I can’t tell you how often I see people looking for instant relief.
They wonder why their understanding doesn’t always help them in the way they think it should. “I hear you”, they say, “so why don’t I feel better?”
Or, “I think I get what you’re saying but that doesn’t help me now. I still feel bad today.”
I don’t sell instant relief. I’ve never managed to reliably find instant relief myself, so I can’t even fathom how I would give it to you.
Instant relief is not on offer, but understanding is.
Understanding that we’re designed to experience life, and life is rich and complex and varied, full of pendulum swings and ups and downs. Thankfully.
Understanding that we aren’t in charge of what we feel. We aren’t here to dictate how life should go, we’re here to watch it unfold, witness the miracle of it, and create when and where we can.
Understanding that it’s not personal. It’s not about you. “You” is only an idea you have. Experience flows through you and then it leaves and makes way for different experience to flow through you. It is that simple.
Understanding that all humans get in our own way at times. They say that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. That may be true, but a life where suffering is feared or seen as the enemy is missing the point, too. We all get lost in thought at times and we all suffer when we do. That suffering isn’t us or ours, and it’s never permanent. It’s just part of the diverse, fluid experience of being human.
I remember wanting instant relief too. Life felt like a game of add-more-good, feel-less-bad. I was exhausted and felt powerless.
As you begin to deeply see that you are always well and peaceful by nature, and that the thought and emotion you experience over that wellness is not personal and can’t touch who you are, you relax into all experience. Instant relief isn’t necessary.
And ironically, there tends to be far less desire for anything other than exactly what you have.