The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life. The pain that you create now is always some form of non-acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is.
— Eckhart Tolle
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I had an amazing Ascension course the weekend just been.
The group was ready and primed, keen and full of questions, and most importantly – they put the teaching into practice immediately.
What I love about Ascension is that it shows you how to use it – as you use it, it teaches you. I have some useful guidelines and suggestions, but they are really just to get someone to trust the process enough to stop resisting and surrender and be taught by the techniques. And that is excellent, because then I do myself out of a job. Which is the whole point of being a teacher or a guide, isn’t it? To fulfil your role so well you become unnecessary.
We had some very fruitful chats about life and a spiritual path. From one it became super obvious (again the penny drops – and long may it keep dropping!) that serenity and peace and acceptance and tolerance and understanding are all fruits of an inner path.
But so is clarity and courage and boldness and dedication and the ability to trust your inner wisdom and direct your life your way (without OTT control, obviously).
So many people come to Ascension and any kind of spiritual path just looking for the serenity and peace. But it’s a kind of sedation; a kind of seeking to ‘stick my head in the sand and hopefully all the difficulties that I don’t want to face will go away’.
A true spiritual path will give you serenity and acceptance, but it will also ask you for the courage to come to difficult realisations and make difficult decisions. We talked about how they’re only difficult really because we’re not prepared to face them head on; that they actually lose their power when you stop running and fighting and turn and face them, in awareness.
Decisions aren’t always easy or comfortable. There are right things that you just have to do, even when you don’t want to do them. But embrace the rightness of the decision and all the resistance fades away, talking ALL of the difficulty with it.
Do you get me?
Life isn’t difficult. We make it difficult by the amount of resistance we bring to what we have to do.
I’m not saying there are no challenges; not at all. That would be sticking my head in the sand to the reality of life.
As a small example, I wouldn’t particularly choose to change a dirty nappy or sick covered sheets at 3am, but it’s something that must be done. The sooner I stop whining and crack on and do it, the sooner it’s done. And we can choose to do all these things with a frown or a smile – it’s totally up to us. Right?
Life WILL throw the unexpected and the unwelcome at you. It will also change and it will ask you to change.
It’s a fact – and it’s never a case of ‘if’, always ‘when’. When you have the awareness to stop avoiding and realise that you have to play the cards you’ve been given to the best of your ability … why, then you can fly. It becomes a game; so much easier. You step into another kind of level of living. Life becomes that much more enjoyable and wrapped with an extra layer of fulfilment.
I truly think most people really begin their spiritual path when, to quote someone from the course, “you get tired of your own bullshit”.
If you haven’t already, may you very soon reach that point – one of not avoiding and making excuses, but turning to face life with full involvement.
There seems to be something out there, a higher power or guidance or wisdom — whatever you may call it, that wants all of us to have more and be more. And it will do whatever it takes to wake you up to the choices you make that keep you limited.
Isn’t that a great thing? The whole world is your teacher, your whole life will show you how to be more – we just have to stay awake to it.
That can seem brutal to the one who wants to stay asleep; but it’s actually a thing of extreme kindness and love, isn’t it? It’s a cause for celebration.
It might not be comfortable, but it’s easy when you give yourself to it; when you embrace the fact that life is constantly expanding and it wants you to come along too.
Growth and change. It’s the imperative of life, and resistance and avoidance aren't great strategies in dealing with it.
There you have it. Just one of the many things I got from the weekend, tapped out rapidly because it’s the school holidays and a picnic awaits. Apologies for grammar and all the rest!
Make the most of your moments. It’s the greatest thing you can do for yourself, and everyone.
Go well,
Arjuna