To struggle is to freely admit that we are needy, incomplete, and have deficiencies that we own. Strugglin’ is a process we do in our daily grind we call our life. It is what we know, it is what we were taught, and it is the only thing we know how to do, as well as being ‘so’ stuck in this process of doing we don’t see a way out. Help!
We can even appear to be happy with our lot and others would agree that we do have a so-called ‘good’ life. What’s not to like?
Somehow, somewhere there is this nagging feeling that things are not right. Yes, by appearances from the outside, everything is cool. However, when we sit in the silence and look at ourselves, we have this unsettling feeling. It’s there. We then ‘think’ our way through this disharmony, using rationalization and logic, quelling our egos.
At this point nothings really changed. Our ego saved us again. Or did it? Or did it enslave us again?
If we continue to use the same processes to ‘try’ to see what’s going on, we will be again limited to limited results, again. How do we got out of this box?
How can we change our process? Are we even aware of the limitations of our process? Where do we start? Is it even worth doing anything different?
Suffering is present profoundly and subtly in life, a basic truth. The source of suffering is struggling (a process) and attachment to results. Only in the absence of struggling (lose the process) can there be a cessation of this disharmony. The “how to” of it is to lose our attachment to the ‘process’ of doing things, controlling things, pushing things, forcing things to effortlessness and seeing attachment.
Easier said than done. Easier said than seen. How can we overcome this liability to Being that we have been practicing all of our lives?
One of the unstated benefits of retirement is the opportunity to stop cramming our life. Ever since high school or college, we have been trying to improve our lives by doing more things within a limited timeframe, every day. In college we cram information, parties, drinking, dating, classes, and sleep. We graduate and we get married and we cram time for our spouse, hobbies, children and jobs, with nothing winning in a real way.
Our lives are lost in this cram thing. We do not know how to stop spreading ourselves so thinly. We are not even aware there is a problem. Normality of this desperation of living has reduced our standards and expectation to 5 to 7 moments of contact a la family life and other pursuits. Most of us will go to our deaths with this way of life, sadly.
Retirement with consciousness, can provide the change in process where the culprit of cramming can be identified and dealt with by seeing an alternative. Tomorrow or the next moment is readily available for us when we become less regulated by our life. This may be a revelation vis-a-vis retirement but it really is taking the opportunity to ’see’ the struggle and it’s unnecessary role.
However we liberate ourselves from the shackles of suffering in its wide-ranging degrees of discomfort, is not as important as to ‘see’ the ridiculousness of the necessity of suffering. Why does it have to dominate us so much and why have we gladly accepted it as an acceptable way of life?
The equation of more struggle, more suffering is real. We test that everyday. We imprison ourselves in our familiarity. We fight for our right to compete and struggle to the death.
Once we know that the pushing energy of struggling is unnecessary we will stop. Only then shall we be convinced enough to do something different to get a different outcome. We cannot choose until we see that our first choice was not our only or best choice.
There is another choice and that path is attachment to the Silence, to the ‘real’ which is beyond cause and effect and is the only permanence available. It is not through ‘doing’ it is through ‘seeing’ and getting our false selves out of the way effortlessly.
Sitting and seeing the Silence allows us to see the gaps, the spaces between thoughts and ideas to the unquantifiables of who we really are, always and forever. We can choose this stream once we see we have a skillful choice. Use the immediacy of the Moment to see the compulsions of our lives so they can replace the process of struggle for the process of effortlessness.
edward. . .Being effortlessly Now 