Our troubles and fear, our anger, our emotions… urges and habits… these are the signals that call us toward spiritual pursuits and development. It turns out that upon careful reflection, spirituality is the process of deeply re-entering our actual experience and difficulties, rather than, as is perhaps popularly imagined, a path beyond them into bliss. This isn’t to say that such bliss has no place in the process, but rather that challenges to bliss draw our attention to the signals that arise as we participate in relationships with the actual world we live in, the actual body we inhabit, our origins, relationships and… struggles.

It is in these struggles, which we may deeply desire to evade, that the real process of awakening finds its most powerful assistance. In a world of bliss, there is little to call us beyond our habits. In crisis, however, we are challenged to grow.

This, perhaps, has much to do with our human incarnation. For, if we dwelt in paradise, surrounded and imbued with wisdom and knowledge, peace and adoration… what need would we have for challenge and growth, and where would we find the difficulties that, like the infant falling at each attempt to walk, inspire us to learn and struggle against the often sharp or painful situations that only here, in human and animal bodies… we ceaselessly encounter … or directly generate… through our own misdirected desire for and attachment to… the shadows that the brightness of our true origins and nature generate in consciousness, relationships, and the world of embodiment.

It is no great accomplishment to find peace or liberation in circumstances conducive to such feelings; but to be free within the chaos of the world and our human lives is another matter altogether. One that arises from and perhaps depends upon … intimacy and attention… difficult work and struggle… and discovering the opportunity to become the mind of beauty in the very eye of a storm we find painful, confusing, and entirely undesirable.