Life is a wonderful and often tough teacher. We walk through it experiencing our days, moments and life events often without the awareness that each opportunity is teaching us something profound about ourselves, others and our soul journey. This learning, should one embrace it, is one of the most beautiful paradoxes of our lives.
We all have a journey ahead of us which we are designed for and which our purpose is fulfilled through and yet this journey can seem so difficult to pursue because our egos are holding on tight to our fears, pain, sorrows and ultimately our souls.
Some lessons are so hard and painful that resistance is considered to be a mode of survival. But that's a lie we've been taught by those who surrendered into their fear and away from their pain. Survival in this day and age often equates to being numb and being removed from your life experiences as though you have no say on what or how you go about your journey.
We weren't born to be passive audiences of our own lives but rarely are we encouraged to be bold actors and actresses of our own stories. We wonder through our journeys avoiding sadness, pain, fear, disappointment and discomfort, with the hope that by doing so we will obtain happiness, bliss, joy and love. We've been conditioned to avoid pain because it almost always hurts too much, but without pain we can't learn how to be our own hero.
Here is where the difficult truth lies, you can't have one without the other. So the sooner you accept and realise this, the easier it will be for you to pick up the life lessons on your path and to grow and evolve further each day. I know on my journey I feared pain, so I resisted it by seeking temporary relief however I could, whether it was through avoidance, denial, or distraction, I never really sat with my pain. This approach seems normal because it's easy and it's effective, but it is not sustainable nor is it fulfilling in the long term.
When you decide that you want more, that you want the freedom to be your true and authentic self and that you want bliss and contentment that is when you will open your eyes to all the teachings around you. The teachings that are orchestrated in a way that is so subtle and so detailed that only you the intended student will be able to decipher each message and take away the gift it has to offer you.
On your path, remember that life is a stubborn teacher and it will continue to teach you the same lesson over and over again until you are able to shift and evolve into the version of you that you are meant to be at any given time and place. What you need to be aware of is that these repetitive lessons can often look and feel different to each other on the surface, but behind the diverse packaging that life wraps them up in they encompass the same fundamental lesson intended for you. Some days you may feel like you've learned your lesson and you've been able to understand the significance of it but you will be retested on this found confidence. Like all things, we need reminders and tougher challenges to truly test our growth and understanding. It's a journey, not a checklist, so don't try and tick off your life lessons like a curriculum.
I am currently going through retesting of an important life lesson which is about letting go; letting go of pain, of control, of what has been and could've been, of who I was and wanted to be, of making sense out of everything, of ideas and beliefs, of egotistical love and relationships and of expectations I had set for myself and for others. The irony in all this is that I can accept these things, I can consciously decide to let go but of course life continues to test me over and over again and each time I've come to understand a new meaning of the concept of letting go and each time I have been reminded of the frustration of being human and how complex we are by design.
If I am being honest with myself I've still got so much to learn on this topic and pretty much every other topic that I've come to learn, both spiritually and intellectually. To think that you've mastered anything is a naive concept in life; becoming a master in something is becoming complaisant and comfortable with yourself. You can have confidence, you can trust your judgement and you can have a good understanding of the probabilities you will encounter in your area of expertise; but your cup will never be too full for more learning, to think otherwise is your ego trying to make you feel better about itself.
This is probably the only thing I know as truth, that learning will never stop, that growth is eternal and that we only ever experience the most superficial growth possible, because our very beings are confined by human limitations. This is what keeps it interesting, the concept that we are so complex that we will never reach the full depth of our being; you can swim and swim, but the depth to our soul and heart is eternal, so be sure that there is no bottom and there is no end. This gives a sense of freedom, because it means it's not a race, there is no end goal, there is no pace nor is there any right or wrong way of going through life, it just means that it's about the journey not the destination.
Going back to my current lesson of letting go, I've recently come to realise that the whole concept of letting go is much deeper than a thought and a decision. That letting go needs practice, patience, faith and trust in the universe. That letting go is a hard task and a painful one because it means that you are surrendering your control to what life has planned for you. That you are accepting things as they are, despite how they make you feel, and that the truth is not always self-serving. Life is not always going to be easy and not everything will make sense or seem fair, but you can still let go of all your wants, expectations, fears, hopes and dreams and still experience bliss and inner joy.
Easier said than done that's for sure and this will probably be a life long lesson for me seeing that I can't let go easily. So much of my identity and who I am is based on overthinking, over caring, over attaching and over loving. Letting go of all this means letting go of myself or the version of myself I have come to know so far. So I stay still and observe the lessons life is teaching me, through events, through relationships, through choices and through every single experience I have. When I pay attention I see that I have various small and achievable opportunities to practice letting go, so I practice where I can. Then I have more difficult challenges for letting go, where I recognise that I am just not ready yet and I need to be ok about that. So I practice self-love and self-trust instead, because god knows that in itself is a retest of another lesson that I am trying to learn.
We all have our own journeys and each journey is special and unique in it's own way. We all have the same teacher, Miss. Life, who is brutally strict and unconditionally loving, who is wise and who is timely, and she has a purpose, to guide us towards love, joy, bliss and growth. She is always there giving us the tools and hints we need, the question lies on whether or not we are we paying enough attention or if are we too distracted by everything else to realise we've always had what we needed right in front of us.
In stillness you will meet her and in stillness you will meet yourself. Whenever you're ready pay attention to your journey, to your world and to your divine teacher. There you will see clearly what it is that you need right now to bring you back to balance and if you're not ready for the lessons you have to learn, don't run away from them; instead try and nurture and love yourself for where you are at and understand that in time you will be ready to tap into your inner strength and face your fears and pain.
Be kind to yourself, you are a living, breathing, miraculous being who is wondering through their journey as best they can; whatever you do, just be gentle with yourself.
Love Always,
Miss Dreamer
Souloom™ 