Dismantling ‘The Universe’

“The Universe sent me a sign.”

“The Universe is teaching me something.”

In the more spiritual corners of the personal growth conversation, people looove referencing The Universe as this all-knowing, all-seeing, constantly planning, plotting, and scheming entity that has a specific, deterministic agenda for each individual.

Varying from person to person, the strength of belief in The Universe and its mystical machinations stretches from happy coincidence to full-blown cosmic orchestration.

I’m not above looking for the magic and the mythic in the mundane myself…

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But outsourcing your agency to ‘fate’ is where problems arise.

The path your life takes and what arises as you walk isn’t delivered to you by the whims of The Universe—whose literal definition is “everything that exists, encompassing all space, time, matter, and energy.”

(Shoutout to NASA for that quick hit of clarity.)

“The Universe” is everything you can sense, feel, measure, and detect.

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Your life blooms from what you sense, feel, measure, and detect.

What unfolds blooms from your internal state in response.

Your preferences and desires. 

Your decisions and actions. 

Your beliefs and values.

How you do (or don’t) integrate what happens to you. 

We know life isn’t fair. 

We know that accidents, mistakes, and abuse happen to us through no fault of our own. The quiet truth is that, like it or not, unfairness is our responsibility to navigate.

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How you show up in and meet the world is what shapes your life.

The energy you put out into the world, intentionally or not, is what attracts or repels people, opportunities, and those random chance moments that can feel like fate.

(I’m not talking about the law of attraction, but real psychological signalling.) 

Your internal state shapes how you perceive, respond, and choose.

Whether you stay, leave, reinforce, or break patterns.

You can shape your energetic field, if you’re willing to take the reins.

But only if you take responsibility for your inner world.

At every step, agency is an option.

Don’t be passive.

Take ownership.

Lead yourself.

If you don’t, you’ll simply be a passenger.

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The tricky bit is that your energetic field lives in your subconscious.

Which is why you might think, “This is just the way that I am.”

Or, “I’ve always been this way. I can’t change.”

Horseshit.

You are malleable. 

Identity isn’t permanent.

Behaviour isn’t set in stone. 

Personality isn’t locked in at birth.

Your subconscious wiring can be changed with intention.

That is real growth.

What most consider growth is actually just coping with their life experience.

Real, true, lasting growth is intentional. Chosen. Written to your design.

You have that power. This capacity. The ability.

Once again…

The choice is yours.

Always has been.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander