Meditation on Finding Peace & Wholeness by Diving Deep Into Our Hardships

First the falling, then the rising.  Over the past week a few people shared heartache, struggles, fears, and other painful stuff with me.  Being wired for optimism, I wanted to quickly sugarcoat these hurts or move past them.  Knowing this about myself, I’ve been practicing going INTO the pain instead of around it; taking time to let tears fill my eyes as I brought their suffering into my heart.  I share this because, the secret is the “falling” leads to our RISING, going THROUGH secondary emotions like sorrow, frustration, and fear is how we uncover the primary ones, deep joy and peace.

Choosing to feel our pain, speak our struggles, share our hurts, and such not only frees us from being enslaved to or weighed down by them, it makes us more whole as individuals and as communities.  Regardless of who we are life is hard, so we avoid the pain with Netflix, food, booze, shopping, and exercise.  Yet, when instead of numbing we dive into our messes with a smile and give our hardships a big hug, we receive a divine gift of Big Bliss.

While pain suppressed becomes a ticking time bomb resulting in things like depression, ulcers, divorce, and worse, struggles embraced with arms wide-open transform into wings that take us into the heavenly skies of joy and peace.  So, today I invite us to practice diving deep into our hardships with a tear and a smile, knowing deep peace and wholeness awaits us.