Life is supposed to be hard.
The experience of being human is supposed to be a challenge.
And the more you don't want it to be that,
The more of a challenge or difficulty you're going to have.
And the more you embrace the truth of this,
Which is to allow reality to be reality,
And you embrace those challenges,
You accept that there are elements that are going to be very difficult and very hard,
Then the easier they become.
There's something very specific that I want to explore today.
And the inspiration comes from a conversation that I had with someone.
We were exploring the nature of life and being human,
As we do.
And one of the things that we were acknowledging was about relationships.
And how,
If you want a quality relationship,
You have to be willing to do the hard things in relationship.
And in our exploration of this,
We also looked at our relationship with life as a whole,
Which includes our relationship with so many other things,
Whether it relates to our relationship with money,
Our relationship to health and wellness,
Our relationship to our own path of discovery,
Or waking up to the truth of life.
Do you see that within this landscape of being human,
There's all these different experiences of relationship.
You are relating to something,
And your experience with that something shows you your relationship to it.
Just like with sharing space with another human being,
Whether it's a family member or whether it's an intimate partner,
Your experience of them is to experience the quality of relationship you have with them.
And all of these different expressions of relationship are a simple feedback mechanism that helps you see you.
They're all offering some flavor of reflection that ultimately helps you answer the question,
Who am I?
And of course,
As we explore quite often,
This is the fundamental question for the human being.
Who or what am I?
And it's the driving force that sends us on this great adventure of self-discovery.
And as it relates to this dynamic,
There's two parallels that I want to look at that will help illustrate a point I want to make.
And the conclusion of that point is that life is supposed to be hard.
The experience of being human is supposed to be a challenge.
And the more you don't want it to be that,
The more of a challenge or difficulty you're going to have.
And the more you embrace the truth of this,
Which is to allow reality to be reality,
And you embrace those challenges,
You accept that there are elements that are going to be very difficult and very hard,
Then the easier they become.
And this really speaks to the nature of resistance.
Whereas,
The more you resist resistance,
The greater the resistance.
It's like you compound resistance.
Also,
There's no avoiding resistance,
Meaning that there will always be some flavor of resistance.
And it's important that there's resistance.
One of the parallels that I want to talk about here,
Which is just to draw an illustration.
And so I don't want to turn this into an expectation of how you should be living your lives.
But because I'm examining my own experience,
I'm going to talk about my own experience,
Which doesn't have to be your experience.
And that experience is one of going to the gym.
And I just got back from the gym.
And so it's super fresh on my mind.
And I had this conversation early in the morning.
And so it all just beautifully ties together.
There's a sincerity of desire within me that wants to be healthy.
And the reason for wanting to be healthy is because I know what it's like to be,
Let's say,
Sick,
Or the opposite of healthy.
And that's not what I want from my experience.
In fact,
In my experience of not being healthy,
There was a considerable amount of blame,
As if it wasn't my fault or my doing,
That my experience of lack was somehow because of conditions,
Somehow because of external influence.
Effectively,
I couldn't really take responsibility for it,
Which only made it worse.
And then in my journey of regaining my health slowly over time,
And for some of those that know,
I used to at some point be more than 100 pounds than I am now,
Or 45 kilos.
And I grew up as the proverbial fat kid that got made fun of all the time.
So I still have to process a lot of that childhood drama.
But my point being is that this is a very intimate experience for me throughout my life.
And it's been one of those primary challenges that have fueled a lot of growth that I've experienced.
But here's my point,
That in order for me to experience more health,
In order for me to feel and be stronger,
I have to encounter a particular flavor of resistance.
And I'm required to do things that on the surface,
I don't really want to do.
Those things are hard.
The beautiful part about this is,
The more I do hard things,
The easier those things become.
But yet,
The easier they become,
I find more hard things to do,
Which then become easy,
And on and on and on.
So in order for me to progress and grow,
There is somewhat of a constant state of resistance.
Meaning I can lift a certain amount of weight that's really heavy and difficult,
But at some point it becomes easier.
And as it becomes easier,
I don't just keep lifting the easy way,
I find harder weight to lift,
Which maintains that resistance.
And in maintaining the resistance,
There's a natural growth that happens,
There's a strength that's built.
I love this parallel because in one way,
It's so obvious that that's how it works.
But I find the same thing happens in relationships.
And of course,
Again,
I'm not speaking just about a romantic partner,
But our relationships with everything.
