When Pain is part of the Journey

Sometimes suffering is all just part of our sacred path.

Yes, I really did just write that - and it's a tough one for me to accept even now, but I've come to the conclusion that it's true. 

I've had a really shitty few years to be perfectly frank with you. 

2019 has been incredibly hard - losing my business premises, having to take a regular job to keep my head above water, some insanely difficult personal relationship struggles and to top it off I have anxiety most days too.

Without wanting to overshare (I'm really bad for that!) I am somebody who struggles with my mental health as a result of complex ptsd. It's complicated, as the name suggests, and sometimes I really can't achieve what I want to, or do what I think I should be doing.

One of the hardest lessons for me has always been to do with divine timing. As a general rule, I want everything now and I'm pretty good at working to make things happen. Until cptsd throws a spanner in the works and knocks me down, that is. 

Boom - anxiety hits and I can barely function as an adult. The usually capable and highly motivated me disappears and I have to take care of a much weaker and incapable version of myself who can barely get up in the morning much less be the spiritual teacher and business dynamo I usually like to think I am.

During my times of struggling with my mental health you'll notice that I go very quiet and my social media pages stop being updated, blogs and newsletters become rare to non-existent, and emails and messages go unanswered.

For the record this isn't a pity-party blog, I just wanted to let the world know that despite appearances on social media and in marketing, I'm a human being and I struggle quite a lot against forces I can't always control.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to apologise to anyone I've had to let down or who has had a very late response from me over the years or who may experience this in the future. I genuinely care so much about all of you, and it kills me every time I have to cancel or postpone a client or group.

It also bothers me that every Tom Dick & Sally seems to want to jump onto the mental health bandwagon these days, which can seem to trivialise the genuinely serious issues that some of us face. But despite the fashion of playing the victim, I just wanted to put it out there that there are many of us who may appear very successful, capable or evolved who also struggle with some quite serious problems but don't let on.

Mental health struggles have been very challenging and very painful for me, and although I've worked extremely hard on myself, my self development and my spiritual development, they are still something I have to deal with on a daily basis. 

Again, I want to stress that this I'm not writing this to gain "victim points" or to fish for sympathy - to be honest with you I'm embarassed about having to deal with and flashbacks, anxiety and depression caused by cptsd and I'd really rather it all just went away!

Throughout my life, and the past few years in particular, I've spent far too many hours sitting around, feeling dreadful either physically or emotionally, and wondering why I bother.

I realised today, that I bother because this is who I am. 

The struggle, the pain, the difficulty that I've experienced up until today have made me, me.

The challenges we face create the incredible people that we are, and will continue to shape us into even more amazing, caring and compassionate people if we choose to see it that way. Life isn't meant to be easy otherwise we wouldn't have the opportunity to learn and grow.

We humans are at a point in our evolution where suffering and pain has become necessary to force our souls into a phase of growth for our very survival as a species, on more than just the physical level. 

Whilst suffering, pain and anguish are horrible to experience, I do believe that they form a crucial part of our sacred path and the times when we can't do what we want or achieve what we hoped are as necessary to us, if not more so, than the happy and easy times we also experience. 

I may not be able to tell you exactly why people suffer in the ways that they do, after all that sort of question usually isn't answerable at this plane of existence - hence that old religious saying that "God moves in mysterious ways."

What I will say to you though, is that your life's purpose is to live it - not to become the person on the TV with the house, the car, the dog or whatever other "stuff" you're told you need to have in order to be a success.

Your life is a success because you are living it, and every part of that is sacred and to be honoured, including and perhaps especially the bad stuff.

Pain and struggle are as much as part of your journey as success and happiness, and in many ways are far more important for the deeper truths that they enable us to contemplate and learn.