When we talk about making changes in ourselves, it could be said that it's like climbing a mountain. Why is the mountain a metaphor for spiritual change? There's a certain kind of effort necessary for climbing, isn't there? Also, the mountain represents a higher view. Because as you ascend the mountain, not only does the atmosphere change in terms of becoming more rarified, but every step higher up the mountain produces a relationship with a different order of light.
But how many of us get stopped on the journey upward? It could be anything, couldn't it? "I had this feeling I wanted to understand, and I thought about it. I bought a book. But I eventually came to a point where I didn't understand it and couldn't go any farther." "I wanted to educate myself in a new direction, to pursue a new profession." "I wanted to no longer be someone who did the kind of things that I always seemed to do. I wanted to stop yelling at people..." And when we got stopped: "I couldn't," "I didn't," "It wasn't going to happen" -- and all of the self-loathing that comes with feeling like, "I'm not good enough." There always comes a point -- in science, math, athletics, relationships, you name it -- where a person reaches this impasse, this point they bump into it, again and again, and then finally say, "Okay, I've gone as far as I can go here. So, I'm just stopping."
Why? Because I've reached a point at which I meet something, and there's pain. And 'I' want the resolution of the pain through the familiar path that my mind gives me in those moments that seem impassable. I want to be relieved of the pressure of this great resistance to the pain.
Look at your relationships with other human beings. Most human relationships are predicated on, "Let's not cause each other too much pain." But the man or woman who is more interested in understanding the nature of their pain than they are in protecting themselves from how they hurt others or are hurt by others doesn't stop. Because they realize there is always something else they can uncover and discover about themselves. They understand that the light never gives up on them; it is they who give up on the light.
So here I am... I run into a moment, and I can't go any farther than this: "I just can't get out of bed today; it's impossible." "I can't not speak cruelly to someone" "I can't not rush." Why? Because there's pain. And 'I' want the resolution of the pain through the familiar path that my mind gives me in those seemingly impassable moments. I want to be relieved.
But have you ever been at that point where you were going to give up on something, and you didn't give up... and then you succeeded? As Thomas Edison said, "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." So how did you get past that immense resistance when you were certain you couldn't go on? You went through it. What does it mean that you went through it? What happens? What is the nature of the success that you experience when you meet that great resistance? Is it that you finally manifest what it was you intended to by going through what you couldn't go through? That's part of it, but the real success you "achieve" in such moments is that you are able to step into and through a certain kind of darkness that had always turned you back.
At a certain point, if you persist, you are able to understand and step through. And the real achievement is the discovery that what was stopping you wasn't real -- that what was in your way belonged to a level of self that is telling you what you are standing before, when the fact is you never stand before anything other than yourself. And when you meet a point where you say, "I can't," or "I won't," or "It's not going to work and the pain is too great," what you're meeting in those moments is an order of yourself that is unconscious to the fact that what you have met is yourself. And when you go through the resistance, you discover the truth of that. You discover that there was no way through this, because the me who was looking at this was this.
But something, thank God, exists in me -- through my studies, my work, my understanding -- that is capable of looking at this great wall of pain, this great wish that it would go away, this insistence there's no way through it. And it begins to understand that it never sees anything other than what that self is showing itself as being true.
Do you know that every single time you run into something that seems greater than you are, and you are turned back by it because something in you resists it and reacts to it -- it's because you don't see any more where you are? All you see is where you don't want to be. That's all you see -- what you don't want -- and you cease to see anything else. Which means, you cease to see any possibilities apart from what that same mind is telling you is true about where you are. And the pain you're in is the validation of the impossibility of passing through that situation because the pain is produced by you seeing nothing other than what you are resisting.
You get stopped because you run into what you know is true. And you don't know what's true. What you know is what you tell yourself is true. When you're feeling beat up or you're worried or frightened, is there any doubt in your mind? No! "I just know my depression is real!" "My anger... it's real!" "My resentment... it's real!" "My self-doubt... it's real!" "My inability... it's real!" And I'm telling you, it's only real because you are standing where a lower part of you wants to stay. But within you lives something that doesn't want to stay there. It wants to go higher.
So the journey upward is through your resistance. Instead of allowing your resistance to prove to you the reality that it reveals, you understand enough about the nature of the resistance to walk into and through it. Then that moment where suddenly the resistance is welling up and it's so great and you absolutely feel, "There's no hope, no power, no chance, no way," what you have to do is understand that the "you" that knows what it does, doesn't know the whole story.
This is why people don't like the authentic spiritual mountain. It's because the authentic mountain is gradually ascended by an individual coming to doubt -- with greater and greater strength -- their own certainty. A person never doubts their fears, resentments, anxiety, or sense of inadequacy. Because "If I have it, it's mine!" One day you will see the absurdity in meeting a moment where you think to yourself, "I can't; there's no way to go past this," because you will understand that the "you" that is saying, "This can't be done," is looking at what it wants to see so that it can keep you "you." And who you really are, the totality of you, is not just that level of you at the base of a mountain. It also includes the unrealized part of you that is already at the top.
But the experience of discovering the whole of yourself, in time, is through this slow and arguably arduous path of little by little meeting the moment where the pain says, "No," and you becoming so tired of letting pain be your master that you decide you're going to put your foot into that thing that seems impossible for you to do and understand. And when you step into that place where you were sure you couldn't go, you discover a light that shows you that hidden within you was a higher understanding that was already there.
So, here's the task: the next time you're so sure about something -- some pain, some fear, some worry -- have the spiritual audacity to walk directly into and through the pain that pushed you back and back and back. And you'll find that every time you do that, you have uncovered something that you didn't know was true about yourself. And here's what you uncover at once: that who you thought you were, you weren't. And that what you took yourself to be was nothing other than something that was telling you who you are.
Imagine for a moment what it would be like -- the next time you start to feel pain, doubt, or whatever it is -- that when the pain and doubt start to talk to you and tell you who you are, you understand that what's talking to you isn't you and has no authority over you. Your pain has no authority over you except what you give to it for not understanding your relationship to it. The pain is the product of resistance, not reality. Yes, resistance is part of reality, but you can step through it.
Step into the knower. Find out if what you think you know is true. If you find out it's not true, then the next time you'll be able to question it and act sooner. And little by little by little, you will -- for yourself -- ascend the true spiritual mountain.