Facing the Ups and Downs of Life

The mind is the agent that is interacting with the world through the senses day in and day out. Whatever interacts with the world through the senses subjects itself to the pulls of opposites, raga and dwesha – attraction and repulsion. It is the mismanagement of attraction and repulsion which creates problems in life. If we are attracted to something, it is we who are attracted, but we then expect the other person or thing to reciprocate, and when that doesn’t happen, attraction leads to frustration. Repulsion is the opposite reaction, whereby we try to repel things that continue to come to us no matter how much we try to avoid them, creating another cause of tension, anxiety. Through this mental disturbance, our balance is lost.  – Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati

 

Some people are more into Yoga, some Zen, some “New Thought,” and others into whatever it is that helps them to feel good.  We are all looking for some way to manage the “ups and downs” of life.  We are seeking inner peace.

I think that the spiritual path begins when we realize that we can’t really win at the game of life the way it has been set up.  Somehow we have been lead to believe that if we just had enough money everything would be perfect.  Or maybe it’s the right love partner, career, physical condition, maybe just a life free from problems.  If things were different we could be happy and fulfilled.  Thus we strive for some possible state of perfection. 

There is a wonderful verse in the Tao Te Ching that goes, “Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it? I do not believe it can be done.”  Think about it.  We are inseparable aspects of a fractal hologram unfolding in the theatre of time and space.  Everything is interrelated.  Do we really think that we can take charge of it all?  It’s pretty clear that our attempts on this lonely planet have brought us close to self-destruction.

True peace of mind comes through the Yogic practice of Ishvara Pranidhana, which means surrender to the will of God, Tao, higher power, super-implicate order, or whatever we want to call it.  This cosmic order is not something apart from who we are.  It is our own essential nature.  It is the unfolding of consciousness. 

The key to facing the ups and downs of life; the inevitable pains, losses and changes, is to welcome them with love and acceptance.  Understand that whatever happens is not personal to you but the working out of a greater process which we call evolution.  But don’t get hung up on evolution as some kind of future agenda.  Instead embrace this moment of being alive and savor it for all its worth.  There is nothing better than this.

 

Of course, our conditioned minds rebel against this.  We want to fix things or demand that someone fix it for us.  However, if we practice acceptance and surrender, along with forgiveness and compassion things do get better.  We learn to be happy in the face of ups and downs.