We call it life
Call it a whirlpool, call if a vortex, call it a math test, a divorce, or student-loan debt…. call it what you want, but it is complicated, complex and feels completely uncontrolable. That's life. And call it whatever you want, but there are times when it isn't fun, when you feel unsure, backed into a corner and stuck a downward spiral.
Often, we panic, and in an act of survival, we claw and grab at whatever we can can to keep our head up. Instead we pull all sorts of stuff down on top of ourself. This is when we realize we really are trapped and what we hoped would break the fall weighs us down, holds us under.
In situations like these, we realize that our energy for fighting these fights is limited. Our will power is eventually broken and we are forced to give up, and we have to ask, “Is this Life? Is this what it means to live?”
“Yes,” sadly, is the correct answer. The human condition is one of limitations. It is said that our true nature is perfect and free. But this isn’t how we experience life. Our experience is filtered through perspectives, patterns and conditioned thinking that make us believe that we are anything but free, anything but perfect.
At some point, if we are honest, we are forced to recognize that life is hard. Often what’s meaningful gets lost in what’s difficult aspects of life. We also recognize that this fact only makes things more difficult, we are forced into acceptance. However, we also recognized that life is also beautiful. Life is also meaningful. If we have to recognize the difficult, we also have to accept the meaningful and beautiful aspects as well. The question is, “How do I get more of the good stuff and less of the bad?”
The yoga traditions tells us that the key to happiness is to clarify the way that we perceive the world. To be truly happy, then, is to live beyond desire and illusion. No problem. (Yeah right!) Buddha taught that the root of all suffering is, interestingly, the desire to be free from suffering.
The correct response to this line of thinking is, “Well, that’s fine for the Buddha, but for me…” It is easy to recognize that our problem is one of concepts and perception, but to truly realize the truth of this is to confront the nature of the mind, to confront our own perspective on reality.
While this is important to recognized, we really haven't done much but take an inventory of the content of the mind. Nothing has changed. We aren't necessarily any closer to discovering the meaning of life or the secret to happiness.
Yet, we know where we are at, we've zeroed in on our location. It is like finding the "you are here" arrow on a map at the mall. It's essential to know where we are at in order to find our way.
Now what?
