Behind the pretense, not too deeply hidden, this moment is filled with unbearable grief, a choking sadness that steels the breath, the burdensome weight of unending judgment and an angst we can’t quite put our finger on, like heaving skies pregnant with unsettled energy set to explode in thunderous lightning without notice.

As spiritual disciples, long-suffering seekers, we have seen our darker side, or at the least caught glimpses. We know the lengths we will go to ensure that others do not see what we see. We learned tools and techniques, undertook bodies of study. Perhaps a special teacher synchronistically appeared in our life. As the darkness appears, and reappears, we use our tools to transform the darkness into light. We attempt to find the sweet spot of joy or happiness. We do whatever we do to change the unwanted in our lives into love, into what we now believe is the more divine experience. We know this for we have been doing it a very long time. For many of us, lifetimes of suffering.

Transformation is so well intentioned, so mystical and divine. It is what we spent our life’s blood and sweat to attain. It feels so good when we’re up; feels like hell when we’re down. What no one told us is the attempt to transform, regardless of how well intentioned, IS suffering.  The seeker itself is the cause of suffering. The very definition of suffering is wanting the pain to be something other than the pain, which is why we began seeking in the first place. So what do we do? How do we stop?

Just as any attempt to change this pure pristine moment of now and all that it holds is suffering, bringing both light and dark into the open aware conscious experience IS freedom and peace.

When we are not willing to experience whatever shows up, to feel the minute curvatures and lick its essence like a sweet lollipop, we condemn ourselves to another sip of hell. Life will never offer only that which we want. It is not designed that way. Life will surely, and most powerfully, offer both the illusion of good and bad, of heaven and hell. As long as we attempt to change the illusion, the illusion has reality. Life will give us new tests and trials to see how invested we are in the illusion, as it has been proven time and again to do. If we defy our experience, the lie of our separate existence will be our reality and we will suffer, for the very act of defiance firms up the identity called seeker – an individual, someone whose life is not quite right yet. We seek to make ourselves whole but our seeking is for the ‘me’. We will never settle into our true nature, the Absolute Oneness of Everything, while we seek to improve our personal experience of life.

I would ask you to stop, to quit the search, to settle into Now, but I know that I was unable to stop until I was not. I cannot escape the pain any longer, nor would I want to. The painful energy wrenches this heart of mine, ripping it open further than what it knew just moments before …always further … always unexpectedly … each time such a grand surprise. I will lose everything I have and everyone I love before I leave this plane; such is the human condition. And yet, opening arms, heart and mind to embrace what begs rejection, this concept called ‘I’ explodes into particles of the Holy ever-expanding cosmos, and nothing is left to suffer.

I write these words and you may be blessed to hear; you may not. Your perfect path may beg of you a bit more research before giving in and giving up. Yet give up you will, for that too is written in the Divine Design. No one will be left behind—if not this lifetime, then the next … or the next. For Now, trust the unfolding perfection if you can.