People in their majority, and here I also include myself, are programed to avoid certain feelings, people, and experiences altogether, although in reality, I have noticed that valuable information and lessons are hidden where we least expect and implicitly in what we avoid.
I can give a very mundane example in which my entire life I was trying to keep myself comfortable especially when coming to extreme temperatures, be it cold or hot. I was always shaking uncontrollably when exposed to cold and suffering greatly when exposed to heat.
One day I went to the sauna with my girlfriend at that time and usually I like warm shower even after the sauna, even if the majority may use a cold shower to create resilience both of the body as of character.
My girlfriend went straight into the cold water which was probably no more than couple of degrees, and was just sitting there without whining or shaking. That was the moment when I was in awe with her stoic resilience and realized that I was weak in this particular matter.
Some years after I was talking to a friend online and said that I am not going out because it was very cold and I I would rather stay in the warmth of my home.
She laughed and said that men sometimes can be so weak, and that she prefers pushing her limits to build her character. Again I felt I was doing something wrong. Since that moment I started taking cold showers after the hot one. The first ones were probably less than 5 seconds 😁, but slowly I increased the time until I reached the moment when I can easily take only cold shower in the morning, and also in the pools I started using the cold water pools which are 0 degrees, and I stay there 2 to 3 minutes at a time.
As a beneficial result I see that my resilience to extreme temperatures increased several fold, as to the point that this winter I haven’t been using a hat despite very cold days. But my point is not in emphasizing the physiological benefits but rather to point out my realization of the fact that when we avoid something and try to force into our lives just the pleasant or comfortable, then we force life to push onto us those gathered small inconvenient events that we avoid snowballed into a big “negative” event to restore the balance.
As I stated in previous articles, I feel life as a continuous ebbing and flowing, a continuous change from Yin to Yang and vice-versa into a perpetual movement of the polarities.
So to get to the theory I propose to my readers to observe:
If we don’t embrace the negative aspects and events, which in reality are not only not “negative” at all, but teaching and enhancing our awareness and forcing us to reason, observe and ponder on the experience, then the choice is that we will have life, or consciousness forcing onto us the gathered accumulated negative charge which can be too much for us to bear.
So just by having a cold shower we embrace the discomfort that at first we experience whilst having it, although later the whole negative aspect of it flips into positive. Just by extrapolation, you can realize inside your own life whenever you try to avoid the discomfort and hoping for the opposite, and choose to change the approach.
As such, when we avoid certain type of people or/and experiences that life is pushing onto us over and over again, we fail to examine the reason behind that, as nothing in life just happens, as I don’t believe anymore in that neither in the existence of sheer luck.
So there are several benefits as I have noticed in embracing what we usually tend to reject or run away from. And those benefits are multidimensional. And once we realize that just by embracing and facing what we used to try to escape from, life will become smoother and more balanced.
With gratitude for Anna (the friend I talked about above ) , who unknowingly inspired me to face the harsh weather and implicitly life’s challenges.
Inspired by and dedicated to Jivanmukti and Siddha Param-Para 