Reactivity or expansion?
These days, there are many paths we can walk choose to walk on in our own timeline. Hundreds of years ago, people did not have much choice. They were all breadwinners, and they did not have a chance to be unemployed or to be reflecting on their path. These days, these times, we experience both. Either the hustling part of Life, being in the rat race, going for a career, going for a project, a dream home, a family, touring around the world. Or taking time to wander, to be in our own body, or for most of us, in our mind. We take on a trip in our mind. Why do we go for a mushroom or an Ayahuascan trip while we have our own minds to take us to heights of imagination? Just kidding here, of course. But back then, people did not have as many options as we do now, or at least, they did not have the chance to know about the many options we know now.
Today’s post is about reactivity and expansion.
We know that everything that is happening in our Life is experienced through the projector of our own mind. Whatever is thrown at us is not that we created it by ourselves only, it’s been a dance between us and The Universe, and we live and embody it through the lens of our own mind.
Let’s take the example of a friend who secured a very successful business deal and made a huge amount of money. When we see that, it triggers some of us. It feels to us that some people have it easy, while (and now our ego starts talking) we’re struggling. We react, feel jealous, envious, and feel miserable for ourselves. Reaction comes from ego, from survival. It’s a defense mechanism that internalizes what we project out there, and it usually shows us there is something here that must be worked on.
It’s all good to react. Let’s not blame ourselves for reacting, it’s a precious gift. When we react, we shrink ourselves. When we react to reacting, I’ll let you guess. The good news about it, is that we can experience a better timeline, by learning from our reactivity. I want every single person reading this article to try that in their Life, next time they react. To observe themselves in a loving and compassionate way, and to feel it fully. What does this reaction feel like in your body? Ask your mind to take a break for 5 min, and observe, feel the sensations. What does that feel like? Does that feel like tension, like headaches, like a heavy stomach? Does that feel like stress, anxiety, tightness?
It's a good sign. Let’s embrace those reactions. There are showing us the way out, the way how traumas talk to us.
On the other hand, the opposite to reactivity is expansion. When the same situation arises, and we feel fully in our power, we experience it with curiosity, with ease, as part of the natural flow of Life. We experience it as meant to happen, and as an opportunity to grow. Because we are at ease with ourselves, we do not judge, we are happy for the positive outcome that our friend has experienced, and we celebrate them as well as Life, fully present in the moment.
Expansion is the language of our soul, when we are grounded in our Truth and in our power. We are not looking, we are not wanting, we are just being. We naturally register and learn what we need to learn from a situation, and we carry on with our day not being attached to what happened to them or what did not happen to us. We are simply flowing with Life.
In this state, we make one with The Universe, and we are fully in receptive mode. All the blessings are drawn to us, we make the right choices for our soul, and it feels effortless. This, is our natural state of Being. This is the way we are supposed to live our Life. But because we cling onto stories, onto traumas, onto past experiences that we’ve made as defining us as humans beings, it feels impossible to be in that state. Bear in mind that it is absolutely normal to experience both reactivity and expansion in our Life. The more we work on ourselves, and the more we will be able to experience fewer moments of reactivity and numerous moments of expansion.
We cling onto our previous Life experiences, as if we had been labelled as a victim of this experience, and since, we have been wearing the costume of this role every single day. We don’t even take it out at night, we go to bed with it. In the morning, we get up, and the costume is there, intact and shiny as ever on our shoulders. We shower with it, we have breakfast with it, we go to work with it, we go to the gym with it. With the costume, come the glasses through which our mind focuses that keeps telling ourselves and others the story of our experience.
The stories that we create around it, are coming from our mind. Hang on a second, where do they come from again? From our inner world. So, they must be true, right? When we listen to our mind, thoughts show up. How do they show up? They are based on what we have experienced and been believing about ourselves. But what if we start rebelling, and question them? Wouldn’t it be wonderful? Wouldn’t it be scary? Oh, I’m starting to shake just reading this, some of you might say. Because it feels so much work to open the door to a new possibility, let it be a possibility of living without our favorite costume that we’ve been taking care of, washing, ironing, sewing back on, for a long time.
Our thoughts are either based on reactivity, or expansion. Which ones come to us? Which ones are the most prevalent in our head? Which ones feel safe? Because safety is so personal, an unsafe thought might be terrible for another person. But because the costume is on, we don’t have a choice, we must feel safe in that belief. Is is really true we don’t have a choice?
There is no judgement to have for ourselves, or for others, to think this way or to not like the costume we wear, or others wear. It fits us, there’s none like the other. Judging others means that we also judge ourselves in our own process of Life. Judging emphasizes the separation that we’ve all been entertaining as a collective consciousness from the beginnings of time.
As we are all creating our hero’s journey moment after moment, what are we deciding for ourselves, and for the collective? To wear the cape of reactivity, or expansion?
With love and gratitude,
Caroline
© Caroline Caanl 2025. All rights reserved.