Just Keep Trying ( a reminder when things are hard)

Some days are difficult. Try as we might to have things go our way and according to our plans or standards. The idea of the spiritual person being all love and all light all the time…well that isn’t realistic.

In my early years I would commune with nature and trees, feeling a hot anger for anything religious. As I grew up and learned more about the world, I was drawn to buddhism and practiced it for a while. I thought it was a religion I could understand, and I felt such a deep sense of peace in it. The teachings of Buddha tell us that life is suffering. That the constant pursuit for perfection and happiness has no other result but drama and dissatisfaction. I took that to heart and I was grateful for simple joys and pleasures in life. Young and optimistic. But as journey’s go, they take different paths, they progress or regress and over time I fell into the love and light belief. That wellness and health meant perfection. It meant not feeling depressed or angry, it meant being “beautiful” in the eyes of others, and it meant living a clean, healthy lifestyle even to the detriment of coming off as snobby. It meant not having a single thing wrong with me, as that would make me defective.

Somewhere along the way I bought into these wellness ideals. And I bought into them so much that I started to judge myself against them (falling short many times). I felt I had lost my way. I would remember as a child, walking through the trees, and feeling so…connected. Feeling that, though I couldn’t understand this world, or all the suffering, there was something there to remember. Something amongst the wind through the leaves, the smell of the dirt and plants, the quiet other than the birds and wind rustling about. Living in the city I hadn’t felt that in a long time. I had been disconnected and disconnected myself.

The ebb and flow of reaching a place of contentment despite life’s circumstances, and raging in despair against how unfair it all was, came and went, stopped and began again. The confusion of Buddha’s teachings, with my own spiritual experience, with the wellness world and with day to day life all clamoring to be right in my mind. Ego resisiting to diminish, as we love black and white, right and wrong, blame and innocence.

When the days go smoothly, and life lights up, it is so easy to be optimistic and full of love. The real teachings come when that is not the day. When you feel beat up, pushed down, adrift in the chaos with no seeming way out.

On these days, all the effort, all the meditation, the gratitude work, the hard learned lessons of growth are torn apart. And what is there to do? Fall back into old patterns of defensiveness, depression, or numbing? Or come back to the basics, back to the silence and try.

As I write this it seems too simple. Listen to me giving advice. The truth is, it isn’t easy and it really fricken sucks at times. Why take a step back and breathe and examine your emotions as an unbiased observer, when you can yell and defend yourself, or take another drink, or watch 2 more hours of tv…or lay in a dark room and cry….

Why?

I think we all have to find that why for ourselves. It is part of the journey in this life. Nothing is permanent, what was once true 10 years ago, what we believed was so real and right, may feel differently later on. This was the case for me, in my younger days, so sure of what I was doing.

So today, on a day that was difficult. A day that pushed me to the brink, I pulled myself out of bed. I boiled herbs for a yoni steam. I could have made 10 excuses not too… I wasn’t in the mood, I felt like crap, it would be better if I kept sitting in the ugliness…I don’t deserve any relief….

Ah, how the mind likes to highlight our deepest fears.

But I boiled the herbs. I sat over the warm steam. And the moment I felt the warmth fill my belly I sighed, ahhhhhhhhh. Relief. I went into child’s pose and cried. I felt the feelings. Because the point is not to push them down or push them away. The point was to listen. To give them space as they have something to say and then to just be silent. And I heard it. “Just Keep Trying”. Again “Just Keep Trying” and “Trust”. I took it in, sat with it.

Does it make the events of the day disappear? No. What it does is remind me that the path isn’t just love and light and happy endings. And that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying, or that something is wrong with me, or wrong with others. It just means that the journey is about trusting and trying and eventually in that, learning, even when it feels hard.

So, I invite you to do the same. Get silent, listen.

What is your true voice trying to tell you, what is it trying to remind you of?