Funny how we all long for the good times, when everything falls in place and life works just the way we want it to.
Times like these are what we live for — or are they?
To those who use life to know themselves and what they’re about, maybe not. Because for as good as those moments feel, they’re like the icing on the cake — something to be savored and appreciated, but get too much of it and our taste buds go on overload and we have to turn away from the sweetness so they can reset themselves.
Life is much the same to the awakening server. Our missions are tools we use to bring us moments of such pleasures (though just as often than not they come outside the bounds of our mission through our everyday lives). At least, as long as we’re not falling down on the job of using our experiences to expand our awakening.
Whether those good times come from our service or our private lives, more often than not they come and go. In these moments, we fall down from our perch of happiness into the mire of the human experience, where struggle, sacrifice and conflict test our ability to bring out our best and make choices that reflect our evolving consciousness.
Falling down, though, brings with it the opportunity to allow light and love to go to work in areas where they are most needed. As we recognize the lessons and meet the tests they offer, we expand our ability to create within this harsh 3-dimensional environment. And in turn, move more easily through the difficulties and back to the good times from which we fell.
There is a recent commercial starring Dwyane Wade that goes something like, “Fall down seven times. Get up eight.” It stresses the importance of getting up when life knocks us down (or our missions hit us between the eyes).
Resiliency and perseverance are critical attributes, but the importance of our challenges is not just in developing the strength and determination to go on. It’s learning to live within the situations of struggle, to keep our heads and hearts fully functioning, and to make decisions that reflect our highest attributes rather than our lowest.
When we do, then getting up becomes easier, because we’ve addressed the reason we fell in the first place. Otherwise, all we’ll do is learn to grit our teeth and revel in our struggles, rather than learn from them how to be more than we were before they hit.
These moments when we’re at less than our best are important tools on our journey, both as indicators of our progress and teachers of how we can see and meet life in new ways, breaking old patterns and allowing our energies to expand into new and greater expressions of what we want to show the world.
So even as difficult as they seem, try to bring greater awareness of what’s going on in your “down” times and how you’re meeting them. This is how you evolve. This is how our world evolves.
I pray that we learn to do it with a little more ease and grace so the good times come more often for us all.
He is author of "Whispers in the Silence -- Living by the Light of Your Soul," and publisher of various websites, including PeaceOptions.com and MissionLaunch.com
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