There are times when life feels like one long struggle.
We work towards a goal, try to overcome difficulties, and put all our strength into finally making things turn out the way we imagine.
Sometimes we succeed. We achieve what we wanted and feel content for a moment. But no sooner have we met one challenge than the next is waiting.
And sometimes, despite all our efforts, we simply cannot move forward.
We fight against circumstances, against other people, against our own feelings. We fight against what we do not want, and for what we are determined to achieve.
The struggle with what is
Our mind is a wonderful tool. It helps us recognise differences, understand connections, and make decisions. Yet it also has a habit of constantly judging the world.
One thing is good, another bad. We welcome this development and want to prevent that one. We imagine how our life should be and begin measuring reality against that image. This gives rise to an inner resistance to what is here, right now.
Perhaps you recognise this in your own life. You have a clear idea of how a situation at work, a personal project, or a relationship should develop. You have prepared, invested a great deal, and believe you know the right next step.
But things turn out differently.
A plan falls through, a door stays closed, or an unexpected difficulty stands in your way.
What happens within you now?
Often, we try to overcome the resistance with even more force. We try harder, look for further possibilities, and hold on to our vision all the more firmly.
In doing so, we overlook something essential:
It is not the situation alone that makes things difficult. Part of our effort comes from fighting the fact that, for now, it is exactly as it is.
This does not mean that we must give up our goals or simply resign ourselves to difficult circumstances.
But it makes a difference whether we act from clarity or from resistance to reality.
Two sides of one reality
We are used to distinguishing between opposites. Light and darkness, joy and pain, acceptance and rejection. One side seems desirable; the other we would rather avoid.
Yet these opposites belong together.
We recognise light through the experience of darkness, too. We experience stillness in contrast to movement. And sometimes it is only after a long struggle that we understand how much peace means to us.
When we reject one side, we easily overlook that it, too, is part of our reality. We try to banish something from our life that might be opening the way to an important insight.
This does not mean that we must seek out suffering or romanticise difficult experiences. But the uncomfortable, too, has its place within the whole.
Perhaps only a disappointment reveals how tightly we have bound ourselves to a particular idea. Perhaps a conflict shows us where we have yet to understand ourselves.
In this way, even the resistance we encounter can become a guide.
Peace in the heart
But how do we find this peace when our thoughts move ceaselessly back and forth between opposites?
We can observe our thoughts. We can recognise how our mind judges, weighs possibilities against one another, and clings to ideas.
Yet we are not these thoughts.
We are the awareness in which they appear.
When we become still and turn our attention inward, we can experience this directly. A thought arises and disappears again. A sensation changes. One memory comes, another goes.
And yet something is there that perceives all these movements.
We do not have to silence our thoughts to recognise this stillness. We can notice them without having to follow them.
But recognising this is not yet the whole experience.
Here we meet what is, without dividing it into wanted and unwanted. We also make room for what we previously fought against: our fear, our disappointment, our uncertainty.
Not to surrender ourselves to these feelings, but to stop excluding them from our experience.
This freedom from judgement is not indifference. It is an attitude of acceptance in which we recognise opposites without having to identify with either side.
We can recognise injustice and stand against it. We can set boundaries, make decisions, and consciously choose a path.
But we do not have to create an inner enemy to do so.
The strength not to fight
What happens when we stop setting ourselves against life?
Do we not lose our drive? Our determination? Perhaps even our ability to change anything?
This is precisely where we encounter a paradox.
Usually, we believe that we must direct our life through willpower. We form an intention, set ourselves a goal, and try to change our circumstances accordingly.
Yet an attitude of inner peace opens another possibility. One that neither rejects nor favours either pole. Out of this freedom, something new arises.
First, we notice what is, without immediately wanting to change it. Without resisting what we find.
In this stillness, we begin to see what the situation actually asks of us. Sometimes it is patience. Sometimes a clear decision. And sometimes a resolute step that calls for all our strength.
A creative undertaking can demand great effort. A difficult conversation can take courage. A necessary change, too, can present us with considerable challenges.
And yet:
We can give our full strength without fighting against life.
In this way, inner balance gives rise to a particular form of guidance:
This is not passivity, but the freedom to use our strength where it is truly needed.
Peace with what is
Perhaps there is a situation in your life right now that you are fighting against.
A development you do not want to accept. A decision you find difficult. Or an idea of how your life should be that, despite all your efforts, will not become reality.
Then pause for a moment.
Feel your breath. Notice what is happening within you right now.
What thoughts arise? What feelings would you rather not have? And what changes when, for a moment, you stop judging them?
You do not have to suppress any of it.
Fear, too, is allowed to be here. So is disappointment. So is the wish to change something. They are all movements within your experience. Yet none of these movements is the whole of what you are.
Look closely.
Recognise the space in which all of this appears. And open your heart even to those sides of your experience that you have rejected until now.
Explore for yourself whether you really must achieve, change, or overcome something before you can be at peace.
For peace does not lie at the end of our struggle as a reward we have to earn.
It is already here.
At the centre of all opposites. In the awareness that recognises them. And in the heart that accepts them in their wholeness.
From this peace, we can give our full strength to life—without having to fight against it.
From heart to heart
Erdherz