Dealing with what feels like constant challenges

Dealing with what feels like constant challenge
I live on the beach, so the ocean is the first thing I see when I wake up in the mornings. As I attend to my morning meditation, I am often greeted by the sight of surfers, navigating the rolling waves. I am intrigued by the balancing act, how they managed to stay on their boards against some unpredictable wave patterns. It got me thinking about how I have been feeling about life for the past 18 months. The waves representing various life challenges, and how they felt like they just kept coming at me, with barely a moment to recover in between.
Understanding that challenge is a part of life, and facilitates our soul’s growth, I knew I couldn’t wish them away. One of my many mornings, sitting in stillness, looking out to the ocean something struck me. I observed that the surfers stood tall and in balance even as the waves approached them. Some lost their surf boards and would spend a few moments locating them after perhaps being swallowed by the more majestic of waves. They somehow managed to get back up, find balance and still continue to ride the wave.
That day I finished my meditation and jumped onto Google (my brain likes to understand the detailed functioning of things to the point of being obsessive) and I came across an interesting fact that I have since adapted and that is, the primary purpose of surfing is to balance the force of gravity against the advancing wave profile. The key word being balance. I wondered what would happen if instead of trying to avoid the waves of challenges, I teach myself to ride the waves, navigating from one wave to another creating some kind of consistency and flow.
Accepting I have limited to no control over life’s various stumbling blocks, it dawned on me that like the surfers the balance could come from within. As someone who has been practicing conscious living for close to a decade, I have found that in stillness I am able to connect to the truth of a matter, unfiltered by the lens of perception. Stillness is such a powerful tool, because when we can block out the external chaos and connect to our intuition, we can access our truth, and in accessing our truth the way forward will appear.
From this outlook I have been able to cultivate the flow necessary to ride out some tough situations. I can detach from the challenges and see them for just what they are. I accept them for being a part of life’s ebb, flow and a player in the necessary evolution of my soul. I am no longer avoiding the waves. Like the surfer I am riding them , each time, another wave approaches I am just a little better at the timing of when I should catch the wave, a little better, at deciding whether I should be lying down or standing, but honestly quite often I’m just paddling (in my stillness) dragging my hands out to slow down the speed of the wave, till I am able, through balance and grounding to access the necessary insights to move forward.

I wish you healing!

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