Simplify the Challenges

Some of the flowers of summer are remarkably still blooming. I have pink petunias and red geraniums that don't want to fade away. I honor their fighting spirit, their blooming against all seasonal reason. It helps that they are close to the house, in window boxes, so they get that nice heat radiating out from our ancient, breezy structure.

What is it that helps us press forward, against all odds? The more I sit with people in coaching, and listen to family and friends and their various struggles, and watch my own process, too, I wonder what it is that gives us motivation to press onward. If you look around you, you will find individuals from all walks of life, slugging through some of life's most difficult trials, and finding their way -- in the way that they are able-- to light and new growth.

In the yogic lineage I have studied, life is seen as a place of purification, where all of our tendencies are burned, bit by bit, so that we can radiate out more of the love that is our true nature. In the Christian lineage, it is taught that we are also being changed into the likeness of God. Seen by these two lineages, life is a kind of refining fire, where what we can hope for is that as we are refined by life, we become more and more like the Pure Love that makes up our nature.

It takes spunk, I think, to take life's challenges as purification. It's easier, in some ways, to complain and rail against what comes our way. Or we want to run and hide, hoping this will trick fate to deal up something different for us.

But like the flowers in my window boxes, life can be simple, when you nestle up against a warm house, accepting the wind and the rain as part of it. These flowers have taken a beating this summer, with all of the rain. Yet look at them. They keep coming back. To them, life is simple. The rain comes, it damages many of the petals; the petals regrow. There is no question about re-growth. It happens, because it is the flower's nature to regrow.

To be like a flower. This is the state of No Mind. To understand problems and challenges as a state of grace, given for our own growth, would be to truly eliminate mental suffering. Growth follows because it is a natural outcome of hardship.

Question for you: What are your challenges? How are your challenges taking old patterns, old ways of being, old beliefs, and asking for something new? What is the new impulse that wants to emerge? Take just one challenge you might be facing, whether its a relationship, a financial situation, a work issue. What is being asked of you? How is your God Nature being called forward?

When framed in this way, challenges are a blessing in disguise. Not that the challenges aren't hard and sometimes very difficult, but that when framed correctly, we can accept the simplicity of what is being asked. Take some time to look for the blessing. Make it a treasure hunt. And if you can't find it, ask a friend or a mentor to help you on the hunt. The treasure is always there.