Crucibles & Cauldrons: Part 2 -- Difficulty

Crucibles & Cauldrons: Desire, Difficulty and Discipline 

When one transforms their desires or dreams from the malnourishing precepts of the ego (the desire to "make it big"), the drain that comes from wanting to be someone other than yourself will cease. It becomes possible to stop the clock on the fear that time is running out to accomplish some thing that will have made life worth it. The fear of death is replaced by the joy of life.

Once that mindset is achieved, the difficulties of life don't just disappear. They're still present, but they are no longer a wall between the self and a mythologized future self. Instead, the disharmonious aspects of life can become guideposts towards the creation of new methods of self-discipline. Difficulty and discipline can work together to work great transformations in life, but the key is to pay attention to the message in the difficulty.

Whenever problems occur in people's relationships, work situations, or their self-image, there is always something to be learned. It might seem like an obvious insight, but on a deeper level, the difficulties that manifest in a person's life often seem to follow a pattern, do they not? Anyone who examines the story of their life with honesty can say that at some point or another, disruptions occurred in their life based on behaviors or mistakes that they repeated more than once.

Why do we get stuck in such loops? When distortion enters into life, people tend to react in one of two ways--either ignoring the problem, perhaps even burying it within their subconscious, or by facing the problem in some way, which when carried through with typically allows the person to synthesize a new understanding about themselves or the world. When new awareness is reached in this way, it is far less likely for the same problem or difficulty to do damage when it reappears (although reappear it may, as some lessons in life bear occasional reviews, lest they be forgotten). The flipside is that when a problem is ignored or not treated with full attention, the disruptions that occur tend to get more and more violent, until it can't be looked away from.

Most people have probably experienced this in romantic relationships--the sneaking awareness that things won't work out, ignored and shoved aside and allowed to fester until the end comes in a screaming or crying fight. Putting aside the problem of needing to break-up caused what might have been a small emotional pain early on to become a volcanic eruption.

The thing to keep in mind is that problems in life aren't problems--they're challenges that allow us to grow into more aware and conscious individuals. Trouble is just an adventure that isn't finished. Allow the stress of the curveballs that life throws to fuel the creative ability to solve problems instead of ignoring the message that the universe presents. When you find that you can gracefully step through life's ups and downs without getting in your own way, the musical rhythm of life becomes the guide for your every movement, and the entire universe will dance with you.