Complacency: Breaking the Spell

It’s so easy to fall into complacency as we breathe a contented sigh of relief that our life is just fine — no need to stretch out, take risks, explore new territory. Complacency spearheads our resistance to change. Fear of the mystery confines us to the comfort zone of complacency when we are convinced that our current experience is good enough. So we stay with jobs, relationships, lifestyles, identities way beyond the vital learning curve inherent in the magnetics that initiated these conditions. We settle in ...forever enslaved to a self-contentment that caps our willingness to move into the fertile realm of insecurity where our cutting edge resides.

How many times a day do we react to growth opportunities with: "Yeah, but" or "Why bother?" Complacency, entrapping us in a dependency on situations that have long outlived their purpose, justifies all the "good" reasons why we should just stay where we are and not rock the boat. Complacency’s sister, resignation, adds to the pool of stagnation that slowly drowns us in the sticky, gooey "blahs" that flat-line our lives as we watch the days pass by, homogenized in a sea of suffocating comfort and sameness. Even if we can muster up enough creative energy to envision new potentials, we put them off, as complacency convinces us that we have all the time in the world to get to these fresh endeavors. Why take the risk, stretch out and apply discipline today when there’s always tomorrow.

The ego gorges on complacency’s self-satisfaction. What a shame that it’s usually pain that motivates us to grow. Wouldn’t it be great to simply shake loose of the chains of complacency by catalyzing our transformation from a desire to leave the dead end "land of contentment."

Complacency is subtle. It builds over years as we blanket our potential without even realizing it. We start out excited about life with grand visions about who we might become. Fired up about all the possibilities and filled with juicy passion, we tackle fears of the unknown with courage and determination. Then as we learn the ropes we become comfortable with these undertakings — eventually good at them, even masterful. Finally, in a heap of self-admiration filled with certainty, we arrive at the top of our game. We’ve conquered our dreams. The ego is pumped. We’re off the hook.

If we’ve haven’t reached a pinnacle of fulfillment, our initial enthusiasm is eroded by the exhausting impact of life’s obstacles. We begin to settle for less as the voice of complacency seduces us into the terrain of contentment that extinguishes all motivation for growth. Complacency feels safe — appearing to be the easier route. Ironically, the realm of complacency is one of the most dangerous places for the soul.

Oh how the soul aches for us to leave Complacency’s zone of dullness, flatness, lifelessness, laziness, stubbornness, blankness, boredom, anger and defensiveness. Complacency fosters depression because it counters our natural instinct for evolutionary adventure. Unresponsive to the changes required for the soul, complacency’s sugary sweet narcotic makes us groggy as it mutes our life with a haze that blurs reality like an opium dream by holding us in a routinized past, fiercely postponing the requirement to release obsolete parts of ourselves.

The attachment to the status quo exacts a price. The soul is distressed when we imprison our spirit with self-contentment. The imagination atrophies, our body becomes rigid, and we die of predictability. Ironically, self-satisfaction breeds its opposite — a dissatisfaction that, like termites, eats away our foundation and topples our citadels of complaisance. Complacency’s smugness is the least secure place to be.

We lose pieces of our life when complacency puts our creative imagination and sense of potential out to pasture, as if they only belong to childhood. Steeped in complacency, we can’t register the changes that inevitably unfold within. Eventually we reach a crisis point of overflowing sticky complacent energy that creates a web of incarcerating "golden chains."

Complacency may be disguised as a spiritual willingness to accept karma and comply with the Divine Plan,. But the underbelly of this compliance is the curse of suffering painful symptoms of under-extension —settling for less than what our soul really needs. Somewhere along the line we make compromises that put our soul on hold and take ourselves out of the game of life while we wait for some magic moment to jump-start a sense of aliveness. But that moment never comes because complacency broadcast’s the message that "We’re fine just where we are."

