Freedom. Isn’t that something we all want more of? Who doesn’t long to feel relaxed, peaceful, unstuck, and open to everything.

How can we find this ease and flow? It helps immensely to discover that there is great value in hard things.

Have you noticed that we tend to avoid our most challenging feelings and reactions? We drink, smoke, snack, get busy, call someone, procrastinate, ruminate, or worry. We get caught in addictions, relationship drama, and stress of all kinds.

The purpose of these strategies is to keep us from feeling pain. And in the avoidance of pain, we stay stuck in a limited view of ourselves and life, denying the peace and contentment that are rightfully ours.

Take a look at any problem that persists in your life, and I can guarantee that there are unexplored feelings driving it.

If you truly want to live in freedom, openness, and full aliveness, then learn how to be with challenging experiences. When they’re met with love and care, they lose their power, they relax, and the expansiveness of your true nature is revealed. Consider these pointers, and watch your life transform.

Be willing. Find openness within yourself to be with whatever experiences arise in you. Vow to stay open to them, even if it’s hard.

Know your strategies. Reflect on your particular avoidance strategies. Become an expert in what triggers them and how they play out in you so you can know when you’re turning away from hard experiences.

Peel the onion. Start with any emotional reaction, and create a spacious field of compassion in your mind and heart to let the feelings be present as they are. Let go of your thoughts about the feelings, and bring your attention to the actual direct experience of them. Give them the open, loving space they need. Then keep going whenever feelings arise.

Be aware of the sensations in your body. Make space for movement, blockages, energy, and whatever wants to come.

Can you feel the freedom in this approach? Eventually, you might notice something miraculous. What you thought was hard and even scary is just more experience arising and passing on. It’s energy, bodily movement, the release of breath, maybe tears, but not something that you need to avoid.

Turning inward to welcome what is puts you in harmony with things as they are, and you are bound to notice a number of happy side effects.

Effortlessness. Being afraid of our feelings and using strategies to avoid them is draining. We are constantly on the lookout for any shred of discomfort, then scurry to deflect from it. These inner dynamics sap energy, and simply being restores it.

Truth. Strategies to avoid our feelings contain within them a subtle lie. We are lying to ourselves about the full reality of what is happening in the moment, and at some level we know it. Telling the truth about what’s actually here might be difficult, but what we gain is a deep sense of integrity.

Transformation. When we offer our loving attention to the most buried fragments of ourselves, we can’t help but change. When we are no longer driven by unconscious forces, we feel relaxed, whole, loving, and clear.

Empathy. When we welcome our feelings with love and acceptance, we connect with the universality of life beyond our personal selves. Fear is not just “my fear,” but we realize that everyone feels it. Same with sadness, loss, shame, or inadequacy. We naturally feel tender toward others who are suffering.

We don’t need to go searching for difficult experiences. As Adyashanti says in the quote above, life offers them to us for our awakening. Invite yourself to discover great value in hard things. You’ll be grounded, present, and available to all.

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“Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render to the world.”
~Ramana Maharshi

In some ways, it’s a dark time in the history of the world and humanity.

It seems easy to look around and find a lack of compassion for human suffering and our planet, war and conflict, and desperate, disenfranchised people just trying to survive.

The news is full of stories that highlight the violence, death, and despair that result from choices people make based on fear and delusion.

It’s not too difficult to get sucked into a feeling of helplessness, resisting the world as it is and wanting it to change for the better. Can’t people just come to their senses and be kind to each other?

Staying stuck in this story of resistance, if you’re like me, you’ll feel a knot of tension inside that sits there, unmoving, every time you read another report of struggle and misery somewhere in the world.

So what to do? Do we wait—and hope—for things to change?

Certainly, if you feel moved to take action for the betterment of humankind, then do that. Volunteer, join an organization you support, donate money, and use your vote wisely.

But there’s something more essential that is possible, and that is to realize that every single choice you make matters.

Can you control how those in power govern? Can you end a war or feed those who are starving? For the most part, no.

But what you absolutely can do is turn your attention inward, shine the light of awareness on your own conditioned patterns and confused thinking, and live in the world as a beacon of clarity and love. By doing so, you’re ending the inner war with your own experience.

This is what heals division and brings the objects of the world—including you—to be more in alignment with their natural state of peace and love.

You might feel helpless about the challenges in the world. But do what is available to you: be an activist for your own freedom.

Commit to waking up out of the dream that makes you believe you’re wounded and small. Bring open and loving presence to what’s happening in the world and your reactions to it. And reflect back acceptance, compassion, wholeness, and possibility.

This is what changes everything.

When you’re freed up from the trap of the conditioned mind, you naturally become open and generous. No longer caught behind self-imposed barriers, you see love everywhere, which informs your every action.

All things in form are an expression of the underlying fabric of universal consciousness. That’s why what you do matters to the whole—your actions and way of being bring about either more suffering and fear or more surrender into love.

This is the fierce choice that you’re actually making in every moment of your life.

Stuck in mental stories that take you away from the present moment, you’re self-focused and resistant, believing you lack what you need to be happy.

But as you see through this distorted fear-based thinking and move beyond it, you become an open vessel for the free flow of undivided consciousness. You’re available to welcome everything unconditionally in love.

The ills of the world are created by people, just like you, who make decision after decision from personal pride, need, lack, and fear. This is what glorifies the belief in the separate self.

