Turn Suffering into Ease

You and I live with the kind of mind that is always trying to get to what it imagines is the good stuff and get rid of the so-called bad. If you watch carefully, you will see your mind is happy when it gets what it wants and unhappy when it gets what it doesn’t want.

But this doesn’t bring us the lasting peace we long for. The war in the Middle East shows us clearly that trying to get rid of what you don’t like not only doesn’t work but it empowers what you’re trying to stop. And New Year’s resolutions reveal that trying to fix our lives is also ineffective. Statistically, only 9% of New Year’s resolutions are successful.

Why does this old way of living life not work? Because life will always open and close, get easy and difficult, joyful and sorrowful. The tides will continue to come in and out, the seasons will change, and day will continually turn into night. So, a good percentage of our life will be filled with challenges but when we resist the difficult, it keeps us caught in struggle.

How can we stop resisting the difficult, being present for it instead, so we can gather the gifts that always come with the challenges of life?

I want to share with you 24 hours in my life where the challenges kept on coming and for most of the time, I was present. On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, walking down the street to clean my storm drain, I stepped off the curb wrong and fell hard, twisting my ankle, and landing on my knee. I hobbled into the house and put some ice on my ankle and knee but became aware around dinner time that this was more serious than I thought. I called Urgent Care, and they were completely booked but suggested I come in for the first appointment on Sunday morning. Thankfully I had crutches in the back of my closet so I could move around.

After a very painful and disturbed sleep, I awoke to intense cramping and barely made it to the toilet before all the food I’d eaten the day before moved right on through me. When I was fixing my breakfast another wave of cramping came and as I went into the bathroom, I discovered that the toilet was clogged! At this point, my sense of humor came on board, so I was laughing as I was leaning on one crutch, trying to unplug the toilet, and asking my bowels to hold on!

Luckily, I made it in time. But life was not done with me:

• I tried to get an Uber, but no Uber drivers were awake at 7:30 AM on Sunday.
• I set my house alarm incorrectly and the alarm company called me after I had gotten into my car. So I had to get out, get the crutches out, go back in the house, and reset the alarm. Back in the car I go, and the alarm company calls again and again I get my crutches out and go back in and reset the alarm.
• I get to the urgent care and even though I’m the first one there, I wait for half an hour.
• In the x-ray, they put my foot in a painful position and after what seemed like forever, they said the machine wasn’t working and I had to go to the next town to get the x-ray.
• I again had to wait because the first urgent care hadn’t released me to get the x-ray.
• When I came back home, as I was unlocking the door, I peed all over myself. I learned later that a traumatic fall can put your bladder nerves offline for a while.

For most of that day, I kept my sense of humor and equanimity and had wonderful connections with the staff at both Urgent Cares. How could I possibly do that?

The more you discover how to use your mind for the wonderful tool it is rather than being lost in it, you see the Intelligence at the heart of life is with you every step of the way. And the wisdom of the yin/yang symbol dawns on you, where dark and light are nestled together in partnership, with a point of light in the dark. In other words, your challenges are tailor-made to help you unhook from struggling with life so you can be present for it. Life doesn’t happen to you. It happens for you.

The deeper I go in being present for life, the more I see that everything is my teacher, and my job is to listen. But I can’t listen if I am caught in reaction. As Eckardt Tolle says, “Say yes to whatever you are experiencing. What could be more insane than to resist what already is.”

But most of us don’t listen to what life offers. Instead, we resist what we don’t like and try to grab onto what we do. This causes us to be caught in the suffering of struggle, experiencing life through the lens of victimhood. But this day shows that even with many challenges, you can discover how to respond rather than react, leaving you spacious and present, learning from what is happening.

Over and over again, as I would start to tighten and resist, I would remember I had the choice to react or respond. And over and over again I would come back to the simple but profound joy of being open to life, even during difficult times.

There was only one time that whole day and I started to react, and we don’t have enough space in this blog to explore it. So I invite you to listen to my radio show – The Suffering of Reaction. The Joy of Response.  You can listen to it at any time by clicking the above link. I explore the day in more depth but also share the true grace that came when I met my edge.

Our world is lost in reaction, creating suffering that is so horrific it makes your heart ache. But as you cultivate the ability to respond rather than react, you will be a part of the healing that is coming from this time. Start with little reactions first and slowly work your way into the places where you react blindly. I assure you, just like it took a couple of years for you to learn how to walk, you can learn to be present for life no matter what is happening.

The next Free Live Call even is coming up soon! Are You Ready to Move Beyond Struggle? We will look at how to unhook from our reactions in life so we can respond instead, using our compulsions as our teachers. We will meet virtually on January 16th at 5:30pm PST. Even if you can’t make that time, you can still participate. Learn more or Register HERE.

Being Healed by Our Compulsions online self-paced course, is a good place to discover a new relationship with your compulsions, allowing them to show you how to move beyond not only your compulsion but also beyond struggling with life.  And because our world is so enmeshed in struggle right now I want to offer you the course for a sliding scale from its regular price of $347 to $50. And if the $50 is beyond you, let us know. This will be available through January 31st. CLICK HERE to learn more about the course. Please email Aja at aja@maryomalley.com for your coupon code. CLICK HERE to see a masterclass video to get a sense of the course.