Wrestle Hard.

When tempted to quit, or worse - despair, we must stare into the bottomless pit.  Empty.  Void.  Meaningless.  Stare in it we must.  To remind ourselves there is no other option.  No better alternative.  Trying.  That is our job.  The rest is not our business.

There is no other alternative.

In the mire we can hardly make our next step.  Confusion abounds.  Lack of conviction.  He who hesitates is lost.  We are lost.  We get stuck.  We are afraid to make a mistake.  Another mistake.  We feel isolated.  Alone.  “No one is helping me.”  Beware.

When this thinking enters, Beware!

For these thoughts are not your own.  And they are certainly not from the Creative Spirit.  They are part of the resistance.  A death.  A broken system.  A disease.  This deathly thought-system ultimately wraps us firmly into the arms of despair.

“I can do nothing.”  “I am stuck.  Alone.”  It is a very powerful lie.  Only the most alert, aware, and awoke can resist its power.  But it will not be easy.  But face it we must.  

It is almost as if we must let the lies drip through us - the accusations to have their day.  The false truths must be allowed to condemn us as they will.  Hear them out.  Entertain them.  For in doing so, we allow a process of disarming to start.  We begin to see they are desperate.

But only then can we see this grasping - the fear, the hurt, and then let it go.

Let it just go!

For those powerful lies will seem so completely true.  They will seem so definitive.  They are not.  But they could be.  They want to be,  They want to define you, to be your source of identity.  Refuse them you must.  An active wrestling match must take place.

Fight!  Fight!  Fight!

At the root of every foundational question is identity: Who are you?  Why are you?  How we understand these questions will more greatly determine our life than almost anything else.  Who are you?  Why are you? Right or wrong, your answer will determine many things.

Wrestle hard.

And don’t settle for your first response.  Don’t settle for a quick reaction.  At first glance it will seem like mere chemical reactions and economics.  Survival games.  But there is more.  There really is more.  Persist until you get to that more.  Refuse to accept purely physical definitions.    

We are more.

We are mystery.  Flesh and spirit.  Leather and lace.  Mind and heart.  We can not be reduced.  The mystery can not be solved.  We remain undefinable.  Resolutely.  Defiantly.  Not because we are special.  Because we are human.  Creature.  Fundamentally human mystery.

And as humans we are created beings.  We start with mystery.  We start with our eyes closed.  Coming out of the womb.  Unwillingly.  Pushed.  Coerced.  Squeezed out in this giant cyclone called birth.  Seeped in trauma.  From the very beginning.  Called forth against our will. 

We are born.  We come out.  We start this mystery as a completely helpless babe.  From day one we are unraveling the mystery of our surroundings.  Discovering who we are.  Whose we are.  Where we are.  How we are.  There is no way to think that we are somehow in charge.

We are helpless. But slowly, surely, we understand our surroundings.  We discover who we are.  We push, pull, kick and scream to discover who we are, what we are, and maybe as importantly, what we are not.

We are not our own.  And have never been so.  We belong.  Because we are alive.  Our very life is the proof we need.  Life itself is our vindication.  Life itself is reason to go on.  You got this!