The Myth of the Linear Path
Jan 02, 2026
I met my best friend in my yoga teacher training program when I was 17. We clicked immediately because she asked the question, “sooo what’s the difference between enlightenment and depression?” It’s something we still joke about to this day.
One of our favorite pastimes was to walk around aimlessly and ponder life’s biggest questions. We realized one day that the things we were talking about, we had talked about before. The dilemmas we were facing, we had faced before. And then it hit us: life is a spiral. We revisit the same patterns again and again, but with new eyes each time.
We started a private blog called “It’s a spiral” that served as a small space where we could ask the big questions. We thought if we could go back and reflect on places we’d been before, then somehow we’d crack some code and break free of the spiral.
Spoiler: you can’t.
And that’s the most liberating truth of all.
There’s a pervasive and dangerous myth in the world of personal growth. It’s the idea that the path of healing is a straight line. We believe we’re supposed to move steadily upward, from “unhealed” to “healed,” from “broken” to “fixed.” We imagine our growth like climbing a ladder, with each rung representing a new level of achievement, a new insight gained, a new pattern overcome—never to be revisited.
And then, inevitably, we stumble.
We fall back into an old, familiar pattern. We react in a way we thought we had moved past. We feel the familiar sting of a core wound we thought we had healed. And in that moment, our inner critic, which has been waiting patiently in the wings, rises up with a terrible vengeance.
“You failed.” “All that work was for nothing.” “You’re right back where you started.”
This is a lie. And it is the single biggest reason people give up on themselves.
The Path is Not a Line; It is a Spiral
The truth, as my friend and I discovered on those long walks, is that the path of human transformation is not a line; it is a spiral. We are destined to circle back to our core themes, our deepest wounds, and our most ingrained challenges again and again and again throughout our lives.
This is where we must remember one of the core principles of this work: Time is not linear.
I have clients say over and over, “it was so long ago, there’s no way that could still impact me.” But time is not linear. And yes, it can.
The past is not a separate country that we have left behind. It lives in our present—in our nervous systems, in our triggers, in the echoes of old stories that play out in our current relationships. The younger parts of us who felt unsafe, unseen, or unloved are still here, and they will continue to make their presence known.
When you find yourself falling back into an old habit—the people-pleasing, the harsh self-criticism, the anxious striving—it is not a sign that you have failed or that your previous work was in vain. It is a sign that you have graduated to the next level of healing that pattern.
It is an invitation from life to heal that wound at a deeper, more subtle, and more integrated level. You are not back at square one. You are simply meeting the old, familiar pattern with a new level of awareness, a new set of tools, and a new capacity for compassion.
The pattern is not the problem; the pattern is the path. The challenge is the curriculum. The wound is the gateway.
Life as a Wise and Loving Teacher
When you truly and deeply embrace the idea that there are no mistakes, your entire relationship with life begins to fundamentally change. You stop seeing life as a series of random, arbitrary, and often cruel events. You stop seeing yourself as a victim of circumstance. Instead, you start to see life as a wise, benevolent, and infinitely intelligent teacher that is constantly, and without exception, conspiring for your growth and your awakening.
You begin to understand that every single thing that happens to you is a lesson. The difficult boss is a master class in setting boundaries. The painful breakup is a Ph.D. program in self-love and resilience. The financial struggle is a deep spiritual teaching on trust and receiving. The unexpected illness is a profound lesson in surrender and honoring the body.
Life is not happening to you; it is happening for you.
This does not mean that you will not feel pain, or grief, or anger, or disappointment. This is not a spiritual bypass. The pain is real, and it must be honored. What it means is that you stop adding the second layer of suffering to your experience.
In that same yoga teacher training, we learned about the difference between pain and suffering—a concept we explore in Course 2, often called “the two arrows.” The first arrow is the pain of the situation itself. The second arrow is the one we shoot into ourselves: the self-blame, the catastrophizing, the story we tell about the pain.
I have more examples than I can count of times I brought on my own suffering. Last summer, my beloved cat, Hera, got out. The pain of that was immediate and immense—the gut-wrenching fear, the grief, the not-knowing. That was the first arrow. It was unavoidable.
But then came the second arrows, the ones I shot into myself. “It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have left that window open.” “She must be so scared and alone.” “What if she’s hurt?” “I’m a terrible pet owner.” I spun out into a vortex of self-blame and imagined horrors, each thought a new layer of suffering piled on top of the already immense pain. The pain was about her; the suffering was about me.
Learning to distinguish between the two is the work of a lifetime. It’s about learning to honor the clean pain of a situation without adding the dirty pain of our own self-judgment.
The first layer of suffering is the unavoidable pain of life itself. The second, and often much greater, layer of suffering is the story we tell ourselves about the pain: the story that it “shouldn’t be happening,” that it’s a sign of our failure, that it’s a punishment, that it means we are off the path.
When we let go of that second layer of resistance and judgment, we are free to meet the raw reality of our lives with a sense of curiosity, reverence, and trust. We learn to ask, not “Why is this happening to me?” but “What is this here to teach me?”
Embracing the Spiral
So, the next time you find yourself in familiar, painful territory, I invite you to try a different approach. Instead of berating yourself for being “back here again,” take a deep breath. Place a hand on your heart, and get curious.
“Hello, old friend. What are you here to teach me this time?” “What am I ready to see now that I couldn’t see before?” “How can I meet you with love instead of with judgment?”
This is the practice. This is the grace of the spiral. It is the deep, cellular knowing that you can’t get it wrong. You are not failing. You are just in class. And your curriculum is perfectly designed for you.
Give yourself some grace. You are exactly where you need to be.
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