Life is Difficult

Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
Scott Peck (opening line from The Road Less Travelled)

I read this book when it first came out (in the 80's?) and it became one of my favorites.  I was more into the psychology understanding of things then, than I was the spiritual.  Its teachings resonated in me at a time I needed them.  I wrote notes in, highlighted, folded back and mishandled the pages of that poor old copy I had until it looked beaten up. I have gotten and read other copies since then because those same teachings still hit home today.

Peck describes the premise of his entire book in the opening paragraph.  Those words also seem to be the premise for Eckhart Tolle's teachings as well.

Life is really only difficult if you believe it shouldn't be difficult.  Eckhart Tolle

Things happen in life.  As Tolle said this morning in a stream of videos I once again closed my eyes to listen through (so I cannot site the actual sources correctly...my bad...) life isn't going to leave us alone.  It will constantly challenge us in one way or another.  It doesn't matter how enlightened or unenlightened you find yourself.  Life is challenging.  Life is difficult.

Yet what makes it more difficult than it ever has to be is our resistance to it. The more we tell ourselves and the world that "This shouldn't be!  They shouldn't do that or be like that.  This shouldn't have happened! etc etc" ...the more stuck we become in the difficulty muck of our existence.  Fighting, pushing  and struggling against something, I hope we have learned by now, only makes the difficulty persist.

We will have actual challenges to deal with in our lives: we will lose things, we will fail, we will struggle, we will encounter people with difficult personalities, we or the people we love will get sick or may even die.  We will suffer.  That is a given.  We will have blessed and beautiful moments and we will have challenging moments.  That is what life does.

Resistance is the problem. Acceptance is the solution.(loosely paraphrased from an Eckhart Tolle Video Binge)

When unpleasant things happen to us or around us we perceive a "problem". The so called problem arises, however, not so much from the external event or crisis that lands on our lap but through our resistance to it and therefore the resistance to the moment we are experiencing that has "it' in it.

When we fight the reality of the event and the moment it is in...we take it from the lap of the present moment where it can be calmed and soothed...to the time centered frenzy of our minds.  We may build stories around it there...add it to a collection of grievances we already have stored in there.  We add other emotional energies to it using the past and future.   We repress it, suppress it, deny it, dismiss it, displace it, rationalize it etc etc using a host of unhealthy "defense" mechanisms.     We may dose it up good with worry or regret...fear or shame.  We do not accept it as being simply what it is. We do not accept life for being what it is.

We buildup our story and our resistance. We cling to the idea of "problem"  because it gives us something we think we want, we think we need.  We do not let it go.  

Yet if we could only accept the fact  that life is sometimes challenging, ...that truth would no longer matter.  We would allow the external events of our life to be what they are.  We would wrap them with presence and allow them to be calmed and soothed before letting them go...so we can get onto the next moment of our lives.

When are we ever going to learn, that all there is, is this moment regardless of what is happening to us and around us?  When are we going to learn to just let it be...now?

All is well.

                References/ Recommended Reads

Peck, Scott ( 2003) The Road Less Travelled.Touchtone

Tolle, Eckhart (2018) Video stream of "Eckhart Tolle 2018"...(Google)