Why do we so often resist the very joy, love, and abundance we long for most? In this solo episode, Jonathan explores the unconscious ways we self-sabotage our own light — and what it means to expand our capacity to fully receive and embody it.
Why do we so often resist the very things we say we want most?
In this solo episode, Jonathan explores the subtle and deeply human tendency to resist joy, love, abundance, and our own potential. Drawing from personal experience, transformational work, and the concept of the “upper limit problem,” this conversation dives into the unconscious ways we self-sabotage when life begins to feel too good.
Jonathan reflects on healing, gratitude, embodiment, emotional capacity, and what it truly means to expand our ability to hold light — not just pain.
This episode is an invitation to stop shrinking, stop dimming, and begin stepping more fully into the fullness of who you are.
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⏰ Timestamps
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Have you consistently struggled to be in these higher states of consciousness, like love or joy, like feelings of capability or feelings of worthiness?
If you're anything like me, being with these higher states of consciousness or allowing myself to be consistently in these higher states of consciousness has been a major part of my healing journey, of my growth journey, of my learning journey as a human being.
And I wanted to spend some time in this episode, this solo episode, talking about our capacity to be with light, to be with these higher states of consciousness. And on the flip side to it, the resistance that we may have to these higher states, how we can so often self-sabotage when things are going really well or we're feeling really good for long periods of time.
There's this author, Gay Hendricks, that talks about this upper limit threshold, that each of us has a sort of unconscious degree of comfort with [00:01:00] a certain level of, of light or, or higher emotions, and that any time we exceed that amount, we find a way to sabotage our way back down to the status quo.
And this rings true for me, and this rings true to my journey and how so often early on, I-- even when I was experiencing really higher states of consciousness for a moment or, an experience that I had that was just life-changing, I would somehow be brought back down to these sort of heavier, lower states at some point in time.
It was very difficult for me to sustain these higher states. Now, over time, as I began to heal and I was letting go of a lot of the belief systems that I was holding onto, as I began to heal a lot of the wounds, th-the ways that my body would hold pain and the way that I, I would experience, others and other [00:02:00] situations, as I started to let go of those things, I did experience more and more lightness in my being And so, you may have been exposed to Marianne Williamson's quote of, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us." And a big part of this quote resonates with me, and at the same time, it is-- it was also my darkness that I was fleeing early on. It was those feelings of unworthiness, of inadequacy, of there's something wrong with me, of I'm not lovable.
It was a-- it was a lot of that, in fact, for me. But then as those perceptions started to heal in many ways, as I was making my way through my own transformational journey, I began to see how either as a result of or just as its own thi-- I-- joy beca-- it was, was really difficult for me to experience for long periods of time.
It, it-- there even felt like-- it even felt like a resistance that I felt to [00:03:00] joy in some capacity. Like, I could only feel just a little bit. Or if I felt too much, oh, I gotta go back down, or I have to, you know... And, and it, it was a very embodied, experience of-- in terms of that resistance to joy. and I knew that this was an area that I needed to lean more into.
In the deep coaching work that we talk a lot about here, there's a sort of bonus practice. We talk about the nine deep coaching practices, but there's this sort of bonus practice, practice ten, which is expand your capacity to be with light. and this plays in juxtaposition to practice seven, which is expand your capacity to be with pain, both of which are so needed in our healing and transformational journeys, in our ability to serve others, in our ability also to optimize and maximize our own potential.
And so some of the things that have worked for me here that I wanna speak to is surely releasing a lot of the, knots, a lot of the [00:04:00] wounds that have accumulated in my own physic-physicality, in my own body. Because as the book by Kessel, I forget his name, the author, of The Body Keeps the Score, he speaks to, the traumas and the wounds that we have are carried within the very tissues of our body, in the way that we hold our face, in the way that we hold our body, in the way that, you know, uh, muscles contract and interact.
And so, , a big part of the healing journey is certainly releasing a lot of that, accumulated, baggage, accumulated knots that we have and letting that go. And as we do that, we feel certainly lighter in our body, lighter in our being. and there's also a psychological aspect to this of feeling truly worthy and capable of The things that we're seeking, of love, of success, of partnership, of family.
And because of s- a, a big part of this is [00:05:00] psychological, I've found for me personally that a gratitude practice goes a very long way. that has been one of the greatest catalysts to my ability to experience more light in my life. Having a consistent gratitude practice where I'm really aware of, and in deep gratitude for, all of the things that I have in my life, both big and small.
'Cause there's always something in our life that we can be grateful for. There's always something that, there's always light in our environment and within us. We have to go seeking it. And what happens is when we go seeking it, and we make a habit of seeking the light rather than noticing the darkness, so to speak, of just focusing on the negative of what's wrong, which is the default mode of most of our minds, when we make that a practice, it really starts to change the brain chemistry, our br- brain chemistry.
