#i didnt really know how to describe the clouds but hopefully my point got across

[three-bunnies-in-a-trenchcoat]

Rain

“‘Rulie?” Sky asked, walking up to him. “What are you doing out here?”

“It doesn’t rain in my Hyrule.” He said, not looking away from the clouds above them. His hands were outstretched, rain slowly falling from his fingers to the ground. 

“It doesn’t?” Sky couldn’t imagine that; even in Skyloft, the land always above the clouds, they had a few storms a year.

“Something Ganon did messed up the weather.” He shook his head. “Always cloudy, but it never rains.”

“That’s…” Horrible? Strange? My fault?

“It’s hard to find clean water.” He said absently. “And the rivers dry up in the summer.” He shook his head, sending water flying over them both. “Anyway, what are you doing out here?”

“It’s just a little… too much in there. No offense to Malon, though, of course.” He added on hurriedly.

“Yeah, I’m… not really used to people, either.” 

“I didn’t really see many people on my adventure.” Sky said, rubbing his arms as lightning struck in the distance. “There just… weren’t many people on the Surface left there, and I didn’t go back up to Skyloft much. Zelda– uh, Sun– is trying to get me used to it again, but…” He shrugged.

Hyrule nodded. “Everyone can be pretty enthusiastic sometimes, I get it.”

“Yeah.” He said, relieved he was able to understand what Sky had meant.

The wind sped up, blowing a sheet of rain right under the porch, and Hyrule laughed brightly, shutting his eyes against the sudden barrage of water. Sky wiped his face, shaking off the excess water.

“Have you ever seen anything this beautiful?” Hyrule asked. “I didn’t think clouds could ever be anything but oppressing, but…”

Sky pursed his lips, and stepped out from under the cover of the porch; he was already soaked, anyway. He glanced up, and gasped.

Hyrule was right; it was beautiful. The sky wasn’t covered in gray, but rather high, fluffy white clouds covered the eastern sky. Beams of light shown down through the gaps, and peeks of blue sky adorned the clouds like jewels. Even as the rain fell, casting a gloomy pallor on the land below, the sky was bright.

“It is.” He said softly. 

@here4dragons

[neetu-uplifts]

Thank you, darkness

We live in a world where the pursuit of happiness couldn’t be greater. Self-help books on how to be your happiest self, positive psychology classes at campuses across the world (including at Google), and an ever-increasing interest in spirituality to fill that void we feel inside (despite sometimes having everything on the outside) - all signal the desire to be happy. And that’s a good thing. Happiness is beautiful and it’s important. But, being happy all the time or only ever feeling positive emotions is not realistic (it’s actually not even good for you). Negative emotions that arise from the difficult times in life are just as important- and in some ways, even more important - as the happy emotions. If we never knew any struggle, we would lack depth, humility, character and connection to something larger than our ego-centric selves. We would be so out of touch with what really matters and have no chance at survival (emotionally) because we would never have faced any problems in our lives. Pain is necessary to being a resilient soul with substance. Without struggle, we would never grow and get the opportunity to discover ourselves. Our relationship with ourselves and with others would be incredibly superficial. This seems obvious to most people because they realize, looking back on the tough times in their lives, they came out stronger and wiser.

Pain doesn’t just make us stronger and wiser (in our human form). On a deeper level, pain has a crucial role in soul work. Pain helps us discover our truest self, by connecting us with our soul. Darkness or pain in this sense is the path to the light - the light inside you.  There’s a line in Rehras Sahib, one of Sikhism’s sacred texts, that I’ve frequently gone back to over the years because it’s so powerful and true: “Dukh daroo sukh rog bhaiyah, ja sukh taam no hoee”. It means that dukh (pain) was the necessary cause that ultimately led you to achieve an immense state of bliss (sukh), a bliss that could never have been attained through happy times alone, and thus, pain is your medicine or saviour. We don’t usually feel this way in the moment of course. But there is always a bigger role that the pain plays in our lives.  Eckhart Tolle talks about suffering as being necessary for the evolution of our consciousness.

Tolle says one should be grateful for his/her suffering because eventually suffering will wake you up. When we suffer, the ego suffers and everything it’s attached to or that defines it suffers. The false sense of