White Collar Support Group Blog: The Architect of Their Life Alchemizes Adversity into Service, by Fellow Traveler Craig Stanland
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Craig Stanland is a member of our White Collar Support Group that meets on Zoom on Monday evenings.
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The Egyptian scarab is one of the most well-recognized symbols in Ancient Egypt.
It appears on amulets, jewelry, hieroglyphics, and in commemoration of the dead.
Modeled after the dung beetle, the scarab was connected with the sun god Khepri, who brought the sunrise over the horizon each day.
The scarab symbolized rebirth, regeneration, and protection in the afterlife.
The dung beetle collects small pieces of dung and then molds and shapes them into a sphere.
It rolls the ball around wherever it goes and will fight furiously to protect its creation.
When the time is right, the female beetle injects her eggs into the ball and buries the ball into the soil.
When the eggs hatch, they feed off the dung until they mature and emerge from the soil.
Life emerges from excrement.
Adversity is the inevitable, shit part of life.
The architect of his life doesn’t ignore his adversity; he doesn’t pretend it doesn’t exist or isn’t impacting him.
No, he allows himself to experience the pain associated with adversity.
If he wants to cry, he cries.
If he wants to scream, he screams.
He immerses himself in his experience fully and deeply.
He immerses himself fully and deeply for three reasons:
Acceptance is freedom.
He knows to ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist is to ignore a part of his life story; it’s to ignore a part of himself.
How will he ever be whole, complete, and adequate if he denies a piece of what makes him, him?
He knows if he doesn’t, the experience will forever define him.
It will be the main character in his life story, pushing and pulling him through the rest of his existence.
Adversity contains the seed of beauty.
He knows, the same way the scarab knows, within the ball of excrement that his adversity is, lay the seed of something new in his life.
In the nascent stages, he doesn’t know what the seed will grow into.
That uncertainty, if allowed, could stop him in his tracks.
Instead, he gets curious.
He uses his sense of inquiry like an archeologist uses a trowel to dig away the superfluous and get to the treasure.
He asks,
“What’s the lesson I can learn from this?”
He understands something incredible happens when he asks this question.
He transforms his adversity from something that happened to him into something that happened for him.
This re-frame opens the door to one of the most significant opportunities and gifts of our shared human experience.
Finding meaning in suffering.
The architect alchemizes the lessons learned on his journey through adversity.
He does this with laser focus with one goal in mind:
To help someone who feels right now how he once felt so they too can emerge from the dark and into the light.
LINKS:
Website: www.craigstanland.com
Blank Canvas: https://geni.us/LifeafterPrison
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