Life is Difficult

Hello. I love ‘journey’s; and constantly re-checking that I am on the right journey and not at the wrong destination! I am going to blatantly paraphrase the first paragraph of ‘The Road Less Travelled’ chapter title “Life is Difficult” which could easily translate to “Bikram Yoga is a Challenge” 🙂 . As with many things in life the premise of this book translates beautifully into the microcosm that is a 90 minute Bikram Yoga class and you can hold it there; and then when discovering it in the class for yourself it transcends back out into your ‘other’ world again. Perfect I thought! I can use this to help me stay anchored to a message I would like to get across and not digress (as I sometimes do) I will leave it to you to uncover the correlations between what this para says about life and a Bikram Yoga Class…

“Life is Difficult; this is a great truth. Life is full of pain as well as joy. Once we see truly see this truth we transcend it; once we accepted this truth the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. The idea that life should be easy is prevalent as are the moanings that the burdens of life represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be visited upon oneself; I know about this kind of moaning because I have done my share. What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one; we would all like to avoid and attempt to get out of them rather than suffer through them; this tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental stress. Life is a series of problems do we want to moan about them or solve them; DISCIPLINE is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. It is this whole process of facing and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed they create our courage and our wisdom. Let us recognize the necessity of suffering and the value thereof and inculcate in ourselves… the need to face problems directly and that it is only because of the pain of confronting and solving problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. DISCIPLINE… a means by which we can experience the pain of problems in such a way as to work them through and solve them, learning and growing in the process…”.

Om Om Om Lock the Knee

Namaste ~ Trisha

1 November 2012