What is the connection between suffering, struggle, and moving closer to one’s potential being fulfilled?
Growth
We cultivate a plant by observing its reaction to various conditions of soil, hydration, and sunlight; then adjust accordingly. Only humans attempt to develop themselves by externally selecting optimal growth factors, then imbuing them inwardly, expecting growth and abundance, while remaining deaf to signs that point to the right environment for maturation.
Such an invasion on the natural unfolding of an individual leaves a trace of confusion about what one is, disorientation about where to go, and where one belongs.
Nature created life so perfectly that, while interdependent with everything else, each entity is also designed as self-sufficient, so that once in its natural habitat, all elements within it work together towards its fruition. An internal process of growth that happens effortlessly, when there is an absence of external interference.
A process that should not be mistaken for a smooth ride, because a change of seasons is also a part of nature’s design.
Struggle
We learned to believe that life filled with struggles is not worth living. We swallowed the conviction that to struggle in life indicates an internal mistake, a deficit of something within us, and therefore, we need to be fixed.
Struggle is a natural element of life.
Suffering is when we refuse to accept this.
It is a state of fighting reality. Confused and disoriented, we twist the natural course of changes in an individual’s maturation and turn it into his failure.
Now he is not a man on the quest for truth, but an error of his becoming.
A tale
Somewhere along the lines, we learned to confuse clarity for truth. So when reality doesn’t provide us with clear answers for where we’re going, we refuse to accept it.
Certainty that people refer to and claim to own is an engineered one. It is not an objective observation of the way forces of our universe work. Certainty is not compatible with the nature of life. It is a fantasy of the human mind.
Certainty that tells the tale of life working out perfectly, of taking a defined number of steps that then secure a safe place for you to exist, was created based on a desire to control, rather than observed factors that lead an individual closer to their potential. Certainty is a concept that is rooted in the fear of change, in the mind’s obsession to know, in society’s judgment and resistance to fluid existence, where one lives in harmony with his own nature.
Truth
Truth does not serve certainty; it illuminates reality.
Choosing to be guided by your truth is not a path that offers certainty, but assurance of always being in the right place for that particular time.
Even when the place you’re at proves to be something you don’t want anymore, you will walk away with clarity and a newly found piece of your truth. And each slice of it is a stepping stone you place in front of you for your next step to land.
Most importantly, choosing truth as your ally restores faith in life being worthy of every burden you carry. Something with depth and meaning. Something worth fighting for.
Refinement
Pressure and strain build us. They invite us to seek truth, to collect more pieces of it.
Yet, we are convinced that it equals danger. Even worse, that it already defines failure.
But how does one learn mathematics or study philosophy, other than by straining the cells of his mind? How does one strengthen his muscles, other than by pulling and straining the tendons and fibers that build them up? How does one refine his character, if not by a healthy dose of stretching the limits of its flexibility and endurance?
Most of us resist the reality of how we feel and try to dilute ourselves into a better-fitting figure. We move through life in a series of futile attempts to rearrange what we’re made of, seduced by the promise that the ease of life will then commence.
But life is less of a smooth ride and more of a dance with forces that roam through your space and time.
Being a human is like a free fall through the tension that builds you, and the best you can do is pay attention and learn. Observe, adjust, marvel, and wander through the atmosphere that surrounds you, expanding awareness that connects you with what’s beyond the tales of the mind.
The Work
We struggle to embrace who we are, not just due to many misguiding beliefs, but also because of the intricacy of the process itself.
A deeply conditioned nervous system and paradoxes that stretch through human nature turn this task into an infinite web of contradictions, rendering required effort into a work of a lifetime.
Where life gets hard is less in finding explanations and meanings, but in the integration of what was found.
Inner Wilderness
When our wild inner nature meets our need to be tamed within a group where acceptance and belonging exist, balancing the two can become extremely challenging, and at times seems impossible.
Most groups require the shredding of your wild nature when crossing their premises, welcoming only culturally domesticated parts. The beauty and necessity of our wilderness is real, and dismissing and repressing those will never be truly replaced by the appearance of outward acceptance. It might offer a temporary feeling of belonging, but your true nature will always seek your attention and call for its liberation.
What’s truest in you is never an excess.
Fate
Every day we rise and endure a loop of distractions, when just a thin veil away, there’s a ride on the spiral that brings us closer to the core of who we are.
Relentlessly diluting who we are, desperate to become thin enough to make more sense.
Sense to whom? Disoriented minds? An ego that never got a single night of deep sleep, not one lucid hour.
What if the home you are looking for is a place where you cease to fight your fate? Then, like a child, you would absorb the worlds around you, and the one inside you, read between the lines, jump and run far outside the walls, and walk on the horizon of this vast world. Then, needs, desires, conclusions, and questions would rise and fall in the steady rhythm, forming rhymes with the nature that surrounds you, and nests somewhere deep within you.
Home
Instead of calculating and assembling, life is more about surrender and flow.
What if the world awaits not for your initiation, but acceptance of the invitation?
An invitation to answer the call that keeps pulsating deep within you.
An invitation to be no less than what you are.
To rise and stretch across all corners of your existence.
To embrace and live your design.
Your design. Not something to iterate, dilute, or reject, but embrace, embody, and use well.
It is not uncertainty that ever killed anyone, but lingering in safety for too long. Safety of the known and accepted, but outdated. Safety of what’s socially reinforced, but individually misaligned. Safety of how lukewarm life is now, but how radiant it could be.
Maybe we were not designed to stand like kings on the deck of a large and sturdy ship, protected, enjoying a smooth ride as passive observers of the forces that work underneath, but rather, we’re creatures made to swim freely, like dolphins through deep seas, flowing with tides and currents of the ocean, grazed by gentle touch of moving waters, in harmony with blue that encompass all what’s living.
