“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will”.
— James Stephens
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(This is a long one, but I think it’s also a good one. At least I like it. Make some time, grab a cuppa, and settle in. Hope it brings you something worthwhile. Enjoy!)
It fascinates me how some people can live through a hellish existence and still come out positive, joyful, appreciative of beauty and the good, and filled with caring and compassion. How do they do that? How do they not let themselves descend into bitterness and resentment that they could so understandably claim?
And then there are those who are relatively blessed and yet take every opportunity to complain and whine and moan about every single inconvenience and difficulty. In terms of a half-empty glass their vessels are almost totally dry.
I was teaching an Ascension course when one participant spoke about their serious cancer diagnosis and how it was “the best thing that had ever happened” to her. I still remember feeling the shock wave that went through the rest of the room, jaws dropping even, as they compared their whines and moans and found them minor compared with her end-of-life possibility.
I get it.
Our trials are incomparable. We can’t measure the weight of someone else’s struggles. We can’t. They are relative and personal to us, and us alone. Part of compassion is understanding that what seems like nothing to us might be the greatest load to someone else. But that does not make them unconquerable by the person who is suffering.
Suffering is all about your personal perception – and herein lies the key for anyone to change their relationship with their own personal struggles, to even free themselves totally from all burdens of suffering.
Here’s the thing:
There have been struggles, there are struggles, there will be struggles.
This, I think, is a fact. But correctly approached, challenges will show you how to be free of any and all burden.
Typically however, when faced with a personal monster, we engage in one of two choices – both of which make the struggle only stronger, the monster only scarier.
The first is to run and try and hide. Choose this option and you end up running for the rest of your life. The second is to turn and fight, in which case you will always be fighting.
Both of these forms of resistance only makes what you want gone more real, more solid and concrete. It gives it juice, it makes it static and unchanging. It becomes more not less. There’s no peace or freedom here.
What can you do?
If you want to stop struggling, the very best, and only real option is to be curious about the thing that you struggle with. Turn and face it; don't try and escape nor offer resistance; have no sword in hand.
This small act of being interested with zero resistance totally changes the dynamic.
By voluntarily approaching the dragon, it transforms. By being with what is there, even by welcoming it, you change it. Actually you don’t change it, you just change your relationship with it … but that is everything.
As the psychologist Jordan Peterson says,
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“It seems that the rule is that which you approach voluntarily shrinks as you approach it – and you grow – and if you run the reverse happens.”
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Voluntarily lifting your own cross means it stops being a burden; it transforms into something useful, and life enhancing – not the opposite as we so often think.
In what way?
Who is to say? This is your relationship with your struggles. My friend with the cancer diagnosis? Through letting go of her resistance to it, it became life affirming. It woke her up to the shortness and the beauty of life, to the futility of whining about anything – and that is a precious treasure for anyone to bring back from any dragon. But you can only find it if you look.
So.
I really hope, as the Irish say, that the road rises up to meet you. That you have a blessed and easy life, that the wind is at your back, that the difficulties you encounter are mild.
But maybe, just maybe, having an easy life will not teach you anything. We learn best through experience, and having everything go our way seems to be a very poor teacher.
Being curious means all your struggles and personal monsters can become meaningful. They can give us something, they can help us grow and truly become bigger than our fears, guilts, shame and judgements. And that might be well worth the price of giving something different a try.
What do you think?
Stay curious – and go well,
Arjuna