In the course of anyone’s lifetime, “bad” things are guaranteed to happen. Yet there is nothing wrong with these “bad” things—nor is there anything “right” about them either. They simply happen. They are neither good nor bad, right nor wrong, and human judgment, as always, is best left out of the equation. It is much more useful and accurate to see these events as challenges. Challenges, in all sizes, shapes and forms, are essential to an evolving life; they are essential to a spiritual life; they are essential to our journey here on earth, and they are not going away.
Nor are we “bad” because something challenging crosses our path. We do not need to blame ourselves. Challenges can sometimes be consequences, but they are not punishments hurled at us from above because we are bad. We need to do away with this myth, as well as the myth that “bad things should only happen to bad people”; or “life is wrong when bad things happen to good people”. Challenges cross everyone’s path. All challenges, regardless of their source, are opportunities for us to grow; they are opportunities for us to take our power back from what we are afraid of; opportunities for us to become powerful and authentic and find out who we really are.
Challenges enable us to become powerful because they automatically trigger our deepest issues and force us to face our fears. Notice that one of the first things you do when such a challenge occurs is to go into a story about what happened and even what the future will be like. Your mind creates a story loaded with your own personal, fear-based distortions that have always colored your world. Challenges magnify your story, and so give you the opportunity to recognize what your story is, see your distorted thinking, and free yourself from it. It is only by changing our perceptions, thinking, and behavior that we can move forward fearlessly in the direction of our dreams. It is our fear-based thinking that holds us back from living a life that we love, and challenges are what give us the opportunity to confront and change that thinking.
We can’t change or control what happens to us, or the challenges that we may encounter ahead. But we can pay attention to how we respond to them. Meeting challenges responsibly is hard work. Challenges show us what spiritual homework we still need to do; they show us where we are at spiritually. When a challenge hits us, we need to take our attention off why it happened, and focus on what now? We need to put our full attention on ourselves, what we are feeling and thinking, and how we are taking care of ourselves.
Once we are paying attention, we will begin to notice what our mind is up to. Are we resisting what has already happened? Are we slipping into our conditioning to blame or feel outrage, shame, guilt or self-pity? If so, then we have left the present moment and are caught in our story. Or, instead, are we able to feel the authentic human emotions of grief, anger, and confusion without making up a story? In other words, can we use this challenge to learn how to grieve without going into pity or self-pity? Can we feel our authentic anger at the human journey without going into outrage, self-righteousness, or blame? Can we accept there is much we will never know about the human journey, and feel our confusion without going into shame or guilt? We will need to remind ourselves again and again that we are not our thoughts. Challenges provide us with the opportunity to notice what our mind is trying to hook us with. Through our response to challenges, we are able to evolve our thinking, and thus evolve the way we respond to life and the way we use our spiritual energy. When we can observe what our mind is making up, we are then in a position to change it, and use our energy more responsibly.
The only things we can really control and change in this life are our own perceptions, thought patterns and behavior. The fact is, that’s enough. That’s our ticket into creating a life we love, and challenges can provide the ride that will take us there.
Must the Spiritual Path Be Difficult?
Many people get seduced into thinking that if they are walking a spiritual path, they will obtain some sort of divine protection from anything that is too difficult and too painful. The fact is, the spiritual path is difficult. No matter how you slice it, it comes up difficult.
It’s good to know this from the start. Contrary to several New Thought schools, the spiritual journey is not a skip down a rosy path collecting buckets of bliss along the way as we magically evolve. Evolution is hard work. Spirit guide Spotted Eagle says, “The harder you work, the harder it gets”. He also suggests that bliss is overrated, perhaps because in terms of evolutionary growth, we get more mileage from encountering the challenges of life.
The spiritual path is difficult because rather than protecting you, it will drive you right into the heart of your issues. This is your opportunity to evolve, and it requires you to face, not run from, your issues. During this process, be prepared to watch a part of yourself get torn to threads. It’s useful to understand that this is, in fact, the inauthentic part of you, the part comprised wholly of the beliefs/ideas/opinions/fantasies you have nurtured most of your life, but it will be painful none-the-less.
If you want, you can wait a few more lifetimes. But why wait? Here are some guide posts and tools to help you along the way.
For those of you who are at a difficult juncture, just a little farther up ahead (oh, all right—after you trudge over Mt. Everest) you will discover something interesting about “difficult”. It’s a perception. Something is difficult only if you perceive it as difficult. Any “obstacle” on the path is only an obstacle if you perceive it that way. It all depends on what thoughts your mind is feeding you. You cannot change the event, but you can change your perception of it. You can change how you are going to dance with it. Experimenting with your perception will alter your experience entirely. No event that the universe places in your path comes with a Do Not Remove tag that says “DIFFICULT–OBSTACLE”. It is only your mind that puts that label on it, and you can remove it anytime. The first tool then is to grant yourself the freedom to experiment and change your perception of what crosses your path.
By the time you’ve trudged over Mt. Everest, much of your story, your belief system, your ego, and the thoughts you identified with all your life have been torn to threads. It’s OK if they’re still hanging loosely all around you. Gather those torn threads and put them in your pocket, because even though the fabric of your old self can never be restored, it will probably be too painful to throw the threads away just yet. You will need to grieve each one, so take your time. Some pieces you can part with easily. Others, you’ll need to swim through what feels like an ocean of grief. There’s no way of short-cutting this process. Allow each thread its due. You must swim through your grief carefully, mindfully, lest you fall into self-pity or blame or guilt or shame or outrage during this process, and then have to begin all over again. Simply grieve what is lost, without going into a story. After you grieve cleanly, each thread will gently drift away. There is no hurry. The second tool then, is to grieve each belief, each agenda, each fantasy that your trudge over Mt. Everest has rendered useless and torn to threads.
When you are presented with your next mountain and look carefully at your perception of it, you will discover something else that will help you travel your path. Seeing it as “difficult” is not only a perception, it can also be clouded with judgment. Your judgment takes you out of the present moment and puts you inside a small box where you are blind. Trying to view the outer world through the narrow and distorted lens of your judgment will never allow you to clearly perceive what’s on your path and how you can best respond to it. Your judgment sits on top of a mountain of resistance. This mountain of resistance is of your own making, and it can loom larger than the ‘mountain’ the universe has put before you. When you resist what the universe has already created, you are taking on the universe, and that is a battle you will never win. It will tire your spirit and deplete your physical energy reserves.
What to do? Let go of your judgments born of your agenda, your time schedule, your beliefs, your fears, etc. Give up your resistance. The universe has put a mountain before you—there it stands. It has already happened, so there is no point in resisting it. It is what it is. Until you learn acceptance, the spiritual path will wear you out. It is not the path that must change; it is you that must change. The more you relinquish your resistance to it, the lighter the going gets. All mountains are opportunities to lighten your load. The third tool is to give up your resistance.
In the final analysis, is the spiritual path difficult? It depends on where you’re standing at any given moment, and from which mountain you are looking. Just make sure you’re not standing on a rock that pretends it is easy. Difficult is a good place to start. Then practice changing your perceptions, grieve what needs to be grieved, and lower your resistance. The path may not be easy, but you can learn to travel it with more ease.