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The Road Less Traveled

The Road Less Traveled

by Laurel Irwin

Self-Improvement Christianity

Season 1

32. Secure Base - An Alien Model of Marriage

What if we stopped defining partnership as supervision, and instead encouraged our spouse to be all that they can possibly be? What if we were fully responsible for ourselves so that they have the room to do that? What if marriage could make us more of ourselves, and we could continue developing as adults, even influencing and receiving from the world beyond our family? What if expansion doesn't have to stop when we graduate college, and what if marriage wasn't a ball and chain?

31. Stealing Agency

Who do we feel most loved by? People who empower us and ignite our own capability? Or those who do our work for us? Whether we're talking about our spouse, friends, or children, I don't think it's loving to do anything (repeatedly, long-term) for them that they can do for themselves. Read this article here: https://substack.com/@roadlesstraveledonline/p-190405800

30. Chris Poffenroth and Pilgrim's Progress

Chris tells his story of escaping Canada and sailing solo to Mexico. Plenty of obstacles appeared, dangers threatened, and misadventures occurred, but God provided and rescued at every step along the way. To learn more and support Chris' ministry: https://www.kingdomvoyages.org

29. Direction Versus Destination

From: https://substack.com/home/post/p-156816900 Each and every action has a direction. We need a vision, but it need not be an inflexible blueprint of specific timelines and circumstances. The first step is know yourself. What are you good at, what do you love? What brings you to life, and what opportunities are calling to you? Which lofty ideals, indeed, appealed to you repeatedly since you were young? What do those things feel like, over and above what they might present as? Once we really accept that our individuality is a gift, we can drop the pressure of external expectations, and begin to move in the directionof these aspirations and skills, block time to allow creative inspiration to come to us, and decide whether it’s the gym or the driving range we are going to today. There does, indeed, need to be a pull toward a certain direction, and while we hold that trajectory, we can look down at our feet, be where they are, turn them slightly in the direction of the goal, and do something today that brings us that way. It can be a much more gentle process than we originally thought, in this culture of hurry.

28. Truth as the Gateway to Adventure

How do we transcend the predictable? From: https://substack.com/home/post/p-157117721 Jordan B Peterson: "If you say the truth and nothing else, you will have an immense adventure as a consequence. You will not know what is going to happen to you, but you have to let go of clinging to the outcome. You have to let go. The truth will reveal the world the way it is intended to be revealed. The consequence for you will be that you will have the adventure of your life. The other part of that ethos—which makes perfect sense to me and I cannot see how it can be any other way—is that whatever makes itself manifest as a consequence of the truth is the best possible reality that could be manifest, even if you cannot see it.”

27. Individuation as the Pathway to Loving Others

Perhaps the only way we ever create the room to love others selflessly, to truly desire their growth and flourishing, is to become radically involved in our own journeys.

26. Unbelievable

Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights, page 205 paints a beautiful picture of why the word "unbelievable" diminishes the very things we all want to believe more in.

25. The Red Book, 311

This excerpt from Carl Jung's The Red Book, pages 311-312, explore the idea that striving to see our efforts take shape in the material world bind up the actual power we possess within our minds to remain good, even to be fulfilled at all. Notice the connection between binding up our efforts in material shapes, and the unconscious proclivity to manipulate others and take them into the service of our need for validation. Interestingly, Jung notes that there are many such people desperate to escape their own selves, so we have willing pawns for our scarcity-based formations. Only by integrating, accepting, looking squarely at our propensity for evil and control can we prevent it from overwhelming us or taking others captive.

23. Life As A Prey Animal

To what extent do you want to live your life as a prey animal? In this episode, I explore the dangers and benefits of breaking free from the herd, the marked zebra phenomenon, and missing the safety of what you've left behind. Jordan B. Peterson & Warren Smith Interview: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast/id1184022695?i=1000679402431 Warren Smith Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SecretScholars

22. The Unlived Life of the Parent

The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parent. (Carl Jung) When we as parents (or coaches, mentors, teachers) don't actualize our own potential or hearken to our callings, we have one of the following effects on those following and looking up to us: We live vicariously through them, putting pressure on them to finish our dreams for us. Then, nobody lives their lives, because they're busy aping the ones we were too afraid to live for ourselves. (Who will live your life if you do not?) We suffocate them when we are afraid of them outshining us. Their souls shrivel and the light goes out of their eyes. This is the story of the Oedipal, devouring mother, or the evil stepmother in Tangled. This happens when we aren't actualized ourselves, and our children/students are all way have to ensure we are worth something. In either case, we lose the person we love, because instead of inspiring them into expansion, we either drive them away, or we drive them to dilution and decay, thereby losing them through a thousand silent concessions.

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