Embrace the Struggle
Feeing depressed, marital issues, a difficult child, illness, a messy house, a controlling person in your life, not getting your way….
How can I consider embracing the struggle when at the same time I am busy thinking “I don’t want this; I can’t handle this; This isn’t fair; I’m stressed out from this.”
What if I didn’t looking to my thinking as a “reality check” informing me about the struggle? What if my thinking isn’t an accurate reflection of reality, but rather a momentary, passing experience of it?
What do I mean by that? Well, do you ever notice that your thinking about your life and your struggles changes?
I see that sometimes I have moments where I feel strong enough to handle difficulities; sometimes I have moments where I feel overwhelmed by life; sometimes I have moments where I disengage and other times where I accept.
What accounts for these shifts? The fact that Thought in the moment is always changing, hence my experience of it.
Embracing the struggle doesn’t mean that I won’t experience pain. It’s not even something that I can particularly “do”. It’s an outgrowth of understanding that the distress I feel is not coming from the struggle, but rather from my thinking about the struggle.
And Thought is not something to fear. It just is. It’s a divine gift. The thought/feeling connection will bring me an experience of my struggle in the moment. That I can rely on.
And when I am free of judgment about it, I am gifted to see it as the hand of G-d. Embracing the struggle then becomes a natural byproduct.
