Beautifully alive living beyond challenge.
“Actually, as it is in the world, what is living? Not your idea or my idea of what living is; what is the fact, the actual fact of what is going on in the world? What is actually going on in the world is war, national divisions, tremendous prejudices, race against race, colour against colour, the appalling exploitation of organised religions, the conflict, both outward and inward. That is what we call living, and in that living, in that field, there are a great many challenges. Those challenges precipitate actions that are more competitive, more aggressive, more despairing. These are all facts.
Is it possible to understand this whole structure and go beyond it, transcend it, and have peace? If there is peace, why should you have challenges? A man who sees things very clearly, why should he have challenges? His clarity itself denies every challenge. It is only the man who is asleep, who is confused, that needs challenge, and his response is according to his sleepiness, according to his confusion. When you live rightly, which one has to go into very, very deeply, then why should you have challenges of any kind? Then you are alive, not confused. Then you are beyond all challenges.”
~ J Krishnamurti
~ For most of us, most of the time, we’re always gathering our energy – girding our loins – to fight, to attain, to gain, to achieve what we think and feel is important. What is it that motivates us to meet and challenge what is, every day? Do we see what is ? Is it our personal fears and desires; our egoic need for security, for confirmation that we exist as a separate entitiy; that what we want from life should be, must be, found and grasped, determined, managed, achieved, controlled. In fine, gripped and held for and by me and mine?
Of course, instinctive security has its relevant and legit demands. Still, beyond food, clothing, and shelter – and let’s add social connection – perhaps its not a matter of what we want – what more we feel driven to secure – but of what we need to be content. What is enough? Do we need those fleetful pleasures that are always accompanied by the aches and pains of living a half-life, half-buried by constant worries, disatisfactions, frustrations and a desperate sense of lack? Indeed, is that the operating ‘reality’ of our life as discribed by H D Thoreau: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
The good news here is that personal suffering seems essential for clarity to arise. It opens doors. Like all pain, it’s a deep call for attention, for self-love. In fact, our suffering – real and imagined, physical, emotional and psychological, is the best teacher we can have – albeit not the one we want. Indeed, suffering – like a stormy wind blowing our boat as we sail along – is a reality, a fact, that we sailors need to directly see and attend to – to make sail changes that are appropriate to the winds of life that are actually blowing, here and now.
In fine, the real challenge is not to fear what is happening, but to see it with loving detachment, as it’s happening. To live fully, freely, in constant alert awareness not of past or future, but of this moment; to flow with it, as it presents. That flowing is not a challenge – it’s an allowing of life to produce what it will, a constant gentle releasing of resistance, of insistence – of persistence in attempting to shape life and the living of it to our personal demands. Reality is not personal.
Bottom line here: lovingly let it all simply be, and live well, freely and fully. Enjoy the miracle in being the natural goodness that one is: simply peaceful, beautiful, joyful and loving – that’s never challenging, and always wonderful, yes.
Love all as it is, and be well. 🙂
