Trusting the Journey
The world seems to be having some serious problems that’s too great and complex for me to even fathom. As I came out of my retreat where I spent 2 weeks isolated from whatever was happening outside, I found the world to be just as messy if not worse when I returned to life. I can’t even wrap my brain around the mass shootings that occurred while I can’t help but to feel the deep sufferings. I might think that we’re in deep sh*t as a country or as the whole world with all the problems we face today and get depressed about it. Yet, there are teachings (as in history) that show us we have gone through many of these global upheavals over and over again.
I don’t mean to say that I think the humanity would find its way through for a better world without my effort. If I try to think about the local, national or global issues, I can easily get overwhelmed, which then leads me to feel paralyzed as the issues at hand seem so grand that I, as a mere individual, cannot even come close to solving.
Yet the wisdom I’m gaining through the practice points to my heart. I get to look within for the mind that causes the sufferings. Bringing it down to my very personal level to see how and where I can get caught in stories and ideas helps me to get present and acknowledge the reality in front of me moment by moment whether I’m angry, frustrated, hurt, sad, excited, happy, etc.
Before I went to the retreat, I was looking for a new journal at Staples as my current one was running of pages. The one I picked up says, “Trust Your Journey” on the cover. O.K. I get it. I am to trust that the path I am on is the path I’m supposed to be no matter how far from what I want it to look like.
One of the big take away from my recent retreat was to realize that for the most part of my adult life, I believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with me even though I couldn’t quite articulate it. There was this nagging feeling that something was blocking me from being all I could be. And one night the teacher said during his Dharma talk, “there’s nothing wrong with you.” After sitting with that one simple thoughts for a day or so, I finally got it was about “trusting.” Trusting that I am on the right path, and I am growing in exactly the right way no matter how imperfect it seems. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with me like I had believed. As long as I’m following my heart, I must trust that I am making my own contributions to the world in a way that’s unique to me. And as long as I’m working with people with similar values, the impact can be much bigger than I, as an individual, can make. So there, I’m choosing to trust my long and winding journey and letting go of a burden of carrying the problems on my shoulders. Phew…