Know that you are born of love, just like every other being in the universe. Live consciously as this love—as much as possible—and you are doing your part to change the world.

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“The discovery that peace, happiness and love are ever-present within our own Being, and completely available at every moment of experience, under all conditions, is the most important discovery that anyone can make.”
~Rupert Spira

Many of us long to awaken to our true nature, and we have ideas about what that will be like.

We think that if we’re awake, we’ll be in a state of bliss forever, life will always flow smoothly, or we’ll never again experience difficult feelings.

And here’s the truth: bliss doesn’t last, life presents challenges, and the range of human feelings arises.

But what’s absolutely amazing is this. In this moment and any moment, it’s possible to find our way out of suffering and into peace.

That’s why the magic is in the moment.

You don’t need to be concerned with changing who you are or figuring out how to solve all your problems. You can’t erase your painful past. These goals will keep your mind busy forever and won’t bring you the happiness you long for.

The way out of suffering is much simpler, and it boils down to the moment.

The only time you’re suffering—is now, and the only time you can let go of the turmoil of personal stories—is now.

Right now in this moment, you can relax away from the stressful mind and lean into the open, loving space of being aware that is completely at ease with things as they are.

Right now, without any thoughts, you’re not broken and there’s nothing wrong. You discover that you are present, whole, loving, and peaceful…

And this is what’s true in any moment.

Remembering that the magic is in the moment, when you wake up to realize that the conditioned mind has taken you over, it’s cause for celebration. Now you are aware of yourself again!

Here is your golden opportunity to stop and recognize what is present for you.

• Instead of feeding the story of lack and limitation for one more second, you become aware of the breath;
• Instead of embellishing the drama of your emotions, you expand your attention to be aware of physical sensations appearing in your body;
• Then letting go of the breath and physical sensations, you rest in presence, coming home to the peace of your true nature.

You may have this opportunity hundreds of times a day, and that’s perfectly okay. Just do it…in this moment…and the next…and the next…

This is how problems and habits change. There’s nothing to analyze, nothing to solve or figure out. And it takes no time at all.

Realize that you’re suffering, right now, because your attention has grabbed onto personal thoughts and feelings. Then, unhook your attention and let it rest here in presence, unattached to any personal concept.

Your mind will tell you that finding freedom in the moment isn’t enough. It will say that you should always be peaceful and that these mental habits shouldn’t recur. It will scold you for not practicing enough or doing it right.

The mind is running on the assumption that if you were truly free then painful and stressful thoughts would never again visit you. But none of this is true.

Conditioned programming recurs—that’s its nature. It pulls you into ruminating about the past and worrying about what might come.

But enter the timeless now, and you’re home. It’s eternally here, the all-encompassing, naturally welcoming field of presence that holds everything with love.

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“Insofar as we’re not conscious, we’re not free.”
~Gabor Maté

Just about every day I speak with people who tell me how they get off track. They feel disappointed when their expectations aren’t met, get trapped in the inner critical voice, bring irritation into their relationships, or believe the thoughts that tell them they’re inadequate.

What is happening that creates this reality? Our attention is pulled into the stories that run through our minds while our feelings are being ignored.

The possibility of freedom disappears as the machine of compulsive, unconscious behavior takes over. Yes, we’re acting and speaking, but we’re not actually aware of what we’re doing. We don’t realize that we’re living from confusion.

We’re like robots, lost in the forest of our habits with no access to our humanness, our compassion, our sensitivity, and our capacity to be aware. Sound familiar?

Getting back on track, we wake up to realize we’ve been disconnected from ourselves. It’s a moment of grace when conscious awareness is revealed to illuminate what’s actually happening in our experience.

Like a breath of fresh air, we come home to ourselves. Turning away from the mind and outer world, we look inward—with loving curiosity—to notice what emotions are present and how we feel in our bodies.

That’s how we begin to know what we’re actually doing and what’s driving us.

As a support to get back on track, inquiry may be helpful. Consider these essential questions that take you out of the confusion of conditioned reactions and into the depth of your true heart’s desire. Ask yourself:

• What is important to me in this moment? How do I want this moment to be?
• What do I value?
• How can I express myself to be aligned with what I really want?

A client came in humbled by the power of these questions. She told me that in the past week she posed them every time she felt irritated and discovered that they brought her back on track where she could open fully to her present moment experience.

She saw that her personal needs and reactive emotions were not what she really wanted for those moments, and she reconnected with a generous, loving heart, a relaxed mind, and the true desire for her own and others’ happiness. She left the drama of her thoughts so she could find calm and see things clearly.

Then she had the insight to apply these questions to all moments, no matter what the situation. She couldn’t contain her excitement about the possibility for her whole way of being in her life to be affected in a profound way—infused with awareness, love, and truth.

By asking these questions, we go beyond the blinders of our patterns and expand into openness and clarity. We’re present, aware, and fully alive.

As an example, consider a relationship you’re in where there is friction or disconnection. Your conversation with this person loops around in the same dissatisfying dynamic.

Now with a fresh view, how do you want your next interaction with this person to be? From your deepest truth, what is important to you?

Embodying these insights, how can you show up differently? Can you take care of your inner reactions, listen deeply with curiosity, be a bit more vulnerable?

When you’re triggered, lost, and things feel challenging, try asking these essential questions.

They just might bring you out of the fog of conditioned habits and home to yourself. And here you are, aligned with truth, with eyes and heart wide open.

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