Do you need change? Do you know you need something to change but you are not sure what exactly needs to change. Have you identified and area in your life that this need for change is challenging you in and you aren’t sure how to answer the question as to how to create that change?
The need and even desire for change and its paradoxical difficulty and the pain that is the part of the process often create considerable mystery in terms of understanding not only needed change but also in terms of understanding more about yourself in a balanced way.
Do you find that there are aspects of your life that just seem to defy your understanding in actual and purposefully consciously aware ways? Are you a seeker of more personal enlightenment when it comes to aspects of your relationships, your attitude, your moods, and your over-all choices in your life?
Are you suffering? Are you emotionally, psychologically, and/or spiritually in pain? Do you know you need change but just can’t quite put your finger on what that change might be or how to even begin to cope with it?
Mysteries are created in our lives in ways that often work directly against the kind of enlightened and conscious awareness that we can most benefit from. Mysteries are things that remain unknown or unexplained, and/or misunderstood in areas of our relating, and/or our lives generally, precisely because we are not, for whatever reason(s), cultivating and nurturing the insight necessary to unearth and reveal very important prerequisites for living in and from a personally enlightened understanding – an understanding that does away with the need for the mystification associated with any denial, dissociation or the abandonment of truth:
- Personal Responsibility
- Integrity
- Spiritually, Emotionally, and Intellectually integrated living
- Following your instincts
- Actively engaging the lessons attempting to awaken awareness
You know you are living a personal mystery in one or more areas of your life when you have unanswered curiosity or speculation that continues to try to get you to pay more attention to something. Each one of us usually has some sense that something is off or unbalanced. There are always clues to what needs to be addressed. Whether one chooses to pay attention or not is the difference between the mystery of understanding and the journey of personal enlightenment.
One can so effectively live in and through his or her own personal mystery for long periods of time. An individual may, in some cases, live essentially more in response to his or her own personal mystery for his or her entire lifetime. When understanding in life, especially of and about one’s self and one’s relationships or general decisions remains a mystery, the natural question to be asked is, why?
The answer might surprise you.
The answer to the question why, is – why not? – Say what? That’s right – why not?
Living your life and experiencing what you wish you could understand about it or yourself as a mystery and wondering why is really actually a choice that you continue to make. Thus, why wouldn’t you expect your understanding to remain somewhat of a mystery? Why would you be surprised that you continue to experience the same negative reality and/or suffering that you most bemoan? After all, it is a choice that you are making to suffer that perpetuates your suffering. Choices that are wrestled with on the emotional battlefield of winning the war in the taking of personal responsibility required in order to to seek and find increased understanding and awareness are the choices that are grappled with sometimes on a daily basis.
What you experience in your life is a direct result of what you have chosen. There is no less than 100% personally responsible for your own life and your own choices. Awakening to enlightenment requires 100% personal responsibility without excuse or exception.
Are you going to choose to leave or to put your head in the sand and continue to suffer? Or are you going to roll up your sleeves, get in there, find, define, uncover, face the problem, the challenge, the lesson – the growth opportunity, and meet it head on — or not?
The mystery of understanding is sustained by an active and often unconscious choice to stay with what is known. The mystery of understanding is shrouded in a very human, very pivotal, and on-going paradoxical dilemma.
The philosophical and practical dilemma life presents us with by the very nature of our just being alive is the duality of the choice that each choice further requires. This dilemma also presents us with a morass of enigmatic and entangled polarized experience that one choice may invoke over another in what is the quagmire of attempting to enable, encourage, and/or allow pardox unfolding.
The essence or heart of this paradoxical dilemma necessitates each individual examining and exploring his or her own core beliefs. Do you believe that what is known is more comfortable – or indeed seems to offer more safety? Or do you believe that taking reasonable risks – undertaking new action – engaging what is unknown and usually equally feared is the way to get on the path to your own personal enlightenment?
Do you know that it is impossible to weave together or integrate trying to protect yourself and learn at the same time? They are mutually exclusive. There is a polarization between the two. One can either choose to protect or one can choose to be open to learning – one cannot do both at the same time. Which are you choosing?
How can you change your suffering into manageable pain until you succeed in creating the change needed to alleviate that pain? How can you learn to manage the pain once you have decided to acknowledge it and to welcome it increasingly into your conscious awareness?
These are just two of the many questions that need to be posed and lived in order to your wind your way from the mystery of understanding and the suffering that results to a chosen and purposeful journey of on-going personal enlightenment.
Clearly, the choice is yours. Choose wisely. Embrace the paradox.
© A.J. Mahari – April 28, 2008 – All rights reserved.
