When you argue with reality, you lose— but only 100% of the time. Byron Katie
My first thought when I realised there was a global pandemic afoot was, there’s always bloody something.
There is, isn’t there. There’s always something. And if it’s plain sailing now, it won’t last long.
If you too have experienced this to be true, then logically speaking we can be sure it will be true in the future. This is good news. It means we can drop right now any anticipation whatsoever of there being nothing. That brings acceptance which in turn brings a softening of the jaw muscles and a lessening of the wish things were different. If there’ll always be something, big or small, then we must find a way to work with that something.
You can look at your ‘something’ right now. Look it in the face. If it’s going nowhere fast, you might as well view it as an opportunity for growth, because the alternative is that it isn’t. Make your choice. So how can you use this challenge to do things differently? How have you dealt with challenges in the past and how might you deal with this one with a little more elegance and ease than last time? Might that be possible?
This process is known in Vedic sankrit as using your buddhi, your intellect, to reason your way more smoothly and peacefully through life. Rather than struggle with reality, you use your intellectual mind to clear the path, as opposed to hacking your way through exhausted. This is mindfulness in action. Mindfulness also means using the power of our minds rather than letting our minds use us.
Often when we decide something is a ‘problem’, we create a resistant relationship to it (because it’s a ‘problem’). We have started a fight. So, therefore, to do things differently we would have to accept things as they are. This acceptance has a palpable effect on our muscles and brain. Thinking thus, we have freed ourselves from an exhausting battle with reality simply by stepping away from the battlefield. This has been achieved simply by applying logic to the problem using our intellectual minds.
We can change by creating time to think rather than fight. Now that you are working with what is, your problem now becomes your chance, an opportunity for growth, grit to your mill. How can I use it? Reasoning, it’s now OK that it’s there. Imagine it might be like this for some time longer, how would you relate to it differently then? What can do you to make your life more comfortable with it here now? I bet you have some ideas.
If there’s always something, thats what you’ve got to work with. Logical.
Namaste.