Carl Jung said, "Conflict exists strictly as an opportunity to raise our consciousness."
It seems that the forces of the Universe came together today to encourage me to write this piece that I've been contemplating because before seeing the above quote, this poignant video from Kyle Cease about not trying to solve our problems from a place of resentment
showed up in my email today. Ok, I'll sit down at my keyboard.
Last week in a conversation with my mom about learning the art of relaxation, I expressed to her the profound beauty of the "bad" things that happen to us in our lives. (There are no "bad" things. Events are neutral, and only our thinking makes them otherwise.) There is so much richness and value that we can mine from the circumstances in our lives. I believe that each of us is infinitely more powerful than we can ever know. I really do mean infinitely. We can tend to get bogged down by the problems in our lives. We attempt to solve them from a very disempowered and limited consciousness because that's all we see around us. Often, we have to hire other people to solve our problems for us we're taught: doctors, teachers, lawyers, financial advisors - you name it. After decades of trying from this small, disempowered place of limited consciousness, people give up. How many disgruntled old people and numb, complacent adults do you know? A lot I'll bet. We all do.
When we know what we don't want, we also know what we do want. Without that first part, we would never get to the latter. Our problems and unwanted experiences that happen in our lives are literally life. Without them we wouldn't evolve, just swimming in an eternal soup of divine love. (Sounds pretty great right about now, right? 😉) But without the pain, sadness, grief, frustration, anger that you've experienced, would you even be able to recognize bliss, beauty, joy, and appreciation? Have you ever met a person who has quite a simple life - they're rather even keeled, and nothing much ever really happens? Do you ever see them ecstatically happy or excited? And you don't see them on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum either. One truly does breed the other.
Each of our unwanted experiences in life are wide and vast fields of infinite opportunity: opportunity to raise our consciousness and open up to a field of new possibilities.
