Part 3 of Series
What if the real danger isn’t what’s coming against you… but what you’ve quietly agreed with?
I’ve been sitting with that question more than usual lately, especially as I’ve been deep in the final manuscript phase of Everyday Demons. There’s something about putting language to these concepts, about bringing them out of the quiet spaces and into the light, that has stirred… let’s just call it an interesting pattern in my life.
I’ve noticed that every time I sit down to write, or even when I begin sharing pieces of this work publicly, things start to happen. Not metaphorically.
Tangibly.
Lights turning on without reason. Encounters with people that feel… off. Not in a dramatic, theatrical way, but in a way that is hard to explain if you’ve never experienced it. Eyes that feel unusually dark, almost hollow, yet intense. Energy that is heavy, pressing, intrusive. Moments that, if taken individually, could be brushed off. But when they stack, back to back, in direct alignment with the work I’m doing, it becomes harder to dismiss.
And I’ve tried to dismiss it.
I’ve told myself it’s nothing.
Fatigue.
Overthinking perhaps.
And then, almost immediately, something else will happen. Another encounter. Another disruption. Another moment that feels like a quiet interruption saying, “Pay attention.”
So, I have.
I’ve been paying more attention from a place of awareness, because if there is one thing I’ve learned, both in life and in writing this book, it’s that not everything is random or even coincidental. And not everything is yours.
When you begin to bring light into spaces that have operated in the dark, there is often a response. Not always loud. Not always obvious. But present. It doesn’t mean something is wrong. If anything, it often means something is being revealed.
And that brings me to what I want to talk about today.
The agreements you didn’t know you made.
Because this is where most people miss it.
We tend to think in terms of attack. Something external, something coming at us, something we have to defend against. But what I have seen, over and over again, is that the real foothold is not in the attack. It’s in the agreement.
We don’t just experience patterns.
We participate in them.
We don’t just hear thoughts.
We adopt them.
We don’t just feel emotions.
We identify with them.
And slowly, without realizing it, we begin to build a relationship with the very thing that is limiting us.
One of the lines I wrote in Everyday Demons speaks directly to this. We don’t just battle darkness, we build alliances with it. We repeat its language, we defend its presence, and eventually we mistake it for our own voice.
That’s just our everyday life, right?
“I’m just an anxious person.”
“I’ve always struggled with this.”
“This is just how I am.”
These statements feel harmless. Even honest. But what they often are is agreement. Agreement with a pattern that may have started outside of you, but has now been brought inside and given a name, a place, and a sense of permanence.
And once something feels permanent, we stop challenging it.
We stop questioning it.
We stop separating from it.
Shaman Durek speaks to this in Spirit Hacking when he says that the mind will create identities around pain in order to maintain familiarity, even if that familiarity is harmful. The body and mind will choose known discomfort over unknown freedom almost every time unless there is conscious interruption.
That’s the mechanism.
That’s the pattern that we have taken on. And patterns, left unchecked, become identity.
From a psychological standpoint, this is conditioning. Neural pathways. Repetition. From a spiritual standpoint, this is alignment. Agreement. Opening a door and leaving it open long enough that something begins to settle in.
We like to think we would never choose something that harms us.
But we do.
Not consciously.
Not intentionally.
But consistently.
We choose the familiar thought. The familiar reaction. The familiar belief. We revisit it. We reinforce it. We give it space.
And over time, it stops feeling like a choice and starts feeling like truth.
This is why awareness alone is not enough.
You can sit in therapy for years, unpacking your past, naming your patterns, understanding your triggers, and still find yourself in the same cycles. Not because therapy is ineffective, but because understanding without interruption does not equal transformation.
At some point, there has to be a break in agreement.
There has to be a moment where you say, “Just because I’ve experienced this does not mean I will continue to identify with it.”
There has to be a reclaiming of authorship over your own internal world.
Scripture speaks to this more directly than most realize. In 2 Corinthians 10:5 it says, “We take captive every thought to make it obedient.”
Every thought.
Not some.
Not the ones that feel good.
Every thought.
That implies discernment. It implies that not every thought is meant to be kept, entertained, or believed.
It implies that there is a separation between you and what passes through your mind. And that separation is where power lives. Because if every thought is yours, then you are at the mercy of your own mind. But if thoughts can be examined, challenged, and even rejected, then you are no longer passive. You are active.
You are choosing.
And this is where I circle back to the experiences I’ve been having while writing this book.
What is happening there?
I can’t say with absolute certainty, and I won’t pretend to.
But I can say this.
When you begin to dismantle patterns, when you begin to question long-held agreements, when you begin to bring awareness to things that have operated unnoticed, there is often resistance. Sometimes internal. Sometimes external. Sometimes both.
And resistance is not always a sign to stop. Sometimes it is a sign that you are getting close to something that matters. The question is not whether you will encounter resistance. The question is whether you will recognize it for what it is, or whether you will fold back into old agreements because they feel easier.
Because they always will.
Comfort is not an indicator of truth.
Familiarity is not an indicator of alignment.
And just because something has been with you for a long time does not mean it belongs to you.
This is the foundation.
This is the beginning of learning to separate what is yours from what is not, what is true from what is patterned, what is aligned from what has simply been repeated long enough to feel real.
Over the next few days, I’m going to go deeper into this. Into how these agreements are formed, how they are reinforced, and more importantly, how they are broken.
For now, just sit with this.
Where in your life have you stopped questioning something simply because it has always been there?
And what would happen if you did?
Be honest, what’s something in your life you’ve accepted as “just who you are”… that might actually be a pattern you’ve agreed with?
Drop it below. I’d love to hear what you’re seeing.
And if this opened something up for you, send it to someone who needs to see it too.
As always loving and praying for you and our world,
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
Love relationships? We promise to have a good one with your inbox.
Subcribe to get 3x weekly dating and relationship advice.
Did you know? We have 8 publications on Medium. Join us there!
***
–
Photo credit: Rene’ Schooler(Author)
