How we create the suffering in our lives

There is a huge difference between the reality of life and our reality. In the reality of life, what’s so is always what’s so. What happened is what happened and your life is exactly the way that it is. Everything can change tomorrow, but at any moment, what’s so is always what’s so. That’s the reality of life.

Then there is our reality. Our reality exists in our mind. It consists of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and opinions. In the reality of life, there are no thoughts or feelings. There is only the truth. Things just are and our feelings about it are totally irrelevant.

To see this in your life, find a time when you were upset. Then notice that something happened. That’s a fact. It happened. Now notice how totally irrelevant your feelings were. Your feelings may affect your future actions, but they don’t change the truth. What happened still happened.

The truth and our feelings have nothing to with each other. This awareness is incredibly important because if you can surrender to the truth, you will see your situation clearly and be very effective. You will also look in a direction where solutions, opportunity, and possibility show up.

When you fight the truth, you do the opposite. You create a state of fear and upset. You lose your ability to see clearly and act destructively. Instead of focusing on solutions, the focus is on resisting. Instead of having the situation clear up, you magnify it.

Here is an example. My wife and I used to have a cat and that cat wouldn’t bark. I could yell at the cat and plead with the cat, but no matter what I did, the cat still wouldn’t bark.

If I could surrender to fact that the cat doesn’t bark, I would see clearly and could focus on what needs to be done. If I wanted to hear barking, I could get a dog and this area of my life would clear up. This is an example of where life works.

Life stops working when we fight the truth. If I am fighting the fact that the cat doesn’t bark, all my focus will be on the cat and I will have no focus on what needs to be done. I will be convinced that the cat is the problem, but the cat is not the problem. The cat is just the cat. The problem is my fighting the truth.

Look at the areas of your life that work great. These are areas where you can flow with whatever happens. You see clearly and can take effective action. Now look at the areas of your life that don’t work. These are area where you can’t flow. Whenever you have an area of life that isn’t working, there is cat that isn’t barking, and you are fighting it.

Surrendering to the truth of what’s so is the key to being effective in life. It removes the fear, upset and tunnel vision. It restores your ability to see clearly and allows you to see what action you need to take.

So why do we fight the truth? We fight the truth because it hurts. It strikes a nerve. It’s the automatic, subconscious avoidance of this hurt that destroys love and sabotages our lives. Fortunately, this is a hurt that can be healed. Learn more.