We create our own suffering.

That’s right, I said it – stop looking away. At some level, you know it to be true.

You can feel it when it begins – a tightening, perhaps. It wraps itself around our being, and threatens to steal our happiness away.

In our minds, we are unable to distinguish – between that initial sharpness of pain to pass, and that which continues to linger. The lingering is by choice, my loves. For, without the willingness, Heart is incapable of moving on.

It’s the clinging which becomes the fuel for our suffering. And, yet – even knowing, we are challenged to let go.

“Do you not see,” shares author, John Keats “how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”

When we view each instance as part of our learning, our awakening – we begin to shift our hearts from pain to gratitude.

A little something to consider, my loves – that we might view trouble as a source of inspiration, as the means to deepen awareness as we move through this world.

In this way, even the greatest of challenges may become our most prosperous ‘reward.’