Struggles Cease When You Cease Struggling

Category Peace, Surrender

Chinese finger traps. How do they work and what’s the catch?

You put a finger in each end. Once you start pulling, the toy clasps onto your finger. The harder you pull, the tighter it grips your fingers, and the more you get ensnared.

What’s the trick? What’s the secret to escaping what seems to be an impossible struggle?

Stop resisting it. Stop fighting. Accept the situation and look at it while you’re not struggling. Don’t even try to look for a solution. Just look at it.

It’s the very attempt to escape that ironically locks you in place. It’s the struggle that creates the struggle.

By looking at the experience when you’re not caught in the struggle, possibilities arise and show you that it’s possible to release the situation without having to struggling with it.

It seems that people think they struggle because something is wrong, yet the reality is that something is wrong because they’re struggling.

Your inner world creates your outer world.

Many people spend much of their lives trying to escape or run away from their issues, to somehow distract themselves with food, alcohol, drugs, music, sex, running, sleeping, clubbing, traveling, meditating, attending seminars, and so on.

These are all used as distractions in the hope that if one can just distract themselves enough, the problem will resolve itself.

See, that which you resist persists.

What you look at disappears.

When you’re willing to sit in the same place as a fear or worry and look at it, just simply allow it to be just as it is, very often you may find that the problem you thought you had simply dissolves all on its own.

Fascinating…

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7 Responses to “Struggles Cease When You Cease Struggling”

Irene | Light Beckons said:

Hi Ariel, I’m a spill-over from Tom Stine’s blog. I really like your style of writing – very simple, to-the-point, easy to read and digest. There’s so much truth here about why we struggle. Thanks for the reminder!

Irene | Light Beckonss last blog post..Glass Half Full
Jasper said:

You wrote: “What you look at disappears.”

This is surely true, if you have the intent to make it disappear (e.g. a disease).

But in General it seems more truthful to say, “What you look at becomes energized” (Energy flows, where attention goes).
So if you focus on something, make sure, to Love and to be clear about what you want to accomplish by focusing (setting an intent).

Your blog Rocks man!

Ismaelia Reply:
November 24th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
I do a lot of work with emotional release. The very fact that it arises from with in tells me that it is necessary to healing. Healing is the intention. No other intention is necessary.Observance and the allowance for it to flow through us and release without resistance is the healing. It doesn’t have to be made to go anywhere. Understanding isn’t even necessary. If understanding arises in the moment or later on, great. So be it. The accomplishment already is . It does not have to be made to occur.
Tuplad said:

Tuplads last blog post..Re: Post Jullie Foto’s Hier
Ariel Bravy said:

Irene: Glad to have you here!

Jasper: You are correct. We’re looking at the same truths and bringing up different aspects of it. The fact that resistance turns into a flow of energy when you look at it happens because the energy flows into when you place attention there. The disappearance of resistance is a result of energy flowing through it.

Tuplad: haha
Polina said:

The more you try to escape, the tighter the problem holds you. But when you stop trying to escape it lets you go…

strange and quite hard to realize, but there is something very attractive in this thought…
Experiencing Emotional Roller Coasters Once You Begin Meditating | Free Articles For All said:

[...] The object is to simply allow these emotions to be just as they are and release them through non-resistance. Remember, when you cease struggling with your emotions, your emotions will cease to be a struggle, as explained earlier. [...]