And if we look at the example of relationships in a romantic setting,
If you want a beautiful relationship with another human being,
You're going to encounter and be faced with difficult decisions that are ultimately going to be hard.
And if we want to simplify that difficulty,
In one way,
It's going to be the difficulty that exists in being honest.
It's hard to be honest sometimes.
Now,
If you want a,
Let's say,
Non confrontational relationship where you don't ever have to encounter resistance,
Then in one way,
You can see that the path to do this is to never challenge yourself with new depths of honesty,
Which might also look like,
I'm not going to say anything,
I'm not going to question anything that might disrupt,
Let's say,
A status quo.
I imagine to some degree,
We've all experienced this,
Where we have avoided,
Let's say,
Elements of conflict,
Where we don't say how we really feel.
We don't share what we really think about something.
And we don't challenge anyone else in their behaviors or thoughts or opinions.
Right?
It's kind of like we avoid the possibility at all costs that the other person might leave.
And this is really a profound insight to explore,
Because on the surface,
What's being said is,
I want an easy life.
I want an easy relationship.
So I'm going to avoid the difficult things.
And isn't it amazing,
As with the journey of health and wellness or becoming stronger,
The more you avoid the difficult things,
The more difficult your life becomes.
And as with relationships,
The more you avoid difficult conversations,
The more you avoid,
Let's say,
Elements of vulnerability,
The more difficult the relationship becomes.
Here's the beautiful aspect.
The sincerity of desire that says,
Wow,
I'd really like an easy relationship.
I would say that there's a profound truth in that.
But we misunderstand the path to get there.
We don't understand that in order to have,
Let's say,
One end of the spectrum,
You have to go through the other end.
Here's a great analogy.
If you want to become stronger,
You have to explore your weakness.
And this is referring to everything,
But in the example of going to the gym and lifting weights,
If you want to get stronger and lift heavier weights,
You have to experience your weakness in lifting weights.
And if you don't want to see your weakness,
If you don't want to experience your vulnerability,
Then you will avoid lifting heavy things.
And quite obviously,
Like when I go to the gym,
I have to kind of leave my ego at the door.
Because if I'm concerned about what other people think or wanting to appear strong compared to somebody else,
Then going to the gym isn't the place that I would go.
Because there are clearly so many other people there that are much stronger than I am.
And so from an egoic standpoint,
If I draw comparisons,
It can be deflating for the ego.
But when I set that aside,
And I recognize what this is really about,
The sincerity of the desire,
And why this is necessary,
It's just like being present.
Then you can lay the ego down and simply do what needs to be done in order to honor what is deeply sincere.
You can embrace the journey,
Which is also like understanding that yes,
This is going to be difficult.
Yes,
This is going to be hard.
But the path towards what I want to experience requires that I encounter this difficulty.
You see this that it's reflective of what I was talking about in the beginning,
That there's a shift that happens where you essentially say,
Oh,
This is supposed to be hard.
This is supposed to be difficult.
And because I now see that it's supposed to be that way,
I open up to it.
Now,
If I'm confused,
And I want it to be easy,
And I think it's supposed to be easy right now,
Then I avoid the difficulty.
I hide from the difficulty.
I make excuses about the difficulty.
I whine and complain about the difficulty,
Which is also like denying the truth of reality,
Wanting it how I want it,
Rather than acknowledging what's real and true,
And playing along with what's real and true,
Which again,
Is also a reflection of my ego getting out of the way,
And embracing the truth of reality,
Which I also feel is representative of this journey of being human,
Is aligning yourself with the truth of reality,
Which effectively says in some playful way,
That the world is yours.
You can have anything you desire,
But you have to play the game.
Right?
Like,
You have a desire to be stronger?
Okay,
It's yours.
Well,
What's the path to get there?
You have to encounter your weakness.
You see this,
It's like,
It's all available.
But you have to understand what that path looks like to get there.
And then acknowledge that the sacrifice is worth it.
And that might be valuable to mention,
That in whatever you desire to experience,
There is going to be some flavor of sacrifice.
And I love the role of being conscious of this and then honoring the sacrifice.
Because,
And maybe we can talk about this in relationship to the journey of spiritual awakening.
And I even hesitate using that word,
But maybe you can hold it gently with me.
But in this spiritual journey of waking up to the truth of what you are,
The sacrifice is your ego.
The sacrifice is clinging to the things you think you want on the surface for the deeper thing you want,
Let's say in your soul.
