Dukha: Suffering as Opportunity
This is the time to go inside, literally and figuratively. “Go inside yourself.” This advice reminds me of, “let it go.” It sounds like the thing to do, all my peeps on Social Media are doing it. But how? How do you go, “in,” when all you’ve ever done is go, “out.” Out, to perform or produce or be in service of someone else or something else.
For many of us, “go inside yourself,” might sound like Mandarin. Go inside and do what? Where exactly am I supposed to go? How do I get there? It’s not like I can hop in my Fiat and take 7th street to MLK and arrive ‘inside.’ And if I do get to this non-descript place inside myself, what the hell do I do there? And where should I park? Next to the heart, or the lungs, and don’t tell me I have to go by way of the intestines because I get car sick! Where are the directions? I don’t even see the crappy Ikea directions that just give you the pictures.
It’s not helpful for any one of us to tell anyone else what’s right or wrong. What a massive relief that is. I don’t have to have your answers. And you don’t have to have mine. We can say things all day, like: “you should meditate. You should practice yoga. You should use this app. You should read this book. You should chant this chant.” We can mass distribute the ‘should’s', and it still will not heal the hurt that is plaguing us.
The only person that can heal my hurt is me. I am the only one, and every time someone tells me I should do it “their” way, that just makes me feel like I’m doing it wrong. It only adds another layer to my hurt, that I then, have to be the one, to heal.
Every time I find a problem “out” there that I can use as a scapegoat to distract myself from my mission of “being love,” as me, right here and right now, is another moment I lose, to contributing to the actual solution. So the “work” or I prefer, “opportunity,” is to relieve yourself from all of the should’s and should not’s, even your own, and choose to make showing up, “in love,” as the most important, powerful, and potent, thing you could ever “do.” This is the doing that needs to be done. This gets the “fast pass” to the front of the line, and tops the “to do” list. Every. Single. Day.
What’s helpful is to stop layering our opinions about healing onto others and simply exude what has been healed within our own being. What’s helpful for me to do for you, and you for me, is to trust, that you will figure it out, and I will figure it out, and that me having an opinion about it, is just wasting energy I could be using to love you. What’s helpful, is all of us supporting each other, while surrendering to the fact that there are many roads, many paths, to the heart center. Your road map is your business. When I take my eyes off my map to fixate on yours, boom, that’s when tragic accidents happen. All I can really do, is use my turn signal, to extend the invitation, and keep my eyes on the open road in front of me vs. in the rear view mirror behind me, where I am even warned that things are closer than they appear.
I must choose to open my eyes every day and see, see what is right in front of me, because that’s where I am going, regardless of who decides to come along. Because I trust that you might prefer an alternate route and that’s ok. In the end, we will meet at the same cosmic exit ramp to destination death, and into the transition of triumph, where death is celebrated as divinity.
See you there my friend, see you there. And who knows, maybe we will connect at a rest stop along the journey. Wouldn’t that be lovely?
*This writing stemmed from my contemplation on the term in yoga that is used for suffering, dukha. I wanted to explore how suffering is an opportunity being served to us from our cosmic teacher and how the lessons to be learned from it are innumerable.
As always, bless you dear soul, bless you. If you made it this far, I am insanely honored to have spent this time with you. My intention is always to evolve my own consciousness and if that can be of service to you, awesome! If my words resonate….woohoo! If they do not, maybe they can help you find more clarity into your own understanding of suffering. Either way, I love you. I love you because you are a human like me, just doing the best you can. And that is enough.
Namaste,
Andrea Dawn
