7 lessons learned the hard way   

Whatever practice resonates with you, do that. It’s not as if you could choose not to. Just don’t expect it to end suffering, not the worlds, nor yours. Damn those expectations. 😉 Practices are everywhere. They come in all shapes and forms, some you’d call a practice and others that you’d swear aren’t practices at all.

What is a practice? Something that you give your attention to, that you do in order to feel better, to feel something, to feel what you don’t want to feel but somehow know you must. Often it is the pain we feel, or the fear. We are tied up in knots, suffering in some as of yet unfixable way. Life is not giving us what we want. So, we find a practice that seems to give us something we are looking for and do that, pulling our attention from what’s not working onto the new practice, or an old one, that seems to help.

We hope the practice will bring us more comfort or at the least, less pain. We’d really like the knot in our chest and gut to cease and desist, for the fear to abate. We remember when we used to be able to relax, when we were at ease in our skin instead of always being on the edge of fight or flight. We need a practice that reminds us that monsters are not everywhere, and if they really are, one that will show us a way to overcome them, to slay them, to get them to sit and stay.

When circumstances fail to align with my preferences, my particular brand of right and wrong, I suffer. We’ve been taught that our practice alleviates suffering. It does for a moment or two, for as long as I am engaging the practice, for as long as I am attending to the wide open youniverse within, but as soon as I stop, as soon as I return to the world, the suffering returns with it. Maybe not immediately, but if I wait a minute or two, a day or two, there it is.

Life doesn’t behave the way I think it should. It hasn’t for anyone who has ever lived, even those who look like they’ve found the key to a well-behaved life. Loss occurs. People die. Power games continue. People we know or care about play roles that conflict with ours. Good arrives, followed by what to our minds, is bad. The bad arrives followed by the good, and we don’t understand why we can’t get our lives to level out, why we can’t hang onto the good for long enough to feel good about it, why the bad keeps popping back in no matter what we do. And sometimes, the bad is really bad.

Generally, this is the point where we covertly set ourselves up as victims. It’s not a conscious decision, but it’s there. If those who see the world differently, who stand between us and what we want, would just change their ways, or if we could somehow exclude them, banish them, make them go away, then things would be good. It takes many forms, from actual attempts at genocide, to passive aggressive behavior with an old friend.

Of course, you already know that doesn’t work. It just mucks up the water even more, but it sounds good, even helpful, when you’re in victim mode. It’s an easy sell. Atrocities can’t happen without victims, and I’m not talking about the literal victims of the atrocity.

Even immortality, if we could achieve it, wouldn’t give us what we want. Life would still be up and down, turning us inside out and backwards, and we’d just have one hell of a long time to put up with it. Loved ones would leave us and we’d have an unending runway for regrets and should have dones.   

I’ve realized that what I used to call a spiritual path isn’t a spiritual path at all, either that or every path is a spiritual path. Doesn’t really matter which words I choose. Having walked far enough down any path it’s easy to see that it’s a bit closer to just call it life.

All the things that drive us to take up a spiritual practice are the same things that drive humans, period. We suffer when what we want doesn’t match up with how life is appearing in our experience.  I might call the practice a spiritual practice. If you’re out in the world feeding the hungry, you might call it service. If you’re bent on putting dollars in your account, that might be called the practice of greed or survival depending on how many coins are in your piggy bank. Someone watching, may call it something else, but all our practices, the various ways we try to do whatever it is we are doing, the many ways we show up for ourselves or one another, are simply the vast expanse of experiencing: life.

The path is the teacher. Life is the teacher, and a demanding teacher it is. What have I learned? So much … and so little. Nothing and everything. But if I had to put it into words I’d go with these seven (I love the magical number 7):

1. I am not in control here, as much as at times, I think I’d like to be … followed shortly by, whoa … I take that back.  
2. There is no way to avoid suffering. Life is suffering and joy. Yeah, I know people say suffering is optional. I’d disagree with that. That’s an avoidance tweak. On one level it’s true, but in this incarnation game we are human too. To be human is to suffer and I find great joy in being fully human. I feel joy to the degree that I am willing to experience suffering.
3. One day, most likely when I least expect it, I will die. No matter what religion I cling to, what New Age guru I listen to, how many plastic surgeries I have, the end of this incarnation will come. I will experience death. Hoping for an afterlife keeps me from truly living this one. An afterlife may show up. Who knows.   
4. Life has its own agenda. It’s not interested in mine.
5. In the midst of pain and suffering, peace and ease is present when I don’t mind what happens. That doesn’t stop me from caring, it simply prevents me from wanting this moment to be something it is not, a lost cause if I’ve ever heard of one.
6. The comfort I seek in practices exists in total surrender to what is, not in overcoming it, changing it, defeating it, finding ways to be one with it, meditating to rise above it, for what is already is. That’s the entire point of practice, of life, to lead me to that all- inclusive surrender.
7. When I start with a blank page, something that surrender gives me, possibilities abound, some that I may like, others than I won’t. My personal storybook determines which stories align with mine. That doesn’t mean that I can somehow manipulate life to give me the stories that do.

Amaya Gayle is the author of 6 books, the latest Actuality; infinity at play, published by New Saram Press. https://amzn.to/3Rd4CTY

Image: Sit and Stay Golden Retriever Street Photography is a photograph by Nancy Jacobson.