There is only one person who can end your suffering.
The present moment is the only moment available to us, and it is the door to all moments. We tend to think that there will be a point on the horizon that once we reach, we will have finally "arrived."
But there is no such point out there on the horizon. The only point you ever have any power or control over is this moment. This moment, the one you're in right now.
We make ourselves jump through hoops before we allow ourselves any satisfaction or self accolade. Because of this, we often put ourselves and our happiness off into the future.
My big hang up has always been that when I meet my soulmate and get married, then I will be truly happy and fulfilled. But the truth is I have had many soul mates in my life. My relationships have gotten progressively healthier and more rewarding, but all of them have taught me something wonderful about myself.
No matter what the destination and the timing of our arrival, life always seems to have its challenges. I don't know why that is... I wish I could change it most times.
Sometimes I see and feel so much suffering, I wish I could take it away and save another person from their own suffering.
I’ve learned, however, that isn’t what's best for us. In the long run, taking away someone else's suffering will only create more suffering, for me, for you, and for them.
It seems like an odd lesson, but perhaps one of the most important ones we can learn.
There is only one person who can end your suffering.
That one person is You.
We must learn to release our own suffering for ourselves.
It's best to understand and embrace this about life, from this place of acceptance, there will always be challenges there will always be opportunity for growth and change, there are always infinite possibilities and potentialities available to us in every moment. When you start living from this awareness life opens for in ways you could never have imagined.
Life is what's going on right now. Are you happy now? If not now, then when?
When you lose the ten pounds, when you have the sculpted arms and impress people with your headstand in yoga class? When you get married, when you get divorced, when you lose the baby weight, when you have another baby?
When you write that book, when you beat that time, when you get that promotion, when you change your career, when you break six figures, when you retire, when you have that new car, when you buy that house, when you pay off your mortgage?
Maybe Friday, maybe next summer, maybe this fall, when you sober up, when you have that drink, when you quit smoking, when you finally get over her, when you finally get him to notice you?
If not now, then when? When you feel better? When you’ve got more money? When you feel less tired. When you’re dead? When?
When we embrace true presence and grasp that this moment is the only place and time in which we have any influence or choice, we begin to experience that sense of inner peace that we’ve been chasing.
Not sometime in the future, but now. Then it begins to seem as if each challenge adds to the suspense, the chaos, the possibilities, the romance, the adventure, the joy and the mystery of life.
When we grasp that this moment is the only place and time in which we have any influence, we begin to experience that sense of inner peace.
Here's to your infinite miraculous expansion.
“Awakening is not a thing. It is not a goal, not a concept. It is not something to be attained. It is a metamorphosis. If the caterpillar thinks about the butterfly it is to become, saying ‘And then I shall have wings and antennae’, there will never be a butterfly. The caterpillar must accept its own disappearance in its transformation. When the marvelous butterfly takes wing, nothing of the caterpillar remains.”
