Dealing with Hardships

Author: ​Nebo D. Lukovich

Learner, Reader, Student of Life

Nebo D. Lukovich

We all want to be happy and to avoid suffering. These are the two tendencies that characterize the entire living world. Every life form will strive to satisfy its needs and thus be content, but also to avoid any form of suffering.

Although being self-aware and highly intelligent, we humans are also unable to avoid pain. Whether it be physical or emotional, pain is inevitable even to the most mature or spiritually developed people.

However, Buddhism claims that one can become entirely free from suffering. That final stage of human existence is being called Nirvana, or Enlightenment. It is not our topic here, at least directly. Still, if we cannot completely transcend suffering, at least we can diminish it.

I will describe here instructions for dealing with various difficulties. These guidelines are based on three stages related to the hardship:

1. The normal state, in which the troubling experience has not yet appeared. In this stage, you have to do the most of your preventive work.
2. Within the hardship. This is the trickiest part of your practice, as it’s very hard to become present or stay present in the middle of the troubling experience and to deal with it consciously.
3. After the hardship. In this phase, you take advantage of the freshness of your recent trouble. You can work thoroughly on the unpleasant emotions that you still can easily recall and feel.

Note that it’s essential for your inner work to accurately recognize at which stage you are at that point in time.
Here are the three-stage instructions:

1. Prevention - the crucial stage

In your normal, everyday life conditions, in which you don’t feel any pain or suffering, you must take some time for the work on yourself. It is not only the work on preventing the hardships; it is rather the work for achieving inner transformation in a positive sense.

In other words, we must face the negativities of our life, but it is not good to focus on them too often and too much. We could define it only as a preventive work, but that would imply avoiding something negative. Instead, to be more aimed at a positive transformation, we will also call it the happiness work.

​It should include:

• Meditation
• Mindfulness
• Reintegration work
• Self-Care 

We must face the negativities of our life, but it is not good to focus on them too often and too much.

​Meditation
​
This work should be well organized and scheduled. It would be great if you could create an everyday habit of meditating twice a day, at least 15 minutes in the morning and the same duration in the evening. These sitting sessions should be scheduled for the same periods of the day, if possible. This regular practice should also include loving-kindness meditation. 

It would be great if you could create an everyday habit of meditating twice a day, at least 15 minutes in the morning and the same duration in the evening.

There are countless types and variations of meditation out there. For example, you may practice vipassana, breath meditation, body awareness, walking meditation, pure awareness meditation, Kriya Yoga or something else. Or, you can concentrate your mind on something, e.g., on a single dot on the wall, on a figure of Buddha or another divine being, on a flame of a candle, etc.

However, the Reintegration System has several meditative practices to offer, too:

• RS meditation
• Loving-kindness meditation
• Total Acceptance meditation
• Meditation Lying Down
• Conscious Thinking meditation
• All-Inclusive Awareness meditation
• Walking meditation
• Relax and Reintegrate

​In all of these methods, you don’t ignore or suppress the emerging thoughts and emotions during the sitting. On the contrary, you reintegrate them entirely with your whole being. Check out the above links to learn how to meditate.

An essential part of your sitting practice should be the loving-kindness meditation. So, don’t forget to include at least 5 minutes of this practice into your regular meditation sittings, preferably at the end of each. 

An essential part of your sitting practice should be the loving-kindness meditation. 

​​Meditation brings you:

• Deep calmness and freshness during the day;
• Reduced stress and anxiety;
• Increased energy and focus;
• Reduced blood pressure;
• Improved quality of sleep;
• Increased overall productivity;
• Improved overall health.

These are not claims; these are the facts. Scientific research has confirmed them, and you can check it out on the Internet and numerous scientific magazines.

What’s more important for some practitioners, meditation, together with mindfulness, will expand your consciousness and can ultimately lead you to spiritual liberation or enlightenment. The veils of ignorance and suffering will gradually (or even suddenly) lift up, and you will eventually experience Pure Consciousness as a permanent state of being.

Mindfulness

Another vital part of your regular happiness work is mindfulness. It simply means to live in the present moment consciously. If you want to be mindful, you will have to do any activity in such a way that you are fully conscious of yourself and of the activity itself.

Although many people don’t consider mindfulness as strictly spiritual, it is indeed a spiritual practice. It leads you to your True nature while dissolving your inner conflicts softly and imperceptibly. Moreover, conscious moments in the Now will gradually accumulate and make your whole life easier.

​When mindfulness becomes your natural way of living, you will enjoy every task; you will become light and, in a strange way, even transparent. You will start sensing some inexplicable joy and deep inner peace. You will feel love more and more, both for yourself and for people around you.

Mindfulness will abate or even prevent challenges.

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