It’s OK.
Oil on Board 16” x 20” “In Favour With Their Stars” 2021
I started to name this post, “It’s OK to not be OK,” but in the interest of brevity, I opted for the mini-version.
I tell new students of painting, creativity, or self-awareness, that I want them to get to the place where they welcome digging up their inner dirt. In the case of painting, I want them to like wiping off all their hard work and starting over. At first they give me the stink eye, a look I remember giving during the years of thinking, “Screw that, I feel bad enough as it is,” or “How would I ever welcome the thing I want to run from most?”
I came to welcome the unwelcome because of practice. The more I faced the dark, the more I saw its rewards. After enough repetition, my inner Pavlov’s dog would recognize big growth and better outcomes right at the start of a looming challenge. Instead of Oh No, it became. Oh Goodies, this is gonna hurt so good.
A mentee told me this week that she’d learn to like the difficult awarenesses, but had thought I was nuts when I called it a goal long ago. She gets it now, and I could tell in her demeanor that her learned equanimity was part of a deep serenity that can’t be gained by gobbling up internet tips and tricks. She had been brave enough to walk through the fire, over and over.
It’s not that it doesn’t hurt in the process. I just had a big challenge present itself, and for a few days I thought, Well, it’s not supposed to be THIS dark and mysterious. But it was, and my team of spiritual wayfarers reminded me of all the wisdom that keeps us strong during storms. One thing the challenges always teach me is that facing shadows alone is, well, stupid. The Not OK stuff is transformed through awareness, best if it’s mine AND my fellows.
It better be OK to not be OK, because life will always contain both abundance and scarcity. The Great Heart holds both, loving each equally. My resistance to difficulty makes it more difficult, and my way of saying saying, “It’s OK,” is to relax as best I can, observe what’s arising, and allow it to take its course.
It gets easier.
