It's that feeling of just not being quite happy, continuing to go into a state of anxiety, fear, or depression, and then struggling to overcome it. Struggling to change so you can return to a state of "happy" again.
Or maybe it's a state of being totally fed up and frustrated with how things are, resenting where life is at for you in this moment, struggling to get to where you want to be.
What it basically boils down to is a sense of trying to get away from what is, or what you are afraid may be, and get to somewhere you imagine will be better that isn't here yet. Or, if it is here, the struggle to maintain it, afraid that it could be taken away at any moment.
This constant struggle, even on a subtle level, puts our bodies into a state of tension and contraction. When our bodies are tense and our energy contracted, we are living in the mindset of fear, feeling small and separate from Life, cut off from the support and flow that is always available to us when we are open to receiving it.
So how do we step out of struggle and into that openness, receiving the support from the Universe that wants to come our way?
The antidote to struggle is something called allowing. When we allow all things to be as they are - especially how we feel about things, without trying to change it - there's no room for struggle.
Struggle only exists when there is something to:
a. resist
b. strive for
When we are experiencing something that we'd rather not feel - the more challenging emotions - our ego's natural tendency is to push those feelings away, avoid them, or do something to overcome them. So we are struggling against what is.
And at the same time as we are resisting what is here right now to be felt and experienced, we are striving to reach a different state that we think will feel better for us. If sadness arises, we want to do something with it to feel happy. If anger arises, we want to push it back to try and feel calm.
Or we see the state of our life as it is which seems unacceptable to our ego, and want to get to a better place. Then we feel frustrated that it isn't shifting fast enough, causing us to feel trapped in a hamster wheel of struggle.
Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't work to improve our lives and increase our happiness, and learn to take better care of ourselves so we can have a more abiding sense of peace and joy in our hearts. But the important thing to realize is that none of those things happen as a result of our struggling towards them.
Happiness creeps up on us when we aren't looking, when we least expect it, when we let go of "trying" and let it come to us. And the creative solutions to our life's problems come to us also, from a place of being open to the possibilities our minds may not yet see.
We can't force that to happen, all we can do is make ourselves open to it. And how we do that is through the art of allowing. Namely, allowing ourselves to feel what we feel without resistance or judgment.
When we are trying to change our emotional state, to move to a happier more peaceful place, often what we are really doing is judging ourselves, and making ourselves wrong for feeling the way we do. And while our tricks and techniques and avoidance strategies may work temporarily, usually those judged and pushed away emotions only come back stronger later on.
So what do we do? There's a very simple and powerful practice that can assist us in allowing our emotions to be as they are, not making ourselves wrong, and stopping struggle in it's tracks.
And that is, whenever you are feeling an emotion you would normally resist or judge, you simply say to yourself "it's okay that I feel ___________"
So whether it's fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, jealousy, hopelessness, powerlessness, loneliness, or sadness. Instead of immediately trying to change it, we just stop and say "it's okay that I feel sadness right now" and we let the sadness be there for as long as it needs to be there.
The funny thing is, when we give an emotion full permission to be there, it will rise like a wave, reaching a peek of intensity, and then release, passing through us in just a few seconds in most cases.
We don't have to act the emotion out or spend a lot of time wallowing in it. In fact, it's when we are struggling against emotions that we get tangled up in projecting those emotions out onto other people and playing out scenarios that show us all the reasons why we should continue to feel this way.
For example, you are frustrated about your current job, you don't want to be there, you hate it and feel angry about things that are going on. If you don't give yourself the permission to feel those feelings fully, then life will bring you more experiences externally that reflect what you haven't fully allowed internally.
So essentially, more frustrating things will keep happening at your work all to give you reasons why you have the right to feel that way. Whereas if you just give yourself permission to feel that way without needing reasons to prove it, that emotional energy can dissolve out of your energy field. Then a new space can open up for resolution and a different experience can be discovered.
The Universe wants to support us always, in all ways. If it ever seems like there's a kink in the flow of that love, it's in our own inability to accept what is here for us to accept and allow within ourselves. As long as we are busy struggling to avoid what we don't want, and get what we do want, we aren't available to receive what Life would bring us for our highest good.
So we allow, we suspend our self-judgment, and we let whatever emotions are arising in us to be there, for as long as they need to be there, until they have run their course and are effortlessly released. Then we are left with a clear space, an open space, for the Universe/the Divine to fill with more of our Essence - which is naturally happy, peaceful, joyful, and free, just as it is.
Blessings!
~Jessica
