My dreams have been quite interesting lately.
One of them changed my perspective about how I function on a mental and emotional level.
I was in a very large house, moving forward from one room to the next. There seemed to be no end. And for some reason, I kept expecting to find something bad in one of them. A malevolent present, or some kind of scary entity.
So, I did what I naturally felt inclined to do. I prepared my prayers and Reiki methods to fight whatever was waiting for me.
Then a voice echoed in my ears:
“There’s nothing there, is it?”
“Yes, it seems so,” I replied.
“That’s because there never was going to be anything… except your fears.”
I woke up baffled, as the lesson settled in.
Most of us move through life expecting something unpleasant around every corner.
Caution has its place, don’t get me wrong. But when every new room feels like a threat, it stops being awareness and becomes a trap.
Life is meant to be lived.
But living doesn’t come from fear.
It comes from openness.
That’s why self-sabotage is such a pregnant part of our lives. It’s a guarding system. A mechanism protecting us from the unknown.
Yet, sometimes it’s not there, or not in everyone. And you might wonder why. Is there something wrong with you?
The answer… quite simple.
Self-sabotage appears when you’re ready to evolve.
3 Root Causes For Self-Sabotage
I’ve wrestled with self-sabotage throughout the years.
It took me a long time to understand its root cause.
There are many reasons why it can occur in one’s life.
These 3 are the patterns I see most often:
1. I’m not built for spiritual growth
Society rewards fitting in.
It treats spiritual growth as a luxury, or worse, a threat to stability. That’s why, at the deepest level, most of us were conditioned to believe that human beings are designed for survival, not expansion.
Procrastination, distraction, rationalization. This is how our mind grounds us in what it’s familiar. It doesn’t let us venture into the unknown or step beyond social norms where “danger” resides.
The root chakra is where this pattern lives.
Therefore, working with this energy center helps rebuild the inner sense of safety that makes expansion feel possible, not threatening.
2. The unhealed shadow
We hide away from our shadow.
But aware shadow never disappears.
It follows us wherever we go. We can ignore it. Dismiss it. But it’s part of us just like any organ, feeling, or tissue.
Yet, we never give it permission to exist.
The fear. The grief. The anger. We bury them deep down as a sign of weakness. They are the enemies of our lives and we do our best to stay away from them.
But this is not healthy.
Not for us, nor for our shadow.
They don’t disappear if you simply ignore them. In fact, they often return much stronger and when you least expect. They come as a reaction to your desire for growth.
But something shifts when you approach it with compassion.
The shadow stops being an opponent and starts seeing it as a teacher for personal development. Mental balance and emotional stability follow naturally when you decide not to fight yourself anymore.
3. Fear of expansion
This one is subtle.
When you begin tapping into higher states of consciousness, you start losing your grip on who you used to be. As strange as it sounds, the old pain can feel more familiar than the healing.
A question rises quietly:
“Who am I if I no longer need to fix myself?”
The answer is simple, even if it doesn’t feel that way yet:
“You are everything you were always meant to be.“
The spiritual path reveals your true self but only if you accept this change to occur at a deeper level.
What Holds It All Together
Self-sabotage doesn’t mean your broken.
It appears when there’s a gap between who you believe you are and who you want to become. The mind then creates friction and ventures into inner contradictions.
It’s a sign something in you is ready to be seen.
Reiki is a wonderful tool you can use to address these patterns at their core. You get to work with your energy centers and become aware of your emotional body without forcing an outcome. Everything evolves in harmony and in the best way for you.
You are more than a physical body moving through rooms, bracing for what’s next. You are a spirit learning, healing, and growing into the next version of yourself.
Fear is just a natural reaction to progress.