The difference between effort and struggle

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Struggle happens for all of us, so it must have  a place in the scheme of things, but I for one have spent way too much time struggling for what struggle can never accomplish. For struggle is not the same as effort — what is sometimes called “right effort.” We all need to make an effort in every area of our life …Life doesn’t just provide us with food and shelter as a natural right. Effort is a natural exertion of the personal will toward a specified end. 

But struggle is an added push that is born of fear. Ultimately, it is born of the fear of not surviving, of dissolving and disappearing, not just as a physical form but as a psychological self… Struggle will never get us the things we want most – love, meaning, freedom from anxiety, contentment with ourselves exactly as we are, imperfections and all. For these we need another way. That way begins and ends in surrender, in letting go of our resistance to life as it presents itself.

Roger Housden, Dropping the Struggle: Seven Ways to Love the Life you Have

Dramas

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All delusions begin in the mind

All delusions are based on various ways we’re talking to ourselves

and then believing what we are saying.

Adyashanti

Sunday quote: Learning from our mistakes

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Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness

Jean Vanier

Metaphors to live by

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Spring is a metaphor for transitions. It moves from lifelessness to life and we move from lifelessness to life in each cycle of breathing. If we know change is going to occur we are in a better place to accept it. If we expect things to stay constant we are vulnerable to frustration, disappointment, and resistance.

Spring is also a metaphor for forgiveness. Whatever happened in the last season, life begins anew with no carryover resentment from the past. Spring reminds us, as Pema Chodron says, to start where we are.

Spring shows us the cycle of living and dying on a bigger scale do. Everything comes into being and goes out of being — changing its form.  Spring invites us not to become attached to things, even the most precious things in our life. The invitation is to love things wholeheartedly with the awareness that they will not be with us forever. And, indeed, we, ourselves, will not be here forever. The invitation is to not be afraid to grieve when that grief becomes necessary. Grief is, at times, the admission price to the present moment.

So welcome spring and your multifaceted metaphors for mindful living!

Arnie Kozak, on Beliefnet

Courage

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How can you reach a pearl by only looking at the sea?

If you seek the pearl, be a diver:

the diver needs several qualities: he must trust his rope and his life to the friend’s hand,

he must stop breathing,

and he must jump.

Rumi

Whatever

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swallow

If you remember nothing else, always remember this one great secret of spiritual practice: we don’t have to feel any particular way. We don’t have to have special experiences, nor do we have to be any particular way. With whatever arises, whether it’s pleasing or not, try to remember that all we can do is experience and work with whatever our life is right now. No matter what life is and no matter how we feel about it, all that matters in practice is whether we can honestly acknowledge what is going on, and then stay present with the physical experience of that moment.

Ezra Bayda, Zen Heart