One of my favourite authors and speakers is Byron Katie, who wrote several books, with her seminal work being ‘Loving What Is’.
In her words, Byron has an uncharacteristically beautiful and unassuming yet disarming way of approaching the stories we tell ourselves so we are gently opened into more freedom from the clutches and shenanigans of our mind and its patterns.
I recall listening to her say, ‘When you argue with you reality, you lose – but only 100% of the time.‘
WOW! It’s a powerful statement, an arresting declaration that is quite enlightening.
So, often we believe whatever we wish and never check it with or through reality; we think the world, and indeed life, conforms to our view of it. Sure, we can have imagination and dreams even a vision of a life to create and that is beautiful, but to face what is before us is to place ourselves in the moment of what is.
I mean it is right here. It is now. Sure, we may dislike or detest it and may wish to change or create anew from it, yet it is still what is and has happened.
The degree to which we deny it can sometimes reveal the intensity by which we remain stuck to it.
Things can transform overnight, and indeed the more we observe free of emotion, just observe, the more detached and neutral we are in the moment, that is, absent any emotional charge, the more things can enter and leave without leaving a sticky residue that creates baggage or burdens.
Reality is. It just is. It can, like all things, change, and instantly; yet the truth of what we face has a level of rawness and authenticity that if embraced sets us free in the act of surrender and that has a way of ushering in a peace, a deep peace. A peace that one might even say, using the time immemorial phrase from scripture, a ‘peace that passes all understanding.‘
It’s like a peace that eclipses our very own soul.
A writer once said, ‘When you step outside your front door, it’s like a boxing match of wills…’ and I can see how that analogy reflects the tendency we have to argue and fight, oppose and resist, push and pull, grab and even manipulate what is happening in our world.
It’s like we, at times, seek to strong-arm and wrestle or tussle with life, and sometimes it’s a wonderful thing and other times it seems to produce a tangled mess.
Yet, it goes deeper, and it is not simply our front door, the fight originates in the human mind even before we left the house and it arises from thought to thought, with even thoughts attacking and contradicting each other.
This is why all healing, all transformation that is true and lasting comes from within first and then flows outward into our world, for the world is merely the sum total of the inner landscape that exists within us.
As we blossom and transform within, the reality that holds true or manifests reflects that inner state and what no longer serves us simply falls away like it never was and we are free to be anew and live from this new place.
Our reality is not so much a stumbling block or obstacle as it is a portal and passport to the life we always wished to manifest within, and being with it, while challenging, can provide compelling clues as to how best to heal and move forward into a life of greater abundance.
Allow it to transcend it.