"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin -- real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."
-- Fr. Alfred D’Souza
Life always brings problems. We really can’t live without them.
And so it helps to shift our perspective. We can stop trying to avoid the problems. We can stop feeling victimized by what’s happening. Instead, we can consciously work with the challenge of the moment to learn more about ourselves and the world. When we make this shift in attitude, we discover ourselves to be strong and powerful.
"Every lesson is a widening and deepening of consciousness. It is a stretching of the mind beyond its conceptual limits and a stretching of the heart beyond its emotional boundaries. It is a bringing of unconscious material into consciousness, a healing of past wounds, and a discovery of new faith and trust."
"Life is the coexistence of all opposite values. Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, up and down, hot and cold, here and there, light and darkness, birth and death. All experience is by contrast, and one would be meaningless without the other."
-- Deepak Chopra
Life is full of dualities, opposites. Despite their apparent opposition, each extreme in a duality is necessary to fully actualize the other. Each depends on the existence of the other. For example, we cannot know honesty if we don’t know deception.
The key is to not resist or suppress the negative. We need to acknowledge its existence, though we may choose not to express it. When we embrace wholeness, we move to a higher perspective.
"The light which man has discovered within himself makes him more aware of the dark; through the good which attracts him, he sees the evil which is the line of least resistance; the activity leading to pain simultaneously permits him to visualize the contrasting pleasure, and thus he experiences something of both hell and heaven."
