
My body mirrored what my mind and energy fed it. My nervous system adapted to fear and urgency until they felt familiar.
This is the deeper truth: you don’t fear being unseen by others. You feel disoriented because you cannot yet see yourself.
And seeing yourself isn’t about the physical eye. It is a deeper sight. An understanding.
When you begin to understand yourself, you stop needing permission from others to simply be.
This is what it means to live untethered.
To not be unaffected by life, but anchored in who you are, even when the ground shifts.
Because once you know where to find yourself, you can always return. Even if life knocks you off your feet, you know the path back to center. Presence is orientation.
Every time you run from this, you run from yourself.
Disconnection deepens disorientation. Ego calls this discomfort “fear.” The higher mind knows it is the invitation to remember your place.
Presence anchors you there.
Not as something to hold tightly, but as something to return to again and again.
The Sutras describe this steady return as abhyasa, the practice. And the loosening of urgency as vairagya, the release. Together, they are medicine for the restless mind and body, discipline balanced with surrender.
From here, a deeper truth emerged:
What moves me now is not urgency.
It is trust.
Not the trust of attaching to outcomes, but the trust of surrendering to the unknown.
Reflect:
What energy usually moves you? Is it fear, urgency, trust, or presence?
How do you know?
Where in your life do you mistake heaviness for failure, when it may be a doorway into growth?
Growth Is Layered
Growth moves in layers, each one asking for something deeper. Growth asks you to step into discomfort.
It does not always feel like progress.
Sometimes it feels like shedding skin, standing exposed, holding steady when the familiar calls you back.
The familiar path will always call to you. The old ways whisper comfort. They remind you of who you once were. Old habits feel safe, even when you know they no longer fit.
Choosing integrity means staying loyal to your evolution, especially in the moments when it feels lonely.
This is the essence of what Patañjali calls Kriya Yoga: tapas (the fire of discipline), svadhyaya (self-study), and isvara-pranidhana (surrender to the divine).
Growth is tapas, the heat of becoming. Self-study keeps you awake to old patterns. Surrender steadies you when loneliness tempts you back to the familiar.
In the past, judgment and criticism lit my fire. I defended myself, poured my energy into battles that had no real meaning.
Each reaction left me drained. Each defense pulled me further from my center.
Now I treat energy as sacred currency.
I spend it where it nourishes me. I refuse to invest where it depletes me.
Growth does not erase stumbling.
Growth teaches you how to rise, choose again, and redirect your energy toward what strengthens your wholeness. The fire of tapas is not punishment; it is purification.
Exhaustion at the edge of the known is not failure; it is the threshold where transformation begins.
Reflect:
When the fire rises, how do you know whether it’s the ego’s fire of reaction or the purifying fire of tapas?
What practices help you stay in the heat that transforms without being pulled back into battles that drain your spirit?
Meeting Exhaustion Without Giving Up
Exhaustion comes in layers, too.
It can feel like carrying too much.
It can feel like isolation, like no one understands why you can’t just “get back with the program.”
It can tempt you to give up and return to what you’ve outgrown, because that feels safer than stepping into the unknown.
Giving up rarely looks like stopping.
It looks like sliding back into habits you’ve worked to release. It looks like chasing after what your soul already told you was not for you.
That is when discouragement silences the heart, and ego takes the driver’s seat.
The Sutras call this asmita, the ego confusing the body-mind with the Self.
In exhaustion, it convinces you that the weight you carry is who you are. But you are not your heaviness; you are the awareness that sees it.
The antidote is steady practice and gentle release.
Practice, choosing again and again to return to presence, to one breath, to the slower step. Release, loosening your grip on urgency, on outcomes, on the need to control. Together, they keep you moving forward without collapsing back into what you’ve already outgrown.
And when the heart softens, trust returns.
Not the trust of knowing how it will all unfold, but the trust of laying down the ego’s struggle and letting something greater carry you.
Practices for Meeting Exhaustion
Slow down with presence.
Presence interrupts the spiral. Even two breaths can bring you back to center.
Ask who’s driving right now.
Ego pushes toward judgment and unworthiness. Spirit reminds you that you are held, always.
Hold yourself as spirit would.
Rest, move, or be still. Choose what clears heaviness. Realignment matters more than effort.
Anchor into connection.
Exhaustion clouds your wholeness. Connection clears the fog. Spirit plugs you back into your source, your center, your groundedness.
These tools do not demand performance. They are simple, gentle ways to stay with yourself when exhaustion pulls you away.
Presence Is the Doorway Back
Exhaustion doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means you’ve reached the edge of what you’ve known. And edges are where becoming begins.
Slow down.
Breathe.
Ask who is in the driver’s seat.
Anchor back into connection.
And remember: presence, even in the smallest way, is always the doorway back to your wholeness.
Presence doesn’t ask for perfection. It asks you to return, again and again.
And when healing feels heavy, stay with yourself.
Exhaustion is not the end of the path.
It is the threshold of self-realization.
Don’t give up on yourself. This is where you meet who you truly are.
If this message resonates, share it with someone on the awakening path.
Presence spreads when we choose to live it, together.
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Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here.
