The Transcendence of Hardship…. core spirituality, my personal journey
It is perhaps the least spoken of and certainly least understood of all human activities our hardships and our unwilling conundrums. Where we find how our transcendence of hardship plays such a vital and important and always contributing spiritual action in this world. The act of transcendence is a universal sub-note or theme to all of our lives and carries a universal purpose. Not limited by any one religion, any nationality, race, any place, or age of person. In fact the act of transcendence is connected to all human activity… directing the future for all of us. So how is it that we have forgotten this deeply moving and important aspect of living?
The facing of the difficult.
The facing of difficulty is so common that we hardly give it a thought, so pervasive in society that we have a vast array of choices we all make which serve to distract us from this very thing! Much of our human activity…. the quest for power, the abuse of drugs, the proliferation of violence as entertainment, the chasing of money, the complete obsession of so many aspects of life and much of the negative psychological problems we share arise out of our resistance, and denial of our need to move forward through circumstance and transcend the conditions we find ourselves.
Transcendence happens on all levels of our lives. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social… there is hardly a human arena where we do not have the personal power to exert change and difference in our lives through our transcendence of hardship. There are no limits to gathering what it takes inside us, around us, and through us to take on the task. Often it is not until we have passed through the fires of a painful and difficult time do we even discover the meaning of it all! Yet in hindsight we frequently do arrive at the greater purpose that was unfolding all along in our hardships.
An act of spirit.
As an act of spirit transcendence transports us into realms of mystery, and revelation, where we are able to shape and develop personal qualities, conditions around us, and participate in something larger than ourselves.. that of evolution. The opening to personal revelation and our unknown strengths and weaknesses are almost always revealed. The forces of circumstance drive us all to move beyond ourselves and to taste the sweet waters of humility. Here is where we regain our footing in new vision, new possibility, and new outcomes. Our soul selves quietly lead us forward through these things all to bring to us the larger place of being, where we discover our most important truths, unravel our greatest mysteries, and find the love we were searching all along. Yet… oh how we resist and fight the urge to transcend our own short comings and negativity. Until we reach the place of our deeper wisdom and learn the purposeful unfolding, we suffer. And most often we generate our own suffering through our ignorance ( from the word : “to ignore” ). The act of spirit is heaved forward into our lives as we gain momentum with our transcendence of every single circumstance both within ourselves and outwardly!
The idea of polarity.
What is so vital in all this is polarity, those forces of positive and negative. For as we face hardship and grok our way onward we gain strengths and wisdom’s as we face the tremendous negativity in our lives. It is perhaps the single most powerful teaching that any negative force can show us. The horrific negative scenarios in our world awaken human beings and redirect us in ways it is almost inconceivable to understand. When we gather one to another uniting in our efforts to face the hardships and difficulties of this world we literally change history, alter the future and gain tremendous strength of character. We are able to redefine and transcend these negatives. Within ourselves whenever we face a personal state of our own making, our own negatives, we draw from the very substance of our lives, the spiritual energy needed to move our blocks, shift our minds, release our pains. It is not uncommon to look back after such a growth zone and think of it as a miracle! Yet as humans this is perhaps one of our most powerful and fluid capacities. We can move mountains! We are truly spiritual beings having a human experience and not just humans having a spiritual experience. Never more is this realized than after passing through a difficult hardship and successfully and completely transcending the conditions and limitations that used to over take us.
How we react to the world and why it matters.
How we react to the world is of pure consequence because our reactions have momentum, have energy behind them. Every thought, emotion, action, or lack of … shape the collective conditions of our lives. Building our days with human choices both conscious and unconscious.
Once the realization that our reactions cause more actions with our environment, our human brothers and sisters, and all life on this planet we learn to pause. Pausing allows us the moments we need to learn to consider how and what we choose will affect life around us.
Staying prejudiced, or remaining stubborn, holding on to our viewpoints when another expresses an opposing view, for example, will only cause ourselves to continue to experience the same limiting and painful scenarios over and over.
Unyielding points of view in the face of opposition only add to conflict.
It is a choice to be this way, and learning to just relax and let others have their say, and to act on their notions is sometimes the one act that can bridge the differences. There is a third place where oppositions meet and the possibility for understanding then has a grounding for arising. It is quite possible to say no to injustices, suppression, oppression, and any forms of subservience while not creating any hardship. Learning how to engage difference has its strength in this world as it can show us how we ourselves may make a difference through the willingness to peacefully face such actions in the world. For truly all of these scenarios show us on the most primal level, what not to do to another. And so not to cause such in our personal lives in any degree.
Saying no to injustice, suppression, oppression and all forms of subservience to outside negative forces.
Choosing kindness over hatred
Choosing empathy over defensiveness
Choosing understanding over prejudice
Choosing strength over weakness
Choosing clarity over confusion
Choosing openness over closed-ness and obsessiveness
Choosing cooperation over fighting
Choosing willingness over resistance
Choosing love over… as the final result in all matters on a personal level
These are but a few harmonious conditions we can always grow in our personal lives in the face of hardships.
