A Shortcut to End Your Suffering

I believe there are many options for paths to travel here on the physical plane that we call Life, Reality, Earth. I reckon they each come with different roles and reasons.

I can only speak for what I've learned on the path of the sacred warrior, that which I travel this time around. If that is also the one you are walking in this lifetime, here is one of the most valuable lessons I've gained that has helped make the journey smoother.

Absolutely everything you come across is in service to your highest good. 

Let's be clear, I didn't say in service to your highest comfort nor your highest enjoyment. Your highest good is that which serves your ultimate mission - the mission your spiritual Beingness came here to do - and the Universe wants you to succeed.

That etherial Being is you and you are it. It is your true Self. As sacred warriors, we dedicate our lives to fulfilling the mission of that eternal essence (with plenty of human fun experienced along the way ;-P).

This used to feel like trying to find the needle in the haystack in the dark in a tropical rainstorm with my hands tied behind my back. It was frustrating and exhausting. Each step forward came with heavy chains attached to my ankles trying to pull me back. Then I realized the above truth that everything I come across is in service to my highest good, and in that I found the shortcut. 

This shortcut reduces the time I'm in unpleasant situations and pretty much eliminates all suffering. 

The shortcut is to approach everything as an essential lesson you decidedly came here to learn and embrace it immediately. In choosing to come into the physical plane on your mission you set up everything you would need to accomplish it - every hardship, every person, every "chance encounter", every loss, every joyous moment, everything. And because you were in your true form of limitlessness, you also set up backups, Plan B all the way to Plan ZZZZZZ, to ensure you would have every chance possible to get what you needed. 

So when the opportunity comes around for you to learn an essential lesson and you miss it, well guess what - another opportunity is headed your way!

Here's the deal: the lessons will absolutely NOT stop coming. Learning those lessons is the main reason you came down here. You as human-you may not want them, but that desire gets trumped by true-You's mission because you chose the path of the sacred warrior. Human-you can choose to not learn them, but then they are going to plague your human life until you're dead, and they'll only get harder along the way.

Avoiding the lessons instead of embracing them is where suffering comes from, and it sucks. 

Think of it like going through school: the opportunities usually come first as kindergarten lessons with a soft-spoken teacher. That doesn't seem too important, so we ignore it and open up the space for the next teacher. First grade is a little more noticeable, but hey could we really learn anything truly significant from a first grade teacher?

And so we ignore it, and so on and so forth, each level getting a little more challenging, each teacher a little more serious. Many of us don't notice we're in class until "all of a sudden" it's the day of the final exam senior year of university and everything depends on it.

The shortcut is to accept that you're here to learn these lessons and be on the lookout for them so you can hear the soft-spoken kindergarten teacher and learn the lessons early before it's final exam day with a seemingly merciless professor staring down at you. 

Next time you're in a difficult situation, change your perspective. Instead of asking "Why is this happening to me?" ask "What is the lesson being offered to me?"

Once you fully learn that lesson, the difficult situations that come as its teachers will retire. The sooner you figure out what the lesson is and commit to learning it, the sooner you'll get to go to recess.

Of course, it won't be long before you hear the bell calling you for your next class, so enjoy the playtime while it's there.

Embrace it. It's all in service to your highest good!

There is a saying that when the student is ready the teacher appears. This means the interior teacher surfaces when the soul, not the ego, is ready. This teacher comes whenever the soul calls - and thank goodness, for the ego is never fully ready. If it were solely up to the ego's readiness to draw this teacher to us, we would remain essentially teacherless for life. We are blessed, since the soul continues transmitting its desires regardless of the ever-changing opinions of our ego.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD