How To Use The Tough Things In Life For Personal Empowerment and Spiritual Growth
When the going gets tough, the spiritual warrior uses the principle of Tapas to tap into the inner power for transformation
Image Credit: Still Mountain Meditation Center
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This is WEEKEND Edition THE DAWNING LIGHT MAGAZINE # 1401
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SPIRITUAL SOUP KITCHEN Section # 243
Stories written by Chinmayan to inspire you to use all your relationships and the challenges and blessings of daily life as vital opportunities for growth
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HOW TO DEAL WITH TOUGH THINGS AND COME TO POWER WHEN THINGS FALL APART
Whether we like it or not, hard gnarly and challenging stuff is going to happen in our lives, no matter how rich, how well planned or arranged our lives are.
Most of the hard stuff will arrive unexpectedly.
Some of it will rock us to our toes, break our hearts and throw us into a stormy sea of circumstance we neither expected nor wanted.
Sometimes the hard stuff is the result of stupid mistakes we have made.
Other times the hard stuff comes out of the blue, like a meteorite crashing through the roof.
Other times it may be something that’s been slowly coming your way without you noticing it until it rears up in your face.
To me, one of the most profound phrases around that I pay attention to is “shit happens.”
How could it not?
Life is not some random crapshoot where we don’t know the rules or the odds.
The truth is that every day when you get up, you never really know what may happen in the hours before going back to bed at night.
AN EMPOWERING SHIFT IN HOW WE RESPOND TO LIFE’S CHALLENGES
If you are on the spiritual path, it is important to know and embrace the principle of “Tapas”, which is a Sanskrit word that means to tap into the training, meaning and purpose of every life experience, especially the most difficult ones, and use it to consciously grow and undergo transformation. Tapas is often translated as “endurance with a higher purpose.”
It is a way of embracing the tough things in life and using them to become more loving, more conscious, more compassionate, more aware and more focused on attaining the state of enlightenment.
Image Credit: Still Mountain Meditation Center
LIFE ITSELF IS TAPAS
Life itself is tapas, especially as we age and go through physical changes we would rather not have to endure, but do as well as we can…because we must.
I have learned to embrace these tapas and use them as the Sanskrit word implies…as spiritual austerities whose purpose is to help me evolve spiritually.
It is not enough just to endure them stoically without complaint, while hoping we will get through them or they will just go away as the days go by.
DECIDING TO BE GRATEFUL FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO GROW
All tapas are bringing me something I need to learn or grow,so it is wise to maintain a cheerful and determined attitude.
I embrace all that comes into my life as an opportunity for spiritual enhancement.
This is the attitude and affirmation that transforms situations as you consciously repeat to yourself: “I embrace all that comes into my life as an opportunity for spiritual growth.”
It changes everything…my mental assessment, my beliefs and my emotional response, when I look for the meaning and higher purpose of my tapas, my challenges and the hard stuff which pushes me to find answers and make changes.
I am grateful, for I live knowing everything is temporary and that “this too shall pass.”
This allows me to greet tapas, even the really really hard ones, with a smile as I choose to love this life I still have to live for another day.
Image Credit: Still Mountain Meditation Center
TRANSFORMING EVEN UNEXPECTED HEARTBREAKING LOSS TO GOOD
I just watched a video tribute to a farmer who was a dedicated bachelor for fifty years until he unexpectedly met his soul mate, fell in love and had his entire life changed by the power of that love which completely transformed him.
As their love grew strong and wide, it was an inspiration to everyone who knew them in their little farming community in Kansas.
After seven months of being inseparable, he proposed and she said yes…making him the happiest man in the state.
They came together to build a new life, including planning to have children and do great things with his, now their, farm.
One afternoon, after sharing a time of special closeness with each other, she said she was feeling tired and went for a nap.
When he went in later to be with her, he found her dead in their bed from a sudden unanticipated heart attack.
Life had delivered a completely unexpected heart breaking and devastating loss.
Even though he was alone and in overwhelming grief, this farmer eventually took this experience and turned it into a legacy of good that will live on long after he is gone.
He founded a recreation and vocational training center for the youth of his part of Iowa, and over the next twenty five years of his life personally mentored and made a lasting difference in the lives of hundreds of young people.
He used his heartbreak and loss as Tapas, looked for its purpose and meaning, and inspired everyone who knew him through finding the good even in this hard experience.
SEEING TOUGH THINGS AS TAPAS BRINGS OUT OUR INNER POWER
My teacher Amma, says we should live life as if we were a bird sitting on a thin, dead branch that could break from the tree at any time. We should live alert and be ready to fly up into the sanctuary of higher consciousness at any time when “shit happens.”
As a spiritual warrior, we must understand that though we may have little or no control over what happens in our lives or this world we all share and live in, we do have TOTAL CONTROL over have we respond and how we use the experience.
The wise person starts looking for the purpose and meaning of the experience and consciously chooses to shift his own attitude to a positive and empowering one in response.
As Kalu Rinpoche often said to us, his disciples, “Your suffering is either going to be useful or useless, depending on whether or not you use it to push yourself to practicing the Dharma, to learning what you need to learn from the experience and then applying it to the rest of your life.”
Most of us close our hearts and minds, grit our teeth and try to endure it while hoping it will pass by.
This is understandable when the shit coming into our lives is painful, scary and overwhelming.
But such a strategy will never help, for any lessons we need to learn will have to be gone through over and over on the journey of life until we face them, look for the meaning and purpose and choose to use the experience to grow spiritually.
After all, all the great men and women who have made a positive difference in their own lives and for the world, did so after going through the fire of hard experience, using it as Tapas and being forged into better, clearer, more dedicated and capable person.
YOU NEVER KNOW HOW STRONG YOU ARE UNTIL YOU HAVE TO BE
You never know how strong you really are until you are thrown into a situation in which you must tap your own inner powers to make it through.
Even more importantly, all the masters who have attained Realization and become enlightened beings who greatly benefited the world, attained those high states through using their own suffering as tapas— as the driving force to seek for the way out of suffering, of coming to power through facing and dealing with it.
As spirits living for a time in these human bodies, not one of us will be able to avoid hard stuff coming into our lives, but everyone of us can choose to see the “shit that happens” as tapas and turn it into solid gold wisdom, character and spiritual growth.
The masters say that…indeed, that’s why we took this human birth and came to earth, which, they say, is the perfect training ground for using our experiences here as Tapas to become free of suffering and the sources of suffering and become a force for Love and Light for others in this world.
Image Credit: Still Mountain Meditation Center
Original Revelations Poem and Calligraphy by Chinmayan
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