This too shall pass is a saying we hear often, especially within the recovery community. I remember hearing those words without any true understanding or appreciation for its importance. Now, years later “this too shall pass” has become a daily mantra in my life. It serves as a daily reminder that everything in life has a cycle of beginning, middle and end. That during the tough times there is an awareness that those struggles will pass eventually and nothing will remain permanent. Yes, those beliefs help immensely during painful times, but they also create an ability to accept the ebbs and flows of life during the “good” times too. The expectations of life remaining positive or as planned dissolve as we realize there will always be a flow of life.
I can visualize it clearly, entering a new chapter of life and finding myself comparing it to past stages. I was thinking, “I am not as busy as I once was”, “I am not as productive”, “I am not as motivated”, “I am not as energized” and so on. This cycle of comparing cut me off from: a) acceptance and b) surrendering to the process. I was so busy comparing my current state to the past or future that I missed the beauty and lesson the universe was providing me with. And in that process, I was creating my own discomfort. The need to attach meaning to my reality outweighed my awareness to see the gift sitting right in front of me. Jeff Foster speaks to this beautifully…
“Right here, right now, in this moment, you don’t have to ‘figure out’ the rest of your life, no matter what anyone says.
You don’t need all the answers. They will come, in time, or not, or perhaps the unncecessary questions will fall away.
There is no rush. Life is not in a hurry. Be like the seasons. Winter is not trying to become summer. Spring does not rush towards autumn. The grass grows at its own pace.
The choices that will be made will be made, and you’ve no choice about that. The decisions that will happen will happen, events will unfold, but right now perhaps you don’t need to know the solutions or the outcomes or how best to proceed. Perhaps not knowing is a welcome guest at life’s banquet. Perhaps openness to possibility is a beloved friend. Perhaps even confusion can come to rest here.
And so, instead of trying to ‘fix’ our lives, instead of trying to neatly resolve the unresolveable and quickly complete the epic story of a fictitious ‘me’, we simply relax into utter not knowing, unravelling in the warm embrace of mystery, sinking deeply into the moment, savouring it fully, in all its uniqueness and wonder.
And then, perhaps without any effort, without any struggle or stress, without ‘you’ being involved at all, the true answers will emerge in their own sweet time.”
It is not to say we are minimizing our struggles, but instead to take comfort in embracing the current stage of life. We can create a knowing or readiness to experience the next chapter of our beautiful and mysterious path. All the while knowing, we are all on our own path but together as One…We can be like the seasons, flowing from one to the other…yes the transitions may have some resistance but ultimately they morph into the next season. We can see the beauty in the seasons changing, from a dark, cold, stormy winter, to a bright, warm and clear-skied summer. As the seasons feed our environment, so too do our personal seasons in life. No matter how dark and cold they become, we can seek comfort knowing that our bright sunny days are coming.
“There is a season for everything under the sun—even when we can’t see the sun.”
― Jared Brock
The Way
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