The Thorns of Toleration

Where are Tolerations Draining Your Life Force?

If you read these little love notes from me on the regular, you know that I’m deep in the creation of HARVEST and Creating a Powerful Pivot Point.

(it’s all part of the transformative work that’s happening in The Seasons of Success)

I am deeply humbled by this material and I feel privileged that it has chosen to come through… ME. Lil ol’ me. Wow.

And I’m beyond thrilled that I get to share it with YOU. Because YOU are so important to me. It means a lot to me that you choose to be here with me each week. It really does.

So, I’m now deep into the creation of The Seasons of Success. 

Everything I’ve learned and all the systems I’ve created for decoding HOW the Universe works the way that it does is making its way into these 5 courses.

And each one is designed to stand alone but they’re also a SYSTEM that is meant to be used together to move from the Line of Fate to the Line of Destiny.

Tolerations Will Be a Thorn in Your Side

There is A LOT going on in each course… but there’s also some overlap. And one of the things that I find so interesting is that there is a particular exercise that has made it into Pivot Point and HARVEST and I already know it’s going to show up in at least 2 of the other 3 courses.

I didn’t know that it was going to happen and I didn’t know that it was that important… but there it is. Being important.

I’m going to tell you what it is… but, first, I woke up this morning thinking about a couple of threads that I need to pull into this weave…

Steward Your Gifts and Talents

Yesterday, I was reading Numbers and they’re at the part where, after wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, they’re making preparations to enter the Promised Land and take hold of God’s promises for them. Before they go, God issues this warning:

“But if you fail to drive out the people who live in the land, those who remain will be like splinters in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will harass you in the land where you live.” (Numbers 33:55 NLT)

Now, there are a lot of horrors in the Bible. And the complete annihilation of various people groups is one of the most horrific ones… and, sadly, an accurate depiction of human behaviour.

But, there are a lot of people who believe that these stories are more metaphor than history and, for this morning, I just need to pull the metaphor apart a bit for you…

From the Bible to the Avengers

… and mention one of the very first programs that I ever created. It was called the Problem Elimination Bootcamp and it was my first time explaining the PARTY Goal Getting System™and still one of my very favourite programs.

… and I was thinking about that last scene in Avengers: Infinity War when 

(OOOOH! SPOILERS!!!)

… when Thor puts Stormbreaker through Thanos’ chest but because he took the time to torment the one he was sure he had beaten instead of just going for the kill to end the story, Thanos was able to do ‘the snap’ that erased half of sentient life in the galaxy (cosmos?). It was bad. 

Toleration Will Steal Away Your Destiny

And I know that these are pretty darn grim examples and they could be a very large conversation about the morals and ethics of annihilation… and one I’m totally willing to have but that’s not why we’re here this morning…

We’re here because there is a theme that runs through each of these snippets (a warp to the woof, if you will) and that theme is the idea of elimination.

Let’s go back to the Bible verse. It says (and I liberally paraphrase): get rid of them or they will be splinters in your eyes and thorns in your sides.

In other words, if you don’t eliminate them completely they will become a torment for you. And, of course, they did.

Israel did their gruesome best to eliminate the nations they were moving into but they did not complete their task. Instead, they started mixing and mingling with those who remained. Then, they started worshipping other gods. They kept wandering down that easy path away from Adonai and He got royally pissed.

Bad things then happened. Really bad things. Like, cast out of their land and made slaves in another, kind of bad things. Almost complete eradication.

You’ve Got to Eliminate Instead of Tolerate

And that’s exactly what I’ve discovered happens when we don’t eliminate our tolerations and irritations. It isn’t enough to get them to ‘tolerable‘ levels – we have to go all the way to elimination.

We have to dig down and root out the sources of our tolerations and irritations and throw them on the burn pile or they’ll just come back in troubling and unexpected places to torment and enslave us.

They’ll drain our life force and separate us from the Divine.

They’ll consume our precious mental space and keep us firmly bound to the Line of Fate. That’s why creating a thorough inventory of everything that you’re tolerating is a key part of these courses.

We have to bring back into awareness what we’ve been tolerating and then eliminate it completely or we will never be free of it.

And that’s what that exercise is: listing ALL of what you’re tolerating and ALL of what’s irritating you. Yup. It can be a pretty long list.

But you need to know because every single thing you’re tolerating is draining a little bit more of your precious life force.

That precious life force that is meant to be used to get you to your Destiny. When it’s squandered on tolerations and irritations it keeps you bound to the Line of Fate as sure as iron shackles.

Q: What are you ready to be free of – to no longer tolerate – as you make the leap from Fate to Destiny?

Let me know.

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Vanessa Long

Vanessa Long is creator of the Seasons of Success and author of Discovering Your Passionate Purpose. Focused on providing straight-forward, no b.s. solutions, strategies, and support to move you from where you are to where you yearn to be. It’s time to tap into your purpose and build a life that expresses all of who you were designed to be.