Of course there’s nothing complacent about me! I’m always on my cutting edge! Smug in certainty that I could never fall prey to the lure of complacency’s comfort zone, I don’t notice how routinized life becomes as laziness infiltrates my imagination and clouds my vision. Loss of initiative then fosters low self-esteem and blankets my creativity. Soon my resolute faith starts to waver as the prison walls of self-pride close in. I realize that my life is just a house of cards. My soul’s intense disappointment reveals that I haven’t delivered the goods I promised because of rationalizations like: Its too much effort, I’ve done enough already, I’m too old to be a beginner, I want to just "ride it out." Cranky and ashamed, I’m trapped by smallness — complacency’s only offering to my soul.

Thankfully, the soul’s passion for evolution is nonnegotiable. If we don’t resist the stockades of self-assurance and humble our inflated complacent egos, then the Universe delivers a crisis to liberate us from complacency’s bondage. We can avert this emergency by bringing awareness to areas of complacency and challenging ourselves to release stagnation in order to explore frontiers of insecurity where we have an opportunity for self-proving at a completely new level — very exciting! Remedies for complacency like flexibility, not-knowing, curiosity, courage and restlessness keep us growing with the fresh sense of wonder and possibility of the magical child.

The Tibetan strikes a thunderous gong to shatter complacency’s spell and teaches:

"Complacency is an ambassador of darkness, especially treacherous at this time in history when all are mandated to release narrow vision in order to ideate the emerging paradigm. The soul craves this opportunity to explore the cutting edge of consciousness that cannot be blunted by the self-pride of complacency or the defeatism of resignation. The necessity for students to comply with the Divine Plan doesn’t mean to sit back, limply yielding, and abdicate responsibility for transformation. Yes, enlightenment for everyone is guaranteed! But true evolution requires the willingness to greet each day with fresh eyes, the attitude of a beginner and the humility of one who touches the mystery and allows it to unmoor illusions of certitude. Only then can self can be truly receptive to the gush of unsettlement that dismantles the ego’s hold.

"Complacency is an escape from responsibility to the soul. It lulls the soul to sleep in the realm of contentedness.

"Complacency is a denial of the directive to feel the surprise-filled impact of the Divine Plan from moment to moment with its unexpected twists and turns purposely orchestrated to shake students out of their convenience circuits and leave them open to the raw truth of experience.

"Call for the Gift of Discontent. Allow it to stir the soul’s passion for more, providing just enough discomfort to provoke searching questions, hunger for the next step and a willingness to ride the Wave of Restlessness. Pray for assistance to be lifted out of the quagmire of comatoseness and lethargy. Remember that one never arrives because the path perpetually re-creates itself — unfolding into infinity. Since there is no endpoint, complacency foolishly detains the journey. Even the pinnacle of enlightenment marks only the beginning of the soul’s true creative pathway.

"To fall prey to complacency dishonors Source’s Gift of Possibility. Throw away all sedatives of egotistic conceit that leave self listless, uninspired and imprisoned in strongholds of knowing/accomplishment. It’s the refreshment of new beginnings and the unfamiliar that renews the soul and nourishes its journey home. Live each day as if there were no tomorrow in order to rise to the Divine Purpose that places self on the edge — open, eager, alive, awake. To rest on one’s laurels, or to settle for less because life is too hard, only postpones soul work which must eventually be completed. Discard the attitude of "same old, same old" and observe the excitement of children who have yet to prove themselves and therefore play openly in the Sandbox of Promise.

"The New World Order is the great equalizer. It brings a firsthand consciousness that makes everyone a beginner. Pioneers cannot afford the luxury of complacency. Honor self’s agreement to investigate and anchor this emerging consciousness on behalf of the soul. Ride the wave of Divine Passion that ignites the Fires of Transformation. Then all will be awakened into the moment of ALIVENESS that breaks the dark spell of complacency and unleashes the Forces of Evolution which launch the global family through the Gateway of Initiative."