And our default begins, little by little, and again, this is from my own personal experience, from looking at [00:06:00] things in a negative light to looking at things in ... of looking at the abundance and the light all around us. And so I couldn't recommend that more as a practice to really be in deep gratitude for the things big and small.
But then at the same time, there is something around ... So that's psychological, but then also in our body, as I was mentioning before, part of it is letting go of the baggage or letting go of the trauma and the wounds. that, is a journey unto itself, but the other thing is actually being able to feel and expand into these higher states of consciousness, to really truly invite forth love.
And what does it look like to feel love in every cell of our body? What does it feel like to feel joy in every cell of our body? And can we sustain that longer and longer each time? So there is something to inviting this as an embodied [00:07:00] practice, inviting it into your meditation, inviting it into your day-to-day where you can sit with and feel and invite in and breathe in love and joy and gratitude and abundance.
Yeah.
There is so much there. Because if we can begin to do that, what starts to happen is we begin to transmit that to others. Others start to feel our light. they are attracted to our light. We begin to uplift We begin to expand, we begin to influence, positively influence the environments that we engage in.
But it does require-- It is a practice. It does require intention. It does require focus. It does require us to make it important, for [00:08:00] ourselves. This is where we get to choose what, we're experiencing, and not as a way to bypass, This doesn't mean we're bypassing any sort of pain or trauma that we have.
Each of these are different practices. expanding our capacity to be with pain and whatever we're experiencing inside, and that of another, but also at the same time expanding our capacity to be with light. So can we be with these varying experiences, both the pain that's naturally-- that's already inside of us?
Can we expand our capacity to be with it and not be in resistance to it? And can we also at the same time then expand beyond the resistances we have to experiencing more light, more joy, more love?
So this is what I wanna leave you with here is, first of all, the recogni-- or discovering, is there-- do I have resistance? Is there resistance [00:09:00] to, some aspect of light within me? Be it an emotion of love or joy or peace or, whatever that might be for you. Or is there a resistance to the potentiality within you?
Feeling, "Oh, I'm not wo-- I, I can't, I'm too much," you know, as a coach, as a healer, as a service professional, as a human being, as a parent, as a, you know, all the different roles that we have. Does it feel like too much to be in your fullness, in your wholeness? To be a true light in all those different areas, does it feel like too much and then something in you wants to hold back?
I know certain cultures have that, where if you go beyond what the culture and the environment around you expects of you, if they have, related to you in a certain way, now you're just this ball of light. there's a way that they try to bring you down as well. So recognizing the environments that you're in, the people that you're surrounded by, and how they influence your capacity to be with that light.[00:10:00]
And then asking yourself then, "If this is the case, w- how do I wanna be in relationship with this environment and this group of people, this person?"
Because expanding our capacity to be with light is so needed in this world. We need people that are boldly expanding into and stepping into all that is available, their full potentiality within the experience that is them. That is us, that is you, that is me.
And I notice that, you know, life feels really good right now for me, and even articulating that to you here, There is a subtle part of me that it feels like, my marriage is wonderful, my kids are wonderful, my-- I love my work, my friends are incredible.
There is so much that is going well. And, again, I'm sharing this because I can see and feel how, a part of me wants to sort of diminish that, in a sense. May-maybe diminish is the wrong word, but it's-- I, I [00:11:00] can't lead with that. I can't show too much of that because, I don't know, either it'll be taken away from me, or it's just too much, or it's too good.
and so recognizing how, for me, how that shows up, and making the decision of how I want to relate to that. Do I wanna give into that, or do I wanna just, insist? And again, this is not for any one of us to go out there and begin bragging, and look at all the good things I have, because that is BS as well.
That is a way of bypassing the sort of insecurities that we have and the feelings of unworthiness that we have within. But can we truly be in, in love and gratitude and acceptance of what we have, and notice how abundant and how blessed those things are? That's the invitation. It's the invitation for me, it's the invitation for you, it's for all of us.
Can we expand our capacity to be with light? So what are those practices for you that you can lean further into, that can help you and support you to be more of the light that [00:12:00] is you, to step more fully into your potential?
there is very little in life that is more important than that. and this is not a conditional state. This is an unconditional state, regardless of what's happening around us. Not forcing ourselves to be with light, but can we still infuse difficult situations with light?
Can we still access the light within any given situation? Because marinating in the traumas, in the darkness, marinating in that over and over again without really seeking to let it go and heal it, because it has now become an identity to us, is not gonna serve anybody. But giving it its proper space, its proper time, its proper attention, expanding our capacity to be with it, and then moving into the light as well, as an additional practice[00:13:00]
So I invite you, I compel you, I implore you to step more fully into your light. You deserve it, and the world deserves it
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to subscribe either in YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcasts. A new episode releases every two weeks. until next time, be well and continue expanding into your light.