Pain

Pain is how we really learn.

You can study something or work to remember things, but to truly transform, you must pass through pain. Pain is the portal.

There is the pain we choose, the sting we induce by selecting certain perceptions and behaviour. From this we sooner or later learn that we have the power to make of life what we want.

We have the freedom to experience and make of it what we will. We are creating in every moment and when the payoff of pain becomes too costly, we drop it. Pain helps us see.

There is the pain we do not choose, the agony that arises from being born, living and dying. This pain is an even bigger and more beautiful teacher.

It breaks down the constructs we cling to, shatters illusions and strips away our form. It is the labour of the mother and the arrival of the child, both of them ourselves. It is the deep joy of total living.

It is in pain that we surrender. It is from pain that we stop and reconsider. It is through pain that we sit with ourselves.

It is in acceptance that pain subsides. It is from growth that pain reveals its blessings. It is through transformation that pain releases us.

Look back and all the growth for which you are most humbly grateful has its roots in pain. It truly is the most gracious gift.

Pain is healing.

Resolution

Are you looking for ways to resolve life? Can you feel within yourself an inclination to wrap things up?

Are you uncomfortable with process and the energy of presence?

Are you trying to hold existence in your tight little grip and squeezing the life out of it for yourself?

I noticed this in myself this morning while working with a client and glancing briefly at the backdrop of some personal relationships at the moment.

I wanted to interpret them conclusively and reach some settlement. I could see, though, that this was just my urge.

The relationships are what they are and life is what it is. I cannot fathom it and I cannot control it, but I can live it.

I don’t want to fathom or control it and I do want to live it, so I let it be. People are who they are, where they are. The whole is what it is and I am who I am, here and now.

There is no resolution in that but there is great freedom. All I need to do is be, and everything will be as it should be. It’s simple.

The urge to resolve is a resistance to what is, an emphasis of the self over the whole. It is a function of mind, which does not like creative tension or surrender.

Mind likes control and the sense that it is not only the centre of the universe but the omnipotent container of everything! When you become aware of it, through seeing your urge to resolve, or any other way, you become conscious.

When you are conscious, you allow the mystery to sweep you with it.

Change

Have you ever considered that life is change, always in the direction of the evolutionary impulse of the universe?

Have you considered that all is absolutely good and that change is always for the even better?

Have you realised that your resistance to it is a misinterpretation of the nature of life, and the cause of your agony?

We get in the way of growth and realisation. Through unconsciousness, we self-sabotage.

We prefer where we are, which is usually relatively miserable, to what beckons mercilessly with the ever dawning now. We resist growth.

Hear that. We continually resist the inevitable, the essence of life. We resist who we are.

Like toddlers asserting the discovery of the word ‘no’, we stay small by trying to be big. We affirm our egos at the expense of our intelligence, happiness and self-actualisation.

Some go large and do it with wars, corporate towers and bold brands. Others are even more ‘successful’ by denying themselves all pleasures. The biggest resisters are passive aggressive.

Surrender to life. Let yourself grow. Allow your wonder to manifest.

Stop denying yourself everything you have ever dreamed of. That is the only real choice.

Resisting your magnificence is a false assertion, a stupid victory, another turn on the recurring cycle of realising that you can truly live without worry.

Ongoing change is the pinnacle of being, and it is happening.

Contentment

There is only one way you will be content in life, and that is to be yourself.

Goals and their achievement, money, status, respectability, power, and everything external will be a painful distraction, a detour.

You will go through it and then still be unfulfilled and eventually find the truth. Be yourself.

Accept and love who you are, as you are. Immediately contentment arises. The struggle with acceptance is one of the biggest yet simplest barriers in the human condition.

Awakened people throughout history have pushed themselves to the very limit to get past their falsities and finally surrendered, at which time enlightenment has descended upon them. Accept and love yourself.

Allow the seed within you, the life force that has you here in the first place, to germinate and bloom. Give it freedom and fertilise it to flourish. That is the other key.

First, be yourself as you are. Second, allow your being to fully be, for a living.

The blossoming and flowering of your being brings the only true contentment.

Sobriety

Life in all its wondrous intensity is best savoured sober.

It is best responded to in a clear headed state.

It is intoxicating enough without the cloudiness of indulgence getting in the way.

It is a matter of life and death every moment and should be addressed with the utmost presence.

I am a sentimental fool by inclination, which can make my living rather romantic. I can see life in rosy hues and seek to do so.

I catch myself injecting legend into every encounter, either positive or negative, with a hunger for the former and default propensity for the latter. It can make for a distorted and unnecessarily rocky ride, plus it is unrealistic.

There is nothing lacking in the real. Romanticising it arises from an egoic need to add personal significance to the story, when there is no need for personal significance or story.

Life is whole, complete and total. As you become conscious of the urge to enhance it, the fictitious and dramatic self subsides, which allows life to reveal its true nature.

Life is clean and crisp, not drugged and drowsy. It is vast and open, yet full.

You are in it but not of it, looking down like the sky while walking barefoot in the sand. When you are aware of the transcendent and the tactile at the same time, life is both overwhelmingly fulfilling and distantly detached. Life is beautifully balanced.

As you mature, your need to sedate or stimulate your experience should subside. To make the most of your living opportunity, grow in presence and let life be what it is.

Stay sober and relish in consciousness all that life has to offer.