Why is Life Difficult?
Years ago I was reading the book. The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck. It was first published in 1978. The opening line of chapter 1 has remained with me for all these years: Life is difficult. The rest of the book went on to explain that if we would just accept this fact and quit getting upset that life is difficult, then life would be easier.
Today I’m reflecting on the premises of The Road Less Traveled from the perspective of Amma the Divine Mother’s teachings.
I said I was going to talk about Amma’s teachings and the first person I’m going to mention is the Buddha. The Buddha taught that it was our resistance to what is that results in suffering. That is essentially what Peck was teaching when he exhorted his readers to accept that life is difficult.
From the perspective of Amma’s teachings I want to discuss why life is difficult and what you can do about it in addition to acceptance. (This is a multi-part series.)
The why is because you created your life to be as difficult as it is right now. I’m not talking about creating your life in the moment. We all make boneheaded choices which have made things more difficult than they need to be. I’m talking about how we planned this life, this very lifetime, before we incarnated.
We Planned Life to Be Difficult
We had a plan of what we wanted to experience in this lifetime. Ultimately we all wanted to experience some aspect of love. We can experience love by having it or by not having it. It’s the details of how we plan that experience which makes each of our lives different and, in fact, makes our personalities different.
You, on the soul level, had choices of what you wanted to experience in this lifetime. You took into account all of your past lifetimes and what you wanted to experience in your future lifetimes. Those lifetimes, even those which are in the future, were developed to bring you to a particular goal in your exploration.
Let’s say you plan to go on a long journey. You could go on that journey without a particular location goal by saying I’m gonna go where I feel like going, when I feel like going. You make a choice to travel in an unstructured, unplanned way. But you do set some parameters around your journey. Your mode of travel is one of those parameters. Another may be exploring the United States, and then Europe, and then Asia, and then Africa, then South America, then Australia and finally the Antarctic before you return home. Your ultimate goal may be to explore all the continents.
Your Soul Self has the ultimate goal of explorations of love. All lifetimes are about exploring the many facets of love. You explore love in every conceivable way: as male, female or trans; gay, straight or bi; married, unmarried, committed relationships, uncommitted relationships, a hermit; as a saint and as a sinner and in any other combination you can think of.
You did not incarnate to do nothing in this lifetime. You certainly didn’t want to be bored and the only thing to prevent boredom is to add excitement and challenges. You, in consultation with your Council, made definite choices. Although you engaged in consultation you made the ultimate decisions about what to experience.
You Made Choices
You chose your family, how that family was going to relate to each other and to you, and your relationship with your family members. Yes, you chose challenges which in this incarnation you call abuse. You chose to be loved or not loved.
Recognition that you are living the life you created before you incarnated is a deeper form of acceptance. Accepting things as they are is one form of acceptance, and a very powerful step in coming to peace. When you accept that you created your life as it is, and that it is going according to the plan that you made before you entered that body in your mother’s womb, you have come to a place of the acceptance of personal responsibility on the soul level. You have moved from looking at your life with a very narrow viewpoint of things happening to you randomly to the perspective that nothing is random. You are living the life you wanted to live, that you planned to live.
I’d like you to read that last paragraph again.
I’d like you to notice the feelings surfacing regarding that last paragraph.
Do you feel hopeless, powerless, or do you have a feeling of ahh, that’s what’s happening, a feeling of relief?
Many people, when reading for the first time that they created this life exactly as they wanted it to be before they ever incarnated have a feeling of powerlessness. Let me tell you, you planned that also.
Does that mean you have no power to change anything?
Your Script
What if somebody approached you and told you they wanted you to be the star in their movie? They tell you you are the ideal person for this role. All you have to do is follow the script she gave you and follow the cues the director gives.
I don’t know if you’ve ever auditioned for a play or movie, but I’m sure you understand the concept of audition. A number of people read from the script and place their own interpretation upon those words. The director then selects the individual he or she believes interprets the words according to the way the director desires.
In this life, the one you planned, you have a script. While you are living that script you have the opportunity to interpret that script in many different ways. I believe that newer souls, those who have not had as much experience in incarnations, follow the script exactly. Those who are older souls are given some leeway in improvisation. You might have built-in to your script some options. Instead of planning that you would marry this particular person, you built in options of whether to marry or not marry. You might have built in if-then statements. If you choose this line of work then you’ll marry this person, but if you choose that line of work you won’t get married.
Exploring this life that you are living is an adventure. There are many ways to engage in this adventure. You may think that there is no use in investigating and discovering what life holds or you if you planned everything in advance. You know that script I told you the director gave you? He didn’t give you the whole script. You’ve completely forgotten what it is you planned to experience. You discover it as you go along. Where’s the fun and knowing every step in advance?
Next post I’ll talk about the possibilities you have built into your script.
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Have fun living your script.