Challenges Always Bring Gifts

Life can certainly be challenging. One day it is easy and the next day difficult. One day we know joy and the next day sorrow. If, as Pema Chodron says, “Enlightenment is relaxing into life,” (in other words showing up for it all), we need to change our relationship with the difficult for as long as we resist it, we can’t be present for life. I want to share with you three examples from my life that show the darkness I took on, and, as I learned how to give it the light of my accepting attention, revealed to me the exact opposite.

As I was growing up, I not only felt deep shame about myself but also revulsion. That is why I believed I didn’t deserve to live. But as I discovered how to relate to my shame rather than from it, giving it the accepting attention it needed to let go, I opened into the exact opposite of shame, a deep compassion for myself and others.

I also took on deep fear. I had a childhood you wouldn’t wish on anybody and one of the many layers of trauma I experienced was after my parents divorced, my mother decided that my father was trying to make her go insane. So from when I was age 10, she believed that my father had hired somebody to come into our house whenever we were not there and move something – not steal something, just move something!

My mother gave this person a name – Kilroy. I didn’t know that Kilroy was imaginary until my late 20s when my mother moved to Canada to get married and decided that my father had hired somebody in Canada to continue to watch her house. As I share the story with you, I want you to get the level of fear that permeated my home. I took on that fear hook line and sinker and over the years I became tighter, smaller, desperately trying to control this fear.

As I say this it brings tears. Can you imagine how afraid that little girl was? We literally breathed fear. And I tried to get rid of the scared one inside of me. I tried to eat her away. I tried to drink her away. I tried to fix her away and it was only when I learned how to be with her, to give her permission to be here that she began to let go and feel safe.

And what was the contrasting experience of that level of fear? A deep trust in the unfolding of life. It is the kind of trust that our mind would never agree to. But the more you unhook from the world of thought, using it for the wonderful tool it is, rather than being lost in it, the more you see that life is a highly intelligent process, giving you the exact set of experiences you need to come out of the dream of thought and make an immediate, intimate, and live connection with life exactly as it is.

In my childhood, I also lived most of the time in a bedroom with an older sister whose way of surviving the insanity of our family was to put me down and shut me up. I learned to never ask for anything, or even say anything for it would be twisted and used against me. So I became invisible. When people began to ask me to teach in my late 20s, I resisted for almost 11 years because the idea of speaking my truth to the world was absolutely daunting. Then I began to feel the difference between the experience of being contained and the experience of being real. And out of that has come all these books and blogs and radio shows.

So, what would your life look like if, rather than fighting with the challenges life has given you, you became curious about them? Yes, this is a radical shift in how we have been living but it is the doorway out of the world of struggle and back into the connection with life we long for. I leave you with one of my favorite poems that speaks directly to this. It is called The Unbroken by Rashani Rea

There is a brokenness

out of which comes the unbroken,

a shatteredness

out of which blooms the unshatterable.

There is a sorrow

beyond all grief which leads to joy

and a fragility

out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space

too vast for words

through which we pass with each loss,

out of whose darkness

we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound

whose serrated edges cut the heart

as we break open to the place inside

which is unbreakable and whole,

while learning to sing.

For all the children that are coming after us, are you willing to honor your challenges so they can bring you the joy of learning how to sing?

Offerings:

I explore this topic in more depth in my new radio show with the same namesake: The Indescribable Joy of Flowing with Life. If this topic resonates with you and you’d like to go deeper, I encourage you to listen to it on Thursday, March 7th or 14th at 5am or 5pm HERE. Or, after the 14th, it will be available on demand along with every other topic I’ve covered. Please feel free to explore the archive HERE.

If this topic resonated with you and you haven’t already, I invite you to register for: The Magic of Acceptance on March 12th at 5:30pm PDT. We will be talking more in-depth about acceptance, including the darker parts of life and ourselves. Here is the summary: We have all bought into the belief that if something is not the way we want it to be, we must fix it, ignore it, get rid of it, or rise above it, not realizing this is an endless game of struggle. Join Mary in exploring the art of acceptance and how to bring its magic into your life. The event will last about an hour. I hope to see you there! (Can’t make it? You can still participate. Click the link to learn how) Learn more and Register Here