The deeper thing you want related to a fundamental purpose that gives rise to your humanness.
Which in another way of speaking is to connect with a deeper authenticity of what you are and letting go of the facade of what you are.
Because if you live this life to protect the facade of what you are,
You won't do the difficult things to connect with the deeper authenticity.
Because the deeper authenticity will threaten the facade.
Again,
Maybe like the example of going to the gym,
Where if you want to appear to be the strongest person,
The most put together person that's not weak,
Then going to the gym and encountering your weakness isn't going to help you maintain that facade.
Now again,
Understand that I'm just,
I'm trying to illustrate a point here.
So the story in these things isn't really the point,
It's what I'm pointing to with the point.
That make sense?
Let's look at how this relates to relationships and we can stick with the example of a romantic situation,
Since also that's my experience and where I'm looking at these things.
I mean there's ten thousand and one examples of where the ego wants to avoid saying something that's sincere,
Wants to avoid asking a question that's really there,
Because the ego doesn't know what's gonna happen.
Why would the ego be so concerned about the unknown?
This is a great inquiry.
And in my way of pointing I'll say this,
Because in the space of the unknown it has a very difficult time holding on to its facade.
Like if the ego is intent on maintaining a particular image of yourself,
Which needs life and everyone else to do a particular thing to be a certain way,
Then it needs to have a sense of certainty about what's going to happen.
The unknown threatens all of that.
Like I don't know if you're gonna go here,
I don't know if you're gonna go there,
I don't know if you're gonna say this,
I don't know if you're gonna like me,
Right?
You see all of this unknown.
And so in order for the ego to maintain its imaginary existence,
It needs to have control over everything.
Which is like saying it needs the opposite of the unknown,
Which is really fascinating when you see the truth of things be in the unknown,
Right?
You can see here how the ego is in a profound opposition to the truth of life,
Which is why it can make such a mess.
This is so brilliantly beautiful.
It really exposes how we are the centerpiece of our experience and the,
Let's call it,
Suffering that we create for ourselves as we're in opposition to what's true.
But in relationships,
You have to really decide what's important to you.
And this evolves over time.
Let's play with this and say,
What kind of relationship do you want to have?
And in the beginning,
And this reminds me of being in school and first exploring relationships,
And what was important to me at the time is that I look cool,
Right?
What's important is that I have a girlfriend as an accessory,
Which makes me look cool to my friends.
Or I'm trying to,
In some way,
Build on the idea of myself so that I can prop it up in the world and get the world's acceptance,
Get the world's approval,
Get the world's love,
Right?
Which is both beautiful and gross at the same time.
Beautiful because it exposes the profound misunderstanding,
Which is also innocent in nature,
But gross to think that I would use another human being as an accessory to build on an imaginary sense of self-importance.
Which also comes with a terrible relationship experience because in your attempt to hold on to this image of yourself,
This accessory now becomes a possession where you need to control them so that they don't jeopardize the image,
Right?
Like,
Don't make me look dumb.
Don't be you.
Be what I want you to be so that I can protect the image of myself.
And this just creates a disaster.
And also what it creates is the impossibility to go deeper.
And as you travel through these different layers of discovery in relationship,
You start to realize that this facade you're trying to protect isn't really what you crave.
It's not giving you what you really want.
And so in this,
You start questioning,
Wait,
What's really going on here?
Why isn't this working?
Why isn't this fulfilling what I thought it was going to fulfill?
And that's a whole nother rabbit hole.
But effectively,
It's not working because it's not true.
You're building on something that's a fantasy.
You're building on something that's imaginary.
You're playing in the realm of mental constructs,
Building on an imaginary self that has no reality to it.
But yet,
The craving within you is actually craving for something real.
And you notice this in your journey of growth,
Is you start craving something more authentic.
And this is profound,
Because it really speaks to the,
What we might call a spiritual journey,
But I just consider it to be a human journey,
Where we are inevitably on a quest to connect with the real,
Which is authentic,
Which is sincere.
We're trying to access that in ourselves,
Which is also trying to answer the question,
What am I?
We're looking for what's real.
And so as you play all of those silly games in relationships that are trying to survive the ego,
You realize it's not working.
And you crave something more real and authentic.
But here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
If you're craving something that's real and authentic,
You have to journey into the unknown.
And the unknown will threaten the facade.
So you have to choose.
What do you want?
You can't have both.
You can't dive into the unknown and protect something in the future.
