The most effective method to get past any hardships in life.
I want to start with a cliche but an apt one for what I am going to share — bear with me for just a few seconds :
Life is akin to an EKG.
A flatline means you’re probably reading this piece in your afterlife, sipping on a warm, heavenly cup of what could be, the best coffee known across galaxies.
If you are going through something really tough at the moment, I want to say to you right at the very beginning — you’re not alone in this, at all.
I know, you would think I do not know what I am talking about because I don’t know the problems in your life.
Agreed.
I don’t, but I do know and understand life , and truth is we all go through some really trying times in life, one way or the other.
Have you ever shared your experience on a platform, only to realise that there are hundreds of people suffering the same, some even worse than you. It is no coincidence . We are all in this together, regardless of our insane attempts to divide and separate ourselves from one another.
If I were to give a detailed account here of all the things that have been a setback in my life just in this one year — 2021 , I would end up depressed and possibly hopeless. From being cheated on, to being left by the man I loved , to losing my dad , 2021 has been some year.
But surprisingly, something kept me going through all of this .
I am a person of the Sikh faith and there is a beautiful verse in our religious scriptures that says -
“ Any one who loves the almighty only in the good times is actually trading love for good times and has no true love for the almighty.”
Atheists might not agree to this view.
But I am a believer . I do believe there is a higher power out there ,a supreme source of pure love and light, a supreme consciousness and we are all derived from it.
Some might argue this is just a way to be hopeful in life and nothing more , but in my experience that is exactly what you need in the harshest times of life:
HOPE.
The only effective strategy that always works when there are storms brewing around you ?
It is your ATTITUDE !
How you look at these downfalls is the one fact that determines how soon and effectively you climb back up!
For me , this is how I see it — where the joyful moments of life are important, the harsh times in life are an absolute must for your growth as well.
Because you aren’t just a body or a mind — you aren’t just flesh and bones.
In my journey, I have placed all my hardships into two categories :
1. LESSONS : I look at the world as a school. My time table is full of good and bad lessons — they are all important for the soul to grow and gain practical education about the world. These are not the average geography lessons you learn in kindergarten.These are lessons on being a human being — lessons on love, compassion, kindness, deceit, selfishness, cheating, pain, ego , greed , lust , friendship, anger, ego , righteousness , joy— and so on.
Sometimes I have wondered to myself —
“ why do we even need these lessons?”
Because I believe that we all are individual souls fashioned from the same cloth as the Almighty. As an individual soul you learn lessons — hands on training of different situations that make the soul richer in experiences — it is as if the Almighty consciousness fashions souls in pieces form it to imbibe more and more experiences — why ?
Well — I do not know the answer to that — If I did , I might well have been in union with the one, enlightened : as we call the souls that find answers to these questions .
I am not.
But this is the attitude you should have — the faith that all the downhill events are important, and one should feel just as grateful for these experiences, as one does for happiness. The pain that we feel when we suffer is the biggest teacher in life. It is not the ideal way to learn, but sometimes as humans we do not learn until something shakes us up from within.
Imagine a mother losing her child — I cannot think of a higher example of grief and it is a pain I would never wish upon anyone.Then why do people have these experiences — Is God so mean that he would want us to suffer ?
I do not believe that — I feel as a soul sometimes we go through these tortures to make us realise that at the end every attachment in the world is temporary — to people and to assets.
Whether we experience union or separation, happiness or sadness , we are born in a world meant for experiences.At some point in our lives, this one or the countless other ones — we do go through it , all of us.
If you are going through something unimaginably bad just think once —
- What is the lesson life is trying to teach you ?.
- Are you even open to receiving it?
You will find your answer. I promise.
2. Tests — Look back to those moments in life when you have been faced with impossible choices —
What is right vs what is easy ?
What is morally correct vs what is pleasing to the senses?
Good for you vs desire, selfish vs good of all.
Those are the tests in life.
Unlike the exams in school, these do not have a schedule — they are the ones thrown at us randomly, out of the blue. You would not even know your score , until you pass from the world and are handed the report card of all your deeds at one go.
Maybe at that point you look back on all the careless mistakes that could have been avoided in this life.
This analogy does help to make life a little easy to understand , at the very least for me.
If you pass , you ascend to the next step.
If you fail, you either repeat the lesson completely or you are demoted — and there in lies the dreaded principle of karma.
“ What you sow, so shall you reap.”
If we look at life with this understanding , then all events — good or bad are not just inevitable but actually important for your soul.Your soul would never graduate if not for these events.
You would be stuck in an endless cycle of births and deaths.
Maybe it is easy for me to write about this philosophy because in the eastern traditions, reincarnation, karma , the cycle of life are concepts that have been around for thousands of years and are widely accepted as the truth , unlike the western world , where these ideologies are sparking interest now.
So , whoever you are , wherever you are , whatever you are going through, know that you were meant to go through this, in this life time. Maybe you even chose it — to experience what this would feel like.
And the way out ?
Its is through the pain — just stick to being a good human being as much as possible through all of the suffering.
Stay true to your consciousness.
In the end, always take the path that satisfies your soul and makes it happy.
You will never go wrong. The path may be extremely difficult but it will be the right one. And the pain?
The pain is but a teacher trying to teach you an invaluable lesson , even if it is that attachment to mortal things is fleeting, much like our time on this planet.
Use it well.
God bless your soul.