Transcendence is a core element of spirituality.
Transcendence is an aspect to core spirituality as it is basic to all of life, even on a cellular level. Transcendence is core because whether we like it or not, whether we want to at the time or not, circumstances will eventually lead us beyond ourselves and the limits we place in life. And this transcendence connects into the collective. Our private thoughts, feelings, and actions do affect the public domains of our common ground. As the actions, words of such generate the conditions we live within. How often have I discovered a private and personal act of transcendence brought to me a new door opening, a new friend, new possibilities. Yet on the surface there did not appear to be any connection outside me. The revelation was indeed, we are… and all things and circumstances all connected.
“Going against the grain” when it serves your intent to transcend.
“Going against the grain” is an uncomfortable realization that our personal growth demands of us eventually. There is a time when it becomes right to step away, to step out, and to go another way. Even at the dismay of loved ones. Our deeper urge to transcend does not always align with the timing of the people with whom we love. Thus there is a pain and this pain we are urged to bear as we move forward and learn to not only face our difficulties, but also to transcend them. Resulting in many turn rounds, shifting of circumstance and whole new unexpected directions. Family and friends are not always up to speed with us at the same time this happens. When we choose differently it is helpful to be considerate of our loved ones and to take time to share, if that is possible. When it is not we must go forward anyway and my experience is that in time, more opportunities will show up later where the chance to build understanding will manifest. But until then, “going against the grain” may become the central theme of our lives.
Transcendence as a way of life, the art of always giving self permission to move on.
Clearly one of the most difficult aspects of all this is giving ourselves permission to move forward! Yet it is needed, as no one has the power to do it for us, we have to act on our own life force from within ourselves otherwise the transcendence is not complete. Going it alone, and learning self permission is one of the scariest most important realizations on the path of facing the difficult. When we can muster this with the smaller conditions, we graduate to larger ones. Along the way we learn how transcendence is a way of life and an art to living that is absolutely necessary. Often it is in our loneliest, most alone moments when we discover our own most powerful strengths. Graduating to the art of transcendence where we learn to love and live happily as we make our changes, even when we face our hardships. This is where we encounter the paradox of living. Paradox becomes familiar ground and acceptance is the way through the polarizing opposites in our nature and the world around us. Many times in my own history of transcendence I have been in a state of paradox until I achieved a greater momentum in my direction. I learned to accept this about myself, life in general and this supports me in facing the difficult with much less angst and more layering of negativity.
The evolution of circumstance based on choice.
When in hindsight we reflect upon circumstance it is much easier to see how our evolution and growth through our choice selections generate the circumstance. When we discover how we create reality, (circumstances) we learn how to value what is inherent in facing hardship. It becomes worth it to move onward and go through whatever it will take to transcend our unhappiness, our discords, our pains, and our adversities and adversaries. All such negative situations become the fuels with which we use to propel ourselves out and beyond. We stop fighting them, and we learn to transcend them…. ourselves.
This is most valuable with larger issues where whole groups of people are involved. We may not have unto our individual selves the powers necessary to shift a whole group, yet we do when it comes to one individual. Me! One transformed person will make it possible for another and another, and so on. In case you have never heard of The Hundredth Monkey phenomenon, then investigate that. We learn to be appropriate in the larger context of life and we replace our rant of “change the world” to “change my world” and we get on with the business of living the change ourselves. This is powerful.
Anchoring intention into states of transcendence vs. the struggle.
When we arrive to the natural impulse within ourselves to transcend, and concentrate on our own life, and stop projecting this onto every person, group, nation or whatever that we do not agree …we cease the continuous state of conflict so many humans place their energy.
We then add to the harmonious forces of transformation and transcendence that already exist and are popping up all over the world. There is an appropriate action facing the negative forces around us , and there is the time to do this work internally and make the change within that we want to see outwardly. In other words… “I become the change I want to see in the world”. And thus we become a force for transcendence that is unstoppable.
Through out my entire life I have experienced all these things and I know how new levels of transcendent living actually shift the very life around me.
Forces of negativity that once pulled upon me withdraw their grip and the freedom within is untouchable to those forces.
There is still a lot we all are learning when it comes to sovereignty… and one of the most difficult realizations is no one can give this to you, no one can make you sovereign like you can.
Yet still the masses seek freedom outside themselves, when it is actually within us.
The discovery that we make this ourselves is for all of us.
As more and more individuals begin to live this, the forces of oppression, suppression, injustice, and harm will only continue to diminish. These kind of negative forces can only take hold in individuals that do not live in alignment with transcendence and the self sovereignty of a human life.
Thus for these negatives to go away we all will learn and learn so fully, so collectively that negatives will have no place to anchor in us, in our lives.
This is the deeper more powerful truth of the transcendence of hardship that all negative forces do not want you to learn, for it does mean their end.
Core spirituality, my personal journey
John R Trevett 