Spirituality and personal development suffers the same fate as trends such as fashion, perhaps more so. One of the current trends is that to be spiritual we must surrender to everything. “Say yes to the universe!” so it has been said. There is no specific direction within this, since all directions become valid when we say yes to everything. More to the point, is that when we say yes to everything we throw what we hold to have true purpose and value in the trash. This leads to confusion, passive aggressiveness and lack of purpose, meaning or any semblance of true power.

All these obstacles are destroyed when we say no.

One door opens and another one closes. When we close all the doors of lesser relevance and priority the true doors are given leave to open. The philosophy of saying yes to everything is ludicrous when we have purpose and meaning in our lives. Purpose and meaning is a direction, achieving these requires resistance and resistance is the holding back of specific elements that would limit us. In short resistance is saying no so that the aspect of life and experience that we would say yes to are allowed to manifest.

Personal and spiritual development is extremely logical. It is as solid as a rock and as down to earth as dirt. It lacks in clarity only when we try to force in-congruent elements, dogma and concepts onto it.

If we sincerely wish to achieve self-mastery we need to be honest first. We need to admit that we want this. Taking the spiritually politically correct route of saying “I’m fine with myself just the way I am,” doesn’t serve us well if it is not to the truth. We need to be honest and be done with it. So much better to say: “No I’m not fine with the way I am, and that’s why I’m going to move the universe to become fine.” This is the sort of motivation that achieves self-mastery. This is the sort of honesty that creates the inner strength and real personal development.

Once we choose what it is that we want then it’s just a matter of saying no to all that doesn’t help achieve this goal. We need to say “no”, and we need to learn to say “no” without shame or guilt.

The more we say “no”, the more in tune we get with what we want to say “yes” to. This “yes” is an indication and affirmation each and every time of what it is that we believe to be of value, meaning and purpose. It appears through the simple process of acknowledging the intentions of “yes” and “no.” As we create a life that is full of that which holds meaning there is no longer a problem with saying “no”, because we understand clearly why it is that deny these other experiences. We deny them because we have embraced our purpose.

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