Times are challenging for all of us, regardless whether you are one of many spiritually oriented individuals, concentrating on spiritual living, or take the life head on, and fight for the spoils. And there’s nobody to blame, only ourselves. After all, we create the world in our minds and then complain that it’s unbearable… The solution is easy: go beyond the mind and even go beyond consciousness and don’t let them play tricks on you.
When we say the challenges are ever growing and the daily living more difficult than ever, we fail to recognize the fact that it is entirely within our ability to completely change it. For what the mind created, the mind must destroy.

Yes, it is critical to keep your mind in abeyance. Allowing it to roam free, you’ll be getting further and further away from bliss, and your living will be entirely consumed by responding to endless fears and desires. By constantly seeking pleasure, we have to accept pain. This “law of the earthly existence” cannot be ignored. Want to free yourself? Train your mind to reject all fears and all desires. Better still; reject consciousness all together, as it is in the ‘I am’ nature to identify itself with the opposites. Said Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj: “Body means burden. Sensations, desires, thoughts – these are all burdens. All consciousness is of conflict.”

And before you rush and start working on yourself and the world, trying to make it better, hear Nisargadatta Maharaj’s words: “In reality, nothing is lacking and nothing is needed, all work is on the surface only. In the depth there is perfect peace. All your problems arise because you have defined and therefore limited yourself. When you do not think yourself to be this or that, all conflict ceases. Any attempt to do something about your problems is bound to fail, for what is caused by desire can be undone only by freedom from desire. You have enclosed yourself in time and space, squeezed yourself into the span of a lifetime and the volume of a body and thus created the innumerable conflicts of life and death, pleasure and pain, hope and fear. You cannot be rid of problems without abandoning illusions.” Pure and simple!

It’s all about realizing the Reality. The longer you choose to live in the state of ignorance, the more pain you are going to experience. Professing spirituality will not solve your problems, earnestness and action will. Realize, it is you who tortures your body every minute of your short life. On one hand, you’re running around crying and complaining, on the other hand, you’re abusing your body and mind endlessly. Said Sri Ramana Maharshi: “Everyone is committing suicide. The eternal, blissful, natural State has been smothered by this ignorant life. In this way the present life is due to the killing of the eternal, positive Existence. Is it not really a case of suicide?” From now on, stop the vain effort of “fixing” your life. Fix yourself; realize that you’re not the body and you’re not the mind. When you realize that you’re the Self, you’ll be walking in the paradise; no matter what life throws at you.