Week 27: Growth
> "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves." — Carl Jung, *Psychological Types*
“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” — Carl Jung, Psychological Types
Reflection
Growth is not linear. This is the first thing the developmental traditions teach, and the first thing the modern mind forgets. We imagine growth as a steady upward trajectory — yesterday we were less, today we are more, tomorrow we will be further along. But the actual experience of growth is closer to a spiral: the same themes returning at different altitudes, the same lessons appearing in new costumes, the same fundamental work deepening rather than completing.
In the alchemical tradition, growth — the opus — proceeds through cycles of dissolution and reconstitution. You do not simply add new qualities to the existing self. The existing self must be broken down so that something more integrated can form. This is why growth often feels like loss before it feels like gain. The caterpillar does not gradually grow wings. It dissolves entirely inside the chrysalis. The butterfly is not an improved caterpillar. It is something new.
In the practice of sacred displacement, growth operates on multiple levels simultaneously. There is the growth of the individual — each partner developing greater self-knowledge, greater emotional capacity, greater ability to hold complexity. There is the growth of the dyad — the marriage itself becoming a more sophisticated, more resilient, more spacious container. And there is the growth of the practice — the evolution of agreements, rituals, and understandings as the couple’s experience deepens.
Not all of this growth will be comfortable. Some of it will require you to outgrow beliefs you held dear. Some of it will require your partner to become someone you did not anticipate. The covenant of sacred displacement is not a commitment to stay the same together. It is a commitment to grow together — which means accepting that the person you married will change, and so will you, and the practice is to keep choosing each other as you become.
Practice
This week, map your growth. Take a piece of paper and draw a timeline from the beginning of your practice to now. Mark the significant moments — the breakthroughs, the breakdowns, the quiet shifts that only became visible in retrospect. Notice the spiral: where did the same theme return at a different depth? Where did you revisit a lesson you thought you had already learned?
Share your timeline with your partner and create a combined version — a shared map of your growth as a couple. Where do your individual growth arcs intersect? Where did one partner’s growth challenge the other? Where did growth in one create space for growth in the other?
Post this map where you can see it. Let it remind you, on the difficult days, how far you have already come.
Closing
May your growth be patient and your becoming be brave, and may you trust the spiral even when it returns you to familiar ground.
This is Week 27 of the Sacred Displacement Devotional Calendar.