Let’s face it. The world is going through difficult times. You may be even dealing with your own personal difficulty.

In today’s INSIGHT, I offer a perspective to hopefully ease inner resistance that can cause suffering. You know the saying, “What we resist, persists”!

I didn’t want to write about this topic today.  

My self-talk went something like this… “You should write something more uplifting. Something to inspire people!”

My SOUL’s response was…

“What if this is exactly what is needed?”

So, here goes… We’ve all known hard times. No one gets through life without them.  Heck, even the richest of the richest can’t stop hurricanes, or sometimes even their own bankruptcy.

Today’s message is really about what to do when nothing works.

With the political unrest, the west coast fires destroying our ancient trees and hurricanes leaving a path of death and destruction, we really only have one option if we don’t want to suffer.

We must learn to find peace with ‘what is’.

We must ‘let go’.

Have you ever been in a situation where, no matter what you did, absolutely nothing worked?! You’ve tried everything. You even went out on a limb and tried things you swore you’d never do. But they didn’t work either.

Trying to make something happen, or to try to get control of something that you have absolutely no control over, can be like walking on marbles. You reach and grasp at anything for control, yet there is none to be had. You are going down.

Maybe you’re going for your dream, but you’re hitting dead end walls or it isn’t going just as you’d expected.

Perhaps you’re dealing with the loss of a loved one, you’ve lost money, or that deal just isn’t coming through as expected.  Or maybe you’re making progress, but not as fast as you’d like.

Maybe you don’t even know what your dream or purpose is and you feel stuck, lost, hopeless and like giving up.

Regardless of what you may be experiencing, all is not lost.  In fact, there is a way through, but for most it’s not the path they’d normally take.

In today’s INSIGHT I share about my former sweetheart’s suicide 17 years ago and what helped me get through those very confusing and dark days.

If you are going through a difficult time, if you are having a hard time manifesting what you want or it you’re finding it challenging to deal with everything that’s happening in the world or your own life right now, I hope this message offers a perspective that helps!

You want it to change. Now!

You wanted it gone. Yesterday!

You’ve racked your head against the wall, to no avail.

“How could there be anything redeeming or positive in this situation?”, you ask yourself.

I get it. I’ve been there!

Friday, March 10, 2000 turned out to be one of the most difficult days of my life, and as a result, my life has remained forever changed.

I was in the middle of remodeling my house, and had just left the flooring store, when I got the call that left me radically changed.

For 10 years, I had been in a relationship with a kind, gentle man named Ed. A doctor. It was his purpose to heal people, and heal people he did. Many of his patients told me that the moment he walked into the exam room they immediately began to feel better. He had something magical about him. People healed in his presence.

When someone as kind, wise and loving as Ed takes their own life, it can be difficult to wrap your head around. But, that’s what that phone call was about. Ed was dead. You can’t ever wrap you head around something like that.

The only thing you can do is to accept the fact that it happened and stop trying to figure out why. That’s what I finally came too, after two years of trying to understand ‘why’. The reality was that Ed was gone and not amount of understanding would even bring him back. That was when I began to feel at peace again, get on with my life and back to serving my clients, once more.

A friend gave me a book that was a balm for my aching heart. It helped to get me through those very dark times. I cherish it to this day.

It’s helpful for not only the difficult times, but also when something isn’t going the way my ego thinks it should. It helps get me back on track and in alignment with my soul.

It’s called “When Things Fall Apart; Heart Advice for Difficult Times” by Pema Chodron.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the book that have made a difference for me. It’s taken from the chapter on HOPELESSNESS & DEATH (Note: Death can be the ending of anything. A job, a move, an identity, money and resources, a relationship, etc.)

To think that we can finally get it all together is unrealistic. To seek for some lasting security is futile. To undo our very ancient and very stuck habitual patterns of mind requires that we begin to turn around some of our most basic assumptions. Believing in a solid separate self, continuing to seek pleasure and avoid pain, thinking that someone [or something] “out there” is to blame for our pain, one has to get totally fed up with these ways of thinking.  One has to give up hope that this way of thinking will bring us satisfaction. Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there’s anywhere to hide.

Hopelessness means that we no longer have the spirit for holding our trip together. We may still want to hold our trip together. We long to have some reliable, comfortable ground under our feet, but we’ve tried a thousand ways to hide and a thousand ways to tie up all the loose ends, and the ground just keeps moving under us. Trying to get lasting security teaches us a lot, because if we never try to do it, we never notice that it can’t be done. Turning our minds toward the dharma speeds up the process of discovery. At every turn we realize once again that it’s completely hopeless- we can’t get any ground under our feet

In my own life, I’ve trained myself to see hopelessness or loss as a gift. I may not be able to see it immediately and that’s okay. I expect the gift to make itself known and eventually it does. But without that mindset, I may never be able to reap the hidden gift within the situation.

 To me, hopelessness is a sign that something is about to change. Why is that? Because I have finally gotten it that I can’t hold it together anymore.

When we come to this understanding, we let go.

When we let go of our own agenda of how something or someone external to us should be, we have true control (of ourselves). The sense of control we have within ourselves is in knowing that there’s no control of the external, but only the internal.

This type of control makes room, on the inside, for infinite possibilities to emerge. And what emerges is infinitely greater than anything my little self (my control freak) could ever have conjured up!
One day, when I was frantically searching for an answer to a problem, my Soul whispered:

Stop seeking Answers.

Seek Peace instead!

That was the reminder I needed. I’ve known for along time that all true answers arise from Peace. We experience peace when we come from our True Being.

Peace cannot be known by the ego (the-figure-it-out-mind).

There are basically 3 states of being: Positive, Negative or Neutral.

• Peace does not desire anything. It is whole within itself. Nothing is needed. Think of desire as a positive polarity.
• Peace does not resist anything. Think of resistance as a negative polarity.
• Peace just is! Peace is neutral.

That’s why meditation and EFT can be so effective. They deliver us from the bondage of duality, desiring and resisting, and return us to neutral- the land of peace.

All true answers arise from Peace.

 Now I’d like to hear from you!

What are you taking away from today’s INSIGHT? How might you use one key idea in your life?

I look forward to reading your response below!