enduring

sometimes, you just have to endure - without succumbing to the tempting habit to diminish or exaggerate through thoughts and actions - the times in your life that get really difficult, without any guarantee that enduring will make it easier or help it end any sooner.

complicated mental tangles, messy emotional storms, identity crises, the dark looming threat of depression... all of these events can be endured by what you truly are, although the mental concept of who you are may not, and often doesn't, emerge intact.

if you're ready to lose the limited conception of selfhood, you can face these challenging situations. you'll understandably experience fear, but if you can bare the impulse to turn and run away or to throw yourself on the ground kicking and screaming without indulging in either escape tactic, you'll be amazed at your ability to endure.

consciously standing firm in these situations, with your eyes wide open and the willingness to learn from what you see no matter how painful (and not spending all of your energy trying to change the situation at all costs), will bring you into closer contact with your true nature, which remains absolutely intact regardless of the violent shocks to the "you" you think you are.