Your Discontent is the First Step Toward Awakening

In our day-to-day lives, most of our attention tends to focus on the realities of the conventional world: our relationships, perhaps raising children, going to school or work, addressing issues in the areas of health and finances.

At the same time, we each experience, from time to time or even persistently, that whispered voice of our heart or higher self, reminding us and calling us to look beyond the conventional world to a higher or transcendent reality.

Sometimes we experience a sudden wake-up call — a loss or change that forces us to consider what life is really about and what’s truly important. It shakes us up(ward). Suffering (or discontent) has been called “the first grace,” because only the recognition of our psychological suffering sends us searching for the real, the authentic, and the higher or transcendent truth of our humanity.

Yet the search for something or someone else, somewhere else, only reinforces that sense of dilemma that sent us seeking in the first place. That’s why the Tibetan master, Chogyam Trungpa once said of the search, “Better never begin; once begun, better finish.”

We are all on a spiritual quest — but for some of us it’s more conscious. In one of my books, I describe such a search and adventure in the mountains with an ageless woman sage. When our time together ends, she offers me the following words, which I share with you:

‘These are my wishes and prayers for you, all the days of your life. May you find grace as you surrender to life. May you find happiness, as you stop seeking it.

“The challenges of daily life will remain, and you will tend to forget what I have shown you,” she said. “But a deeper part of you will remember, and when you do, life’s problems will seem no more substantial than soap bubbles. The path will open before you where before there grew only weeds of confusion. Your future, and the future of all humanity, is a path into the Light, into a growing realization of the Unity with the Creator and all creation. And what lies beyond is beyond description.

“Even when the sky appears at its darkest, know that the sun shines upon you, that love surrounds you, and that the pure Light within you will guide your way home. So trust the process of your life unfolding, and know with certainty, through the peaks and valleys of your journey, that your soul rests safe and secure in the arms of Spirit.”

From a fellow traveler, wishing you good journeys,

Dan