When The Going Gets Tough

This has been a most difficult week for me and my daughter. We experienced a lot of tension and we fought and disagreed almost the entire week. She ended up spending the night at her auntie’s place and after dropping her off I came home and cried, and cried, and cried some more. It was one of those weeks that was just difficult. No, no one died that I personally knew. I just didn’t have anything in me to write about, at least not seemingly.

And yet I was asked to give another sermon at a Unity Church tomorrow and you would never guess the topic: “Resurrecting Desire.”

Urgh! Just when I feel like putting my head in the sand and forgetting about the fact that I’m alive. I was looking and searching and asking for answers, but nothing came to mind, at least not much that made any sense. And the more I searched for material, the more tense I seemed to get. Do you ever feel like you are just stuck in a black hole type of vortex that you can’t seem to get out of? Kind of like a nightmare that you want to wake up from so desperately? That’s exactly what I’ve been feeling like this week.

I’m still coming out of it and I’m still working on my sermon, and as I meditate and let it come to me, I know I’ll be fine. I always am.

What helped me tremendously this morning was sitting on my meditation pillow facing East right when it started to get light. The few sprinkled clouds on the horizon that at first were black, turned white and then bright orange as the sun started to come up more and more. Then it all turns “normal” and the gorgeous and brilliant colors disappear. I sat there for a minute and enjoyed the brightness when the sun started to appear from behind the mountain. I closed my eyes and let the rays warm my face when I realized that I had been harboring all this anger and frustration and disappointment inside of me this week about these things that are not going as I want them to go these days. I was in particular upset with a few key people when I realized that the rays of this sun will hit those people and warm their skin as much as mine and provide light to them as much as to me. Suddenly I felt “ugly” inside for holding so much bitterness and “poor me” attitudes towards these people that are getting the same benefits from nature that I do.

And suddenly I was able to see that although the sun and the moon and the rain do their job for everyone on this planet, the good and the bad, it is not for me to judge who or what is good and bad; especially not since I have done some things myself that are not worthy to be shouted from any roof tops. I was able to let them go and wish them well.

And then the real challenge came. I know that in addition to let them go in peace, we are to also bless our enemies and pray for them and to wish them well and even help them if they ask us to. Ah, do I really have to go there now!? Can’t I just let them go in peace? Must I? Really, must I also bless them and wish them only the best and even help them?

So that is where I am now. Mustering up the heart and the love to wish my enemies well and to bless them with my kindness. I’m in the transmutation process, if that makes any sense. While I have made the decision to send kindness and love only, doing it and feeling it and meaning it takes a little extra time, I find.

So here is my sermon material for tomorrow. Why do we get to a place where we lose our desires? Whether it is our desire to live or our desire to be healthy or in love? What exactly is it that robs us of our desire to only want what’s best for us and others? How do we get into these black holes that seem to suck the life out of us?

I can’t answer for anyone else but me; and what I see for myself is that what robs my desire the most is when I get bogged down by anger, depression, frustration, irritability, lack of patience or kindness towards another living being. Being frustrated or angry at anything or anyone only hurts me.

I’m learning to go within, the desires have never left me, they have never left you – they are merely covered up and blocked by the “ugliness” of our own selfish ambitions. And rest assured, there is a karmic law that goes beyond our natural laws, and karmic law affects all of us, just like our sun does. It is indeed not mine to avenge but God’s.

Much love to everyone.