22 Oct Sometimes Life Hurts – October 23 2018
Posted at 19:40h
in Daily Thoughts
It is difficult to find happiness in oneself but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Being a meditator, living a ‘spiritual’ life, does not give us freedom from the pain of life. This is not about making a mood of ‘everything’s fine,’ when everything isn’t fine. Sometimes life hurts. People die, relationships change, end, grow distant, disappear. Feelings are hurt and hearts are broken. Being a meditator does not mean we can avoid these pains. In fact, because we try as much as possible to be present to life, the pain itself might at first be even more poignant for a meditator than for her sister who does not. But what the meditator will have is:
1) the capacity to choose not to take pain and turn it into suffering by asking ‘why me’ or ‘why him’ or ‘what does it all mean’. Being a meditator means we do not need to fall into the endless speculation that leads only to suffering. The pain arrives, the pain moves through, the pain moves on. Next…
2) the sure and certain knowledge that all change is progressive change, that regardless of how deeply something may hurt at the moment, it is happening for a reason, for all reasons. All things happen for all reasons. If something is falling apart, it is doing so to make room for the next something–we cannot get a new wardrobe until we clean out our closet. Nature is no different. Room must be made for the new. And, the next something by definition will be an evolution of the current something. This is all nature knows how to do: to evolve. This is all we, as nature, will do: evolve. And finally;
3) the knowledge that happiness is a choice, that it is available within, that happiness is what we are in our least excited state, in the truth of our Being; and that nothing outside ourself can add to nor take away from the happiness that we are. When we have sorrow in our life, it is an indication, and perhaps a challenge, for us to find a definition of happiness that is wide enough to include even this–whatever ‘this’ happens to be.
Today I will allow myself to feel my feelings fully, without letting them determine my state of being. I am a happy, joyous and free expression of nature, regardless of this ache, pain or sorrow that is telling me I shouldn’t be.
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Playing in Leaves, Studio City, CA
All original material copyright © 2018 Jeff Kober |