Motorwerx

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.   Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.

In life, we think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem. The truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. Personal discovery and growth come from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy. Suffering comes from wishing things were different. Misery is self inflicted, when we are expecting the “ideal” to overcome the “actual,” or needing things (or people, or places) to be different for us so we can then be happy. Let the hard things in life break you. Let them effect you. Let them change you. Let these hard moments inform you. Let this pain be your teacher. The experiences of your life are trying to tell you something about yourself. Don’t cop out on that. Don’t run away and hide under your covers. Lean into it. What is the lesson in this wind? What is this storm trying to tell you? What will you learn if you face it with courage? With full honesty and – lean into it.

It doesn’t matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn’t matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on.

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.