Have you ever achieved something you were aiming for, or received something you desired, only to find yourself unable to hold on to it, slowly losing grasp until the brilliance fades away and you find yourself back where you started? Maybe you got that dream job where you now feel imprisoned.  Maybe your once shiny relationship has dulled. Maybe you can’t hold on to that higher income you’ve been striving for. Or maybe you’ve been trying unsuccessfully to achieve your dreams in the first place?

You might be hitting Abundance Ceilings. This is an idea developed Dr. Mario E. Martinez, who studies how our thoughts affect our bodies and how they are influenced by our culture and ancestry. I disagree with a lot of his work, but I’ve found benefit in the information shared in this post.

The idea is that you inherently believe there is a limit on the amount of joy, love, peace, health, wealth, and abundance you are allowed to have.  These ceilings depend on your history, upbringing, and environment. You’ve adapted to the suffering caused by these limits, as has your community. Any activity that takes you above these boundaries causes stress and disruption. Internally you are unprepared to deal with the change in circumstances and so your body responds to it as a threat. Your community, no matter how well they wish you in theory, also feels threatened – if you succeed in pushing the limits, it reflects poorly on them for not doing likewise.

There is immense pressure, internally and externally, to return to the known state of suffering. And so you subtly sabotage your good fortune. You don’t set up boundaries in your new job, you pick fights with your partner, or you don’t pay close attention to your cash flow. Or maybe you miss opportunities and just can’t find the energy, time, and motivation to take chances.

What can you do about these Abundance Ceilings? The first thing to do is find a Subculture of Wellness. This is your tribe that welcomes progress and success, cheering you on without subtly dragging you back. This is your support network of conscious evolutionaries, striving together to dismantle the inner and outer barriers to thriving, co-creating a new way of being.

In the safety of such a sacred group, you can face your core, Archetypal Wounds of shame, abandonment, and betrayal — the three basic experiences of life that destroy our innocence. In healing these wounds, you will be Going Beyond The Pale, leaving the safety and companionship of the culture where the woundings are a way of life. This is what I call the Orphan leaving the safety of community with other orphans to travel a Pilgrimage of self-discovery. It’s best to take this journey with other Pilgrims, Guardians of the Heart in your wellness culture, or you may find yourself turning back to the orphanage for condolence.

The Archetypal Wounds are healed with Healing Fields that you create and reveal for yourself to counter the shame, abandonment, and betrayal. As you remember a wounding you will feel the heat and pain of the shame, abandonment, and betrayal involved. It will likely be easy to recognize these feelings, as we spend so much energy alternating between avoiding them and punishing ourselves with them.

Then you turn the situation around and instead look for how you honored yourself in these situations, took actions to stand up for yourself, and remained loyal and true to your needs. This can require some practice to get the hang of — it might help to have someone else tell you how they see you honoring yourself. Maybe the most challenging step is to then allow yourself to feel in your body the joy and self-love of honoring your own true needs.

Perhaps your family pressures you to have children, live closer, participate in their religious rituals, or otherwise change your lifestyle to fit the ideals of your cultural upbringing. You feel a sense of shame around them because they are upset with you for straying outside the pale in this matter. Rather than accept the shame, turn your thoughts instead to how you are honoring yourself by listening to your own inner knowing that this is not in your best interest at this time. Surround yourself with guardians of your heart, who stand with you in your decisions to remain authentic to your personal path.

Imagine the life you could create for yourself if you could set down all such burdens of shame, abandonment, and betrayal from your past! Who could you become surrounded instead by a supportive culture of wellbeing and honor? Take part in the joy of being the lift under each others’ wings as you all learn to fly far above the Abundance Ceilings of your past!