Lessons, always lessons

It's a choice to approach every experience as an opportunity to learn. I am not sure what else one can do in terms of trying to find meaning and purpose in the often challenging and unpredictable aspects of life. 

I am not sure I always learn something but I do try. Although I remember reading somewhere once that if you are trying you are not doing. I think that is a bit glib. We use the word try when we recognise we have not mastered a skill.... perhaps I should say I practise as opposed to I try.

But trying or practising, it doesn't take away the painful feelings and no doubt there is good reason for that but it does often make the unbearable, bearable and/or manageable.  I can see control at work in the word manageable but sometimes we need to exercise control, particularly over traumatic experiences, in order to gather enough calm reason to make our way through it.

So much pain is sourced in demand as opposed to desire. It is one thing to want something, to desire something and another to demand it so that when we do not get what we desire we are disappointed and often angry. We feel cheated. That is demand, not desire. Desire is natural and a healthy part of our human condition... demand is another thing altogether.

It's really about putting the thought out there and then letting go and trusting that while we may not always get what we want, we will get what we need.  Perhaps it simply does come down to a need to control life for desire has no need to demand if trust is present.

Ah trust! One of the most difficult things to be, skills to learn, habits to make. Perhaps that is because so much of who and what we are is programmed at an early age where any lack of trust or absence of security programmes us to fear that which we believe we cannot control. 

And yet it is all illusion.... the illusion of certainty .... comfortable as it may be is still an illusion. How easy it can be to know what we should be or even could be and how hard it is to be it or become it. Perhaps that is why so much of life is about lessons - we must practise, practise, practise to make manifest the best that we may be and the lessons will continue to come until we do.

And perhaps pain is a crucial part of being human. It is clear that this world is about connectedness and the greatest power to connect is Love; that is when we connect with ourselves, with others and with cosmic energy. But pain and suffering also open us and allow greater connection at physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual levels and on that count they are a gift. 

If we accepted pain and suffering as a part of being human would it hurt less? Probably. If we worked with pain and suffering and allowed them to work with us would we learn more and learn faster? Possibly.

If anything makes me believe in re-incarnation, and I am not sure it is a reality or a necessity, it is the fact that we are such very slow learners in this world no matter how committed we may be, or believe ourselves to be, in terms of becoming the best that we may be.

In truth every moment of our being is perfect as it is because it is all that there is. There is only now and we have to recognise the perfection of that now no matter how painful, traumatic, flawed or wounded it may be. There is nothing else so of course this moment is utterly, beautifully perfect.

Again, so easy to say and to think and so very hard to be and to do. Therein lies the lesson.