Why both denial AND truth are needed for growth.
Most pain eventually subsides when we allow ourselves to just be where we are.
This is not to say that we ought to lose all motivation for growth, or dismiss our potential, or stop working toward the actualization of our gifts.
In fact, the act of truly allowing ourselves to be where we are is the very thing that grants us access to what's next.
Healing cannot happen without reverence for the present moment in all its comprehensive nuance. A holistic excavation of Right Now in all her glory is the thing that affords us the capacity to bring all Right Now moments forward with us. It's what makes us more whole.
Growth happens in proportion to our ability to gather all parts of ourselves, look at them clearly with no judgment, and embrace them with all personal power intact, in honorable recognition of the necessity of each moment where we were living an incomplete expression of life.
AND.
The pain of denial is a *necessary* part of that. The greater the personal experience of denial, the greater the potential of eventually slingshotting toward a path of unrelenting pursuit of truth. It's almost like gathering steam for the leap toward transcendence. Sometimes, we need to experience extraordinary amounts of denial, numbness, addiction, illness, trauma, disillusionment, in order to really know, deep in our core, who we are in that space.
Why?
Because that's how compassion is built (so long as you can, from the present moment, muster the compassion to love the you that was once in denial, without attaching to the act of denial itself).
And compassion heals. It is the very nectar that affords us the capacity to be present through the resurfacing of the very wounds that require healing. It's what alchemizes a potentially re-traumatizing experience into post-traumatic growth, instead.
It's a fine line to dance indeed to discern between perpetuating suffering and fostering growth in the name of healing. Both can be equally painful, but they are by no means equal experiences.