Can I See This As My Path?

"It is absolutely fundamental that we learn that when difficult situations and feelings arise they are not obstacles to be avoided, but rather these very difficulties are, in fact, the path itself. They're our opportunity to wake up out of our little protected world; they're our opportunity to awaken into a more genuine way of living. This point can't be overemphasized.

Of course, you have heard this idea before--that our difficulties are our path. But it's a lot easier to understand this intellectually than it is to remember it when we're in the middle of the muddiness of life. Why? Because, again, we instinctively want a life that is problem free. So we usually continue seeking comfort and safety until, at some point, if we're fortunate, we get disappointed enough by life's blows to realize that our strategies--control, trying harder, withdrawing, blaming, whatever they are--will never give us the quality in life that all of us want. At that point--with life's disappointments as our teacher--we can start to use our difficulties as our path to awakening. Remembering the importance of this allows us to make the critical practice step of welcoming our distress, because we understand that as long as we continue to resist our experience we will stay stuck."

~Ezra Bayda in "Shambala Sun"