When It’s Easy, It’s Easy

WHEN THE GOING GETS tough, the tough one keeps going… but sometimes other things crumble as one does, especially if the “going” induces and awakens all sorts of negative feelings one imagined could never be present in one’s system…

When everything is smooth and light and well, it’s easy to practice one’s practice, to mindfully remember what sort of energy one consciously chooses to broadcast into the ethers, to choose who one wishes to be in full awareness… but what about in the middle of the tsunami? How the hell does one stay awake and calm when the storm is clashing one on all four sides?

O, Alas! Alas! How needing of compassion are those living beings tortured by their past actions,
Who are drowning in this deep chasm, the engulfing ocean of their past actions!
Such is the nature of fluctuating cyclic existence!
Grant Your blessing, so that this ocean of sufferings may run dry!

How needing of compassion are those who are skill-less
Those who are tortured by ignorance and past actions,
Those who indulge in actions conducive to suffering –
Even though they desire happiness!
Grant your blessing, so that the obscuration of dissonant mental states and past actions may be purified!

How needing of compassion are the ignorant and the deluded, bound in this confining dungeon of egotistical attachments and the subject-object dichotomy,
Who, like wild game, are trapped in this snare time after time!
Grant Your blessing so that cyclic existence may be stirred to its depths!

How needing of compassion are those beings who endlessly revolve in the cycle of existence,
As if circling perpetually on the rim of a water-wheel…

—Tibetan Book of the Dead

When it’s easy, it’s easy.

When it’s hard, it’s easy… to drown in emotions that sweep all practice and mindfulness under the rug, out the door, and down the sewer. Typically uncharacteristic thoughts and actions surface and execute or near-execute, and even physical health begins to decline.

Those who are observant will be able to tell that even blogging and processing grinds to a halt with all that gum-up-iness.

When things calm down once again—or when the FEAR dissipates, and things begin going as DESIREd once more—one’s Core is re-exposed, un-blinded, and one’s spirit moans, “Crap. I gotta get back to being ME again! This does NOT feel good!”

Way I see it, I reckon there’s two choices from here: Give it all up for lost, or pick it all up for another round—though picking it back up seems to be even harder a task, for now one has to find a way to forgive, to release, to de-hate, to… LOVE those things which caused the storm???

Is that impossible?

One thing’s for sure—there is plenty to chew and reflect on for the re-try.
Plenty to be on-guard about for next cycle.

Will next time be any better, or will one pancake their nose to the floor again?

Impossible to know.

Will that stop one from trying?

Impossible.

 

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