Your humanity is not an illness to be healed
There's an old Zen proverb that says:
Obstacles don't bock the path; they are the path.
Ryan Holiday put it like this:
"The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve your condition."
And the Apostle Paul said it like this:
"Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am."
Yep, Paul's words in the letter he wrote to his mates in Philippi weren't a super-spiritual Christian formula about performing grand miracles and doing impossible things. He was echoing an ancient truth, a fundamental law of the universe:
You can't go around things, or over things, or under things, you have to go through things. The obstacle is the path. Because sometimes the things that seem most impossible are the things are in our hands, and hearts, and homes.
The good news is that you are saved, not from experiencing life in all its wonder and complexities, but into the hot, wondrous, messy beautiful centre of it, as you are, to live it all the way through. You are saved from living a life of avoidance and denial, coverups and hiding; from living behind masks, projecting an image, pretending to be who you think you need to be in order to find love, success, and belonging. The spiritual path, has always been about showing up to your life and facing it, in love and truth and grace.
And so when obstacles appear in all the forms that they do, whether it be relationship challenges, betrayals, health complications... any and all of it - the spiritual path leads you right in, while the false self - the ego; the part of you that is afraid these obstacles will take you out and dominate you - only wants to lead you as far away from it all as it can. So walk on, my friend. Right foot, left foot, keep going.
From Adam to Moses to Abraham to Ruth to Habbakuk to Deborah to Mary to Paul and onward forevermore, life has always been carved out not from a clean, smooth path, where all was well, and perfection and ease were the pinnacles of grace, but through, and because of, the obstacles and challenges faced along the way.
Much of faith has become about curing, purifying, and fixing, and not about being whole, living with the tension and having the courage to live through the mess and the pain, the glory and the beauty. The theology of fixing is rife, and a theology of thriving - learning, growing, and using your god-given autonomy to face obstacles - is demonised.
Your life is not an exercise in how to be cured and fixed. You are not a problem to be solved. Your humanity is not an illness to be healed, an anomaly to be defined. Perfection is not the end game, and sinlessness is not the goal. You are not a project for God to entertain God-self with. The obstacles you face are not judgements or indictments, and they will not destroy and they are not too much for you. They will show you the way if you lean in and open yourself to them.
MINDFUL PROMPT: You have the courage and the strength to face this mountain, to climb it, to the reach summit, to marvel at the beauty of the valley, only to realise it's been beautiful the whole way up.
Written by Liz Milani
Instagram: @thepracticeco
From this week’s series titled "The Only Way is Through", with a subscription, in the App.