And the thing we're always trying to protect in the future is an idea about ourselves.
We're trying to protect a facade.
That has to be released.
It has to be let go of.
Again,
This also speaks to the difficulty.
The journey of being human that is hard,
This is the hardness of it,
Is to release what we're holding on to,
Which is always an idea about ourselves,
Which is always the ego,
And surrender to something that is much more authentic,
But it's always wrapped in the unknown.
Like I've mentioned,
The difficulty is found in being honest.
And here's the beautiful thing about being honest.
In order to be honest,
You have to let go.
Because in being honest,
You don't know what's going to happen.
For example,
If I just be myself,
I don't know what's going to happen.
If I express this sincerity,
I don't know how they're going to respond.
Do you see how this fear is a fear of losing the facade,
Losing a particular image about yourself?
There's a fear of surrendering that character,
The ego.
And so in order to be honest,
There must be a surrendering of that.
Another reason why this is so profound is it shows me when I operate from my ego,
Fundamentally,
It's operating from a lie.
Because how do I hold on to the image?
By not being honest.
How do I protect this something that is imaginary?
The something that I think that I am that I'm not really?
Well,
I be what everyone else wants me to be.
So that I can get their approval,
So that they do what I want them to do.
Do you see this?
Gosh.
I don't let myself be myself.
Can you see how it is we disconnect ourselves from ourselves?
Do you see how we're moving further away from the authenticity that we crave?
In this living a lie that is the ego,
We are separating ourselves from the authenticity that we are craving,
Which is simply to crave the truth.
This is the symbolic battle.
Again,
A battle that is difficult,
A battle that is hard,
A battle that is the fundamental resistance that is helping us grow.
This is supposed to be hard.
It's supposed to be hard to face your fear.
And what I see a lot of the time in spirituality is people waiting for the fear to go away.
Waiting for it not to be difficult.
As if it's not supposed to be difficult.
Because doing difficult things is like a loud voice of sincerity that says,
I'm honoring what is true.
What is true is important.
And I'm going to set fire to this lie,
Because I also see what that lie is doing to my life.
I'm going to let go of what people think about me.
And I'm just going to be what's true.
Which is what?
To connect yourself to what's true.
And the only thing that's going to burn is who you think you are.
Now,
Again,
The more you think that who you think you are,
Is who you really are,
Then the more painful that burning.
But the more you see that it's not really who you are,
Which is the inquiry we are constantly engaged in here,
Then there's a deeper willingness to let it burn.
Doesn't mean it's going to be easy.
There's always going to be some flavor of difficulty associated with it.
And that's okay.
My goodness,
What this really speaks to,
For me,
Is a life of devotion.
And this life of devotion can play itself out in relationships with other people,
An intimate partner,
Or in your relationship with yourself as it relates to many different types of journey,
But on the theme today of health and wellness.
For me,
Going to the gym is an act of devotion.
It is setting fire to that aspect of myself that is afraid to see my own weakness.
Because I see that that aspect of myself is not serving me,
And it's actually leading to a greater destruction.
And I recognize the deeper sincerity in me that truly wants to honor this human experience that I've been given,
And also simply wants to enjoy my life.
Also wants to feel good.
Also wants to give myself the greatest chance for success in this life,
Whatever that means to me.
Ultimately,
I want to create conditions that honor my heart and creates an environment that truly allows myself to show up.
And this is learned through a contrast of doing the opposite,
And getting in touch with the pain of that,
And becoming radically honest with myself that it's only me doing this to me.
Now,
If you have a bunch of people to blame,
Then you have a bunch of ways out of this,
But those ways out of it are just going to lead down that same path of pain.
Right?
You can keep blaming other people for the rest of your life,
But the pain intensifies.
And that's on point,
Right?
It's intentional that the pain intensifies,
That it gets worse,
Because it's trying to get you to take responsibility for the pain.
Like,
No matter who you blame,
The pain remains.
The blame just helps you hide from the pain.
But sooner or later we realize,
Oh,
Wow,
This is kind of up to me,
Isn't it?
Yeah,
It's all inside of you.
Here's another thing I want to explore.
And I'm going to kind of end with this,
Because I find it super relevant as it relates to making progress.
And it's a great extension on the subject of sacrifice.
One thing I've learned,
And this could change at some point,
But what I've learned is that if I want to give myself the best possible chance of success in the gym,
I need a trainer.
