Training Day

You gotta serve somebody, as Bob Dylan said. That’s what the series The Sopranos is about. Even a championship team in sports only wins the right to have every other team try just a little bit harder against them next time they meet. So in the end, no one really wins, which is why it’s somewhat mindless for so many people to be looking for a life where they don’t lose.

The weird kids get teased by the cool kids, but those outsiders also tease the cool kids for being so predictable. The average kids huddle in the middle, just hoping to be accepted if they keep their head down. But you can’t waffle about who you are. People sense that inauthenticity and they tend to not trust or like it.

Meanwhile, the confident and motivated go off and become Kanye West, Johnny Depp or Mozart. None of them care what you think about them, they’re going to picks the songs or films that they really want to do as artists. Hilary didn’t climb Everest to impress you and me. He and these others were all climbing destinations within themselves. They were responding to their own natural drives rather than using their ego to talk them out of what they felt the urge to do.

Is it possible you’ve misunderstood resistance and they didn’t? What if it isn’t an impediment, or a block or something preventing you from succeeding? What if resistance is only there to strengthen and sharpen your abilities, much like Bruce Lee would use a sparring partner? He had someone fight against him as a form of training for going forward. This is a lesson worth paying attention to.

Rather than seeing difficulties in your life as problems blocking some predetermined success, imagine that your life is more like some video game, where you’re wandering around and the entire point of the game is that it randomly tosses you challenges to overcome as a way of advancing you through itself. How would difficult people appear then?

Start off with the idea that you do know what you should do and you’ll do it right up until you know you should do something else. Trust yourself. Then see any detours or challenges related to your goals as having been intentionally placed there by your trainers.

It’s as if you have a superior from James Bond and they start off your day saying, “Okay Jennifer, as you move through your day we’ve inserted several irritating and challenging interactions for you to help train your responses. Over time we’ll get your impervious to these sorts of things so that you can reserve your energy for what counts, so watch for them.”

If that was how it was set up you’d be totally okay with meeting irritating people. And why? Because you’d always be telling yourself, this person isn’t really like this, they’re just acting this way as a part of my training. So the very same irritating or troublesome behaviour would suddenly be okay because it had been rewritten in meaning within your consciousness. Nothing in the outside world changed, just your idea about it. Do you see now how the world is an illusion made of your thoughts?

An enlightened person is just someone who cannot shake the knowledge that this whole thing is going perfectly and that we’re all helpful players in each other’s games. That means everyone you meet is perfectly helping your execute your life and you’re helping them execute theirs. It’s all very peaceful when you just let it unfold without expectation or regret.

Stop pushing against life. That uncomfortable sensation is within your consciousness, it does not exist in the world without you creating it for yourself with your thoughts. Just allow things to be, even if they’re not ideal or even close to the way you’d want them. Be more accepting. Let more thoughts pass through you undiscussed or encountered. That is what it is to be free of suffering by accepting that there will always be suffering.

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organizations locally and around the world.