Our suffering doesn’t come from any experience but from our resistance to the experience. Likewise, our joy doesn’t come from any experience; it comes from our deeper nature. It is an innate quality of our Being.
So much of the time we don’t show up for the life we’re given but for the life we think we should have been given. This effort to have a different life is actually the cause of our suffering. It turns out that our joy doesn’t stem from circumstances either. It comes from just being with the life we’re given. In hearing this, we naturally conclude that the way to end our suffering is to stop resisting. However, trying to do anything about your resistance is just another attempt to change the way things are. The only thing to do about this dilemma is to simply be willing to experience it.
A good metaphor for being with your experience in this way is trying to grow something. If you’re trying to grow a plant, you don’t go out in the yard every day and tug on it to get it to grow faster. Instead, you’re just present to the plant, to its natural unfolding. You provide the environment for that growth to take place. You water the plant and fertilize it, but you don’t actually do anything to the plant. Doing something to the plant itself could actually harm it. The flow of conditioning is not a mistake.
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