Everything in life is an opportunity to grow - the good things, the not so good, the in-between. It's all an opportunity for us to internalize the energy, to take it past the emotion - past the mind - and bring it down to our foundation. Then bring it to the sex, and circulate it and allow it to travel to the top of our head. Basically, that's all it is - everything that happens to us in life.
We, as human beings, always apply our emotional qualities into every situation. We have to make it understandable in our eyes. We have to understand why and what, and that can be done only in the mind. The moment the mind touches the situation is like rainwater touching the earth. It's not as pure as it was. The same with the energy that travels through us. If we allow the mind to touch it, it convolutes the process. Things are just simple, the way they are. There's no bad or negative quality attached to anything; It's just the way it is.
And it's our responsibility as human beings to grow from it. That's what we responsible for, not to give it adjectives or describe it, or to really start fantasizing about this thing or that thing. Our job as spiritual human beings, people who are trying to grow, is just to take the energy from the occasion, take it into us, and grow with it.
Most of the time, if not all, things that are really hard - if we internalize them, we really grow. I remember in my own life, things that were so horrific and difficult, if I really took a breath and had a chance to not get emotional, I suddenly heard myself coming from a different place. I suddenly felt a different new feeling inside me, and that is worth a million. This is worth anything, feeling different inside, that to have reacted in a different way to a situation that otherwise would've crushed you, or would have upset you.
It just shows you that you are really responsible for your own life; you are taking charge of your own life. You're not just like a leaf on a tree anymore, or like a ship without a mast in the middle of the ocean. You are a grounded human being who doesn't just talk spiritual work, but lives it, and you live it when people are not around, when nobody can really see how spiritual or smart you are. These are the times were your spirituality shines.
I remember years ago, Rudy told me a story. While he was visiting India, he went to some forest with some friends, and suddenly in the middle of the forest, he saw a person in a loincloth doing Hatha Yoga positions. There wasn't anyone else doing around and the man was just so perfect in what he was doing, and Rudy said he was doing it for God. He wasn't doing it for anyone else to see how perfect he was doing Hatha Yoga. He was really connecting to God quietly.
I think that's what's so hard for people to accept: that even without confirmation - acknowledgment - you can be growing spiritually. No one has to acknowledge you, because this journey is between you and you; It's one and one. It's you and God.
These are the times, the quiet times, when a person really grows. When there's no acknowledge, and all doubts surface, and the conflicts, and you have to work with it, and realize that it's all bullshit eventually. You realize that you have to go to sleep in your own skin eventually, not what somebody said about you , or didn't say, or thoughts you were so great, or so this...It doesn't matter at all. What matters is what you feel at the end of the day when you go to sleep,
and are fulfilled inside. Have you worked with you demons inside today? Have you conquered your demons? If not then you have another chance the next day. And if you did, then you have a new one the next day.
It's always a win-win situation really. Everything is really written in our life, and permission is granted. We always have the permission to change, even the structure of the cosmos, of the universe. We don't have to accept things the way they are. Everything is a food for us to grow - absolutely everything! That was the title of Rudy's book. Spiritual Cannibalism. You take everything like food and you turn it into spirit.