I need someone that I can be accountable to and go see on the days that I go to the gym.
And they help me do what I need to do to make the progress that I really want to make.
This is so comical to me,
Because I see the difference between my experience of having a trainer and my experience of going to the gym on my own.
And I wish you could see the visual.
Imagine,
You know,
Like today,
I go to the gym,
And I meet my trainer.
And we have an awesome hour long workout.
That's very intentional,
That's very focused.
Now,
Imagine I go to the gym and get the visual that I'm there for about 15 minutes,
And then I go home.
That's my experience.
If I go to the gym on my own.
Now,
Granted,
Going to the gym on my own,
Which is how it started,
Was a great launching pad to make more progress down the road.
So it was important.
It was important for me to go to the gym at times and spend five minutes there.
Even the days I would go to the gym and sit in the parking lot and not even go inside.
That was its own form of workout,
Just getting there.
And I love it,
Because this is all just part of that journey.
It's such a beautiful reflection of just baby steps,
Of just doing what you can do.
And it builds on itself over time.
And what I've recognized is how important it is for me to make whatever sacrifice I need to make to honor this flavor of growth that I want to experience.
And so for me,
Spending the money to meet someone for an hour,
Five days a week is so incredibly worth it.
And again,
This is completely relative.
But understand the point.
Because what am I sacrificing?
So much nonsense.
I'm sacrificing comforts that I might spend the money on elsewhere.
And those comforts are me wanting an easy life now,
That ultimately create a painful and more difficult life later.
So I'm taking these resources that I have,
And I'm reallocating them towards something that I have a very high degree of confidence that will add significant value to my life.
This is such an just an amazing principle.
Again,
That speaks to so many different flavors of relationship.
Where you take your resources,
And we have different types of resources,
And you put it towards difficult things that you have a high degree of certainty will add value to your life.
Now,
I'm sure there's the spiritual argument that wants to say,
Well,
What about just living in the moment?
And I might have to do a video on that just to tear it apart.
Because there's a flavor of that sentence of just living in the moment,
That's actually trying to hide from doing difficult things that are important.
It's a way of seeking comfort,
And denying the reality of a process,
Which is to encounter resistance to become stronger.
When I contemplate living in the moment,
What does that mean?
That means getting radically honest with myself about my human experience.
It's not trying to protect a facade about me in the future.
It's not thinking the prize is in the future.
It's not being lost in the past.
It's asking myself,
What is true right now?
What is unshakably honest about how I see my experience of being human?
And so often I see there's a lot of things I'm hiding from,
And a lot of things I'm denying,
That when I get honest,
I see that they're true.
I hope that clarifies a little bit.
Maybe that spiritual avoidance of wanting an easy life now,
And so we avoid difficult things.
And again,
I've played that game.
I've played the game where I'm just going to let every moment be some sort of party.
But it's so obvious,
I was just hiding.
I was hiding from the reality of my human existence.
I was hiding from pain that I was carrying.
I was hiding from inadequacies that I had,
And trying to cover it up with distractions that helped me numb all of those things,
And gave me some sort of temporal sense of pleasure,
Which I thought was being spiritual.
Again,
It's all part of the journey.
So just like going to the gym and spending five minutes there,
You could have all sorts of judgments and whatever,
But it's just part of it.
And so in the flavor of this,
And my attempt to wrap this up,
There's such a beautiful invitation here to get present and honest with yourself.
And I understand that it's scary.
You have to really look at all of those things you're afraid of losing.
You have to be willing to get in touch with your weakness,
Which is to be vulnerable.
And all of that can be incredibly scary.
But isn't it worth it?
Isn't it worth it when you get in touch with the sincerity of what you're actually looking for?
In some way,
It's like,
I just want to come back to myself.
I feel so disconnected from my own heart.
I feel so disconnected from life.
Maybe I feel disconnected from other people.
All this is saying is I feel disconnected from the truth.
Which is also like saying,
I feel like I'm not living authentically.
Which is also like saying,
I feel like I'm everybody else's prisoner.
I'm avoiding reality.
Which is to say,
I'm avoiding the truth.
Which is to say,
I'm avoiding the authenticity of my own heart.
And that's a vulnerable space.
I invite you to go there.
At least start there.
And maybe identify some difficult things that you're avoiding,
That you can honestly see will add real value to your human journey.
And if you need to get a trainer,
Get a trainer.
All right,
My dears.
Thanks for hanging out with me today.
