WHAT HAPPENS? LIFE HAPPENS..

PUT THEM ON THE TABLE

There is no comparison of problems; all human struggles are honored at the Nondual Table.

"A student went to the master and said, 'I'm overwhelmed by my struggles. How do I escape them?'

The master poured tea into the student's cup and kept pouring until it overflowed.

'Stop!' cried the student. 'The cup is full!'

The master set down the teapot and said, 'You say you are drowning in your struggles. But tell me—are you the tea, or are you the cup?'

The student sat in silence.

After a long while, the master added, 'When the cup does not cling to what it holds, even boiling water does not burn it.'"

Many wise men considered that the struggle we meet in our journey is not an obstacle to the path - it IS the path. In time, in my process of learning, I added the kindness ingredient offered by the Nondual perspective, and I met struggle not only as the path itself, but as the beautiful reminder of the human limited condition.

When I open myself to struggle in this conscious way, I enter a spacious inner container where I can recognize its true dwelling place: ultimate compassion—the only presence vast enough to hold a judgment that seeks to accuse, or to cast itself as the victim of another, or of a cruel “destiny.” It is not easy.

We meet struggle in every facet of reality. And still, we continue to fantasize about avoiding it, about having everything resolved and neatly understood. We spend much of our lives developing mechanisms to overcome problems, hoping the outcome will always be grand success. There is nothing inherently wrong in this striving—though it can become a tiring race.

I truly believe that when we understand that whatever happens to us is life's approach to invite us into its unlimitedness, we are able to breathe. To pause for a while and leave aside the heaviness that pressures us.

The unhealed ego, when centered on the main stage of our self, adds to the present obstacle a dramatic nuance -- the previous history -- an idea well fixated that if something difficult happened before, we'll struggle every time. And there is a seed of truth in that, but not the whole truth. Life is an artist—an unpredictable one. Within its field of manifestation, all possibilities exist. And the unhealed ego, ever fond of drama, forgets that whatever arose in the past also found its resolution. The aim is not to oscillate endlessly between bravery and fear. The journey asks to be met with curiosity. The path reveals its meaning when approached with a gentle surrender that quietly whispers: “I do not know everything. I can create, yes—but in truth, I have no control over what may unfold in the next second. "Can you sense the liberation that arises from this understanding?

Remain with it for a moment...

You are simply granting yourself permission to be human.

In many encounters, I have witnessed those who want to beat themselves up by minimizing their problems compared to others who were born into tragedy or terror, into lands marked by endless conflict and sorrow.

I gently stop them there and place a hand upon their shoulder... Dear human, at the Nondual Table we bring the problems in to face them, never to compare them. It is not an act of kindness to declare one burden greater than another, or less significant, or less painful simply because another life carries a different form of anguish. What do we truly know of the heart? That it is tiny and, in its openness, encounters brokenness. But the heart's job is just to be a heart—the mechanism through which HEALING HAPPENS. Through which LIFE HAPPENS, through which possibilities arise without end.

When life feels like a frightening field, we often meet it with anxious anticipation of a tomorrow that may never exist in the way we imagine. But when we allow life to unfold as it will, we begin to honor spaciousness itself—a steady ground without enclosing walls that might become our prison. Within that spaciousness lives the quality of wonder, and it is this wonder that frees us, allowing us to move fluidly with each unfolding moment. 

Is my path less painful because there is bread upon my table, though I struggle within my marriage? I am not the one to determine that. I may give thanks each day for the gift of bread, and still permit myself to acknowledge the sorrow of a strained partnership—without diminishing my own heartbreak simply because another form of pain exists somewhere else in the world. The heart suffers regardless of the cause; it is the unhealed ego that insists upon measurements, hierarchies, and pyramids of classification. Thus, many of us fall beneath the harsh judgment that there are “problems of the poor” and “problems of the rich.” Such thinking is unkind at its core; it narrows us and separates us from one another. When we begin to understand that each of us is a journey in motion—holding all that happens, light and shadow alike—we discover that this very polarity has the power to unite us in COMPANIONSHIP. 

And from here, to walk in togetherness... for the rest of the walk.

Don't carry your wound to isolate and compare yourself to another's path; instead, allow the Ray of Light to enter you, as you bask in it. 

As Rumi said: "The wound is the place where the Light enters you."

Dear you, 

Your presence and beingness, without the guilt and pride of your joys and sorrows, can make another's heart feel that one day it can find its liberation...

Keep moving through life in companionship.