Life is abominable. Life is dreadful. Life is horrible. Life is annoying. Life is stupid. Life is boring. Life is interesting. Life is acceptable. Life is likeable. Life is pleasant. Life is attractive. Life is wonderful. Life is delightful.
All of the above are rightful statements, all at the same time. Life, especially here on Earth, is a pretty damn thing. It has so much complexity in polarities that one can occasionally go mad or disconnect oneself from it on so many levels.
Let's not shame those who resonate more on the first six statements about life. Let's not disdain those who see life through the lenses of the last six statements. All of us are right. Everything here has its positive and negative side.
Look at the food. It is an energy for our bodies, it can be tasteful and pleasant. It can also kill us. Be it poisoning, comfort eating, morbid obesity.
Water is necessary. Water can flood our crops and houses. Water killed many people during the gruesome cholera pandemic. The builders who drank beer and were not getting their water supply from infected wells - were the survivors.
The landscapes are beautiful. The land that we want to ground our seeds in, and feed ourselves off - is a tricky little beast. We have to work hard to get those seeds growing in a raw, clearly unwelcoming environment. The land and most of the creatures on it seem to fight against our efforts. Only after years of persistence we may create a beautiful garden. But still, the weather may not be right, one year. And the abundance of apples is rotting away and inviting wasps and slugs.
The roads are an effect of a huge common human effort. They do not rise on their own. We can transport ourselves through them, and all our goods. We can get injured on them. And yes, they devastate the natural woodland.
Look at the trees. They clear the air and make oxygen, give shadow, a rare fruit - but mostly the wood. We have needed it to build our houses, and to warm ourselves up in cold climates. We had to kill them, cut them down. Their roots are a menace when growing too close to buildings. They can fall and make a mess.
Fire is this magical thing, that got us from our animal state to the humanness. We are the only species on Earth that can make and tame fire. How very helpful and essential it has been to our survival and development. How dangerous fire is, untamed.
People are mostly kind and nice. They can also steal things, be irritating, and randomly have murderous intentions.
When we bring forth a new life, we are overflown with love and care for this innocent, vulnerable, little being. Parenthood gives us a surge of positive emotions so we can deal with the inevitable annoyance of bringing up our children.
Life is a wonder, when we see them grow. We want the best for them, and in the process of this - we often become overprotective or over-demanding. The love we want to give them becomes a bit of a poison. They grow into selfhood with fat bodies, broken souls or hearts of stone. And one day they simply leave our homely hearth. We have to deal with harsh reality, back again.
Life is tough. Life is hard. Life does suck. Let's admit it. We are living in serious denial if we do not see it. We force ourselves into positivity to look at the lovely pleasures. This is what we do. We buy stuff, we stuff ourselves and our houses with it, we bring up children, we buy them things, only to forget that life is what it is - tough, harsh and hard. We want to forget about it - all the time.
We all want to make the world a better place, in a variety of ways. We strive for success in those fields that will make life more easy and pleasant for ourselves and other generations. We want to live in paradise where everybody loves each other in eternal harmony. In all these efforts we miss the point.
Life on Earth cannot be changed, at this stage. It has been designed as a marvellous place with incredibly tough conditions. It is a place where our unconscious souls would go through hell and high water, to get what they want. Only we still miss the point, and we hardly know what we do want, and why we are here.
***
How do you feel reading this text? What thoughts and emotions have come up in your mind? Have you ever contemplated life in its holistic view - with the bad and good - all at once?
The thing is, that we try to make ourselves feel good in life at all cost, because internally and obviously - we sense and see that life is full of staggering nuances. It feels like it is threatening us, almost all the time.
This is the primeval fear that not only we all humans have, but all animals do. It is a very powerful emotion that lives inside everyone of us, and invisibly directs our life from the bottom of our souls.
It is the emotion that we try to fly from, far away, consuming or creating the goods that let us forget about the fear. We try to fight with it through attempts of changing others, and the world, that will suit our need for safety. We try to turn against this primeval fear by blaming others and everything around for our unhappiness and suffering.
The subtle change occurs when we turn our attention towards the fear instead of constantly running away from it. Because if we are running away from it, we are running away from a part of ourselves that lives in the dungeon of our subconscious. And this is where the threads of our life are being made. This is where our habits are made, and our conditioning occurs.
This is what makes our lives feel helpless and hopeless - always to some degree, more or less. Thus we are forced to entertain ourselves to death with all the stuff life brings. Our life has then only one meaning - to cover the fear and its children: shame, blame, embarrassment, anger, hate, and all negative, uncomfortable emotions that we can think of, and feel.
It is scary to look at the primeval fear, we all want to run away from it, to hide it, but in reality we are run by it.
To awaken, to be free is to look at the beast. To accept that the fear is there. To make peace with it. To gather all our kindness, compassion and pure love and gently touch the space within us with blessing.
Fear can be transformed and can become our ally. The residual emotions it holds, that are attached to it, become liberated. We become less fearful in our actions, and we notice that our actions do not arise from fear anymore or solely. Fear is transformed into a helping hand that gives us more clear signals whenever there is a danger, and helps us avoid it. It keeps us away from unnecessary trouble.
Then we realize how much we need it. As in this Earth environment everything is a potential danger or potential blessing, the transformed energy of fear assists us to choose the path of least resistance. We navigate our life in a more graceful way, seemingly effortless. We are aware of what life is and accept its rules. It becomes a playground for our souls that can freely evolve. And then and only then we are able to see life in its balanced and most encouraging way, choosing the words:
Life is interesting.
