Struggle Shapes Our Fullness • Embrace Both Sides of Life! (HYC002)
⁘ Created: 2026-02-23 ⁘ Updated: 2026-02-25
Have you considered how the struggles of your life shape you for the better? How — in facing all that life brings you, instead of avoiding the negative — you discover your conditions and your reactivity, and you evolve toward your fullness?
We are not here to craft a picture perfect life, to manifest a flawless expression of material reality. We're here to recognize the truths of life, of ourselves, and to reconcile the self-centered conflicts of our bipolar existence.
Have you considered how suffering shapes you for the better? Every lack, every absence, every shortcoming, every failure, there to lead you toward your fullness. If only you can look at them as they are. Accept, acknowledge, recognize the lessons they bring — instead of trying to avoid, escape, bypass, battle them.
What often happens is we deny one half of our lives, as we cling on to particular ideas of what we are and what things should be. And some even turn that into a misguided philosophy of manifestation. It is not there, I deny the lack, I refuse the shadows, and only good things shall fall in my way. That's obviously all rather delusional.
That's not the way this world is supposed to function at all. We are all here being recognized, being refined, being transformed into the fullness of what we are, rather than pursuing make-believe realities. Every low tide and season of gloom, every shock and jolt and catastrophe. These teach you something about what is, and they show you your reactivity.
Every outcome you deem negative shows you where you cling, shows you how you condition yourself to the environment, inner and outer. Study it. When do you ever study the positive side of your life? The good things coming your way, you just leap at it like a hungry goblin, devouring and devouring, mesmerized in your illusion.
How wonderful, precious, then, the negative side of life. You will not leap into it, you are forced to face it. And in facing it, you are reflecting on the truth of yourself and reality as it presents itself before you. Is it even reality — or am I responding to my ideas? Is all the negativity my own creation? And indeed, much of it is. When you have crafted particular ideals that must hold.
We return to these preferences, the conditions we set to our well-being and equanimity. That meal must be delicious, to my tastes, or must have the nutrient profile that I insist on. The bed must be such and such of thickness. My lady should have no pimples on her face, or stains on her teeth, nor should I. And why?
Because we are blessed gods and goddesses, entitled to the most polished possible version of material existence. Anything else is unacceptable. Well, you know, good luck manifesting all that. I hope you have million zillion billion good karmas in the bank account. Or we could just realize the meaninglessness and hollowness of trying to curate our reality to a particular positive preference.
Take it as it comes. Shadows and light, sunshine and downpours. Let presence and absence be your teachers and guides into the fullness of what you actually are, what reality is. There is a certain beauty and peace in the necessary interplay and eventual union of the polarities of existence.
The short take-away. Recognize the truth in whatever that hits your horizon. Negative reaction — observe your conditions. Positive reaction — observe your conditions. You will recognize that most of it is baseline okay, just fine. Equanimity. And you will realize that most of your suffering, that claustrophobic churn in your mind, is entirely avoidable.
Then, friend, interact with the world as it is, instead of trying to warp it to match your ideas. Whatever that stands to improve, to blossom with the conditions present before you, the momentum shall be there. And whatever that is bound to degrade, decay and break down, based on the conditions present, that too shall go by its momentum.
Then, play your roles, fulfill your duties without attachment to the outcomes. It will be okay at the end of the day. Because reality, the truth of all things, is always okay, working out its kinks. But your ideas, they are never okay, they're always distorted. Keep it real. Embrace the full spectrum of your life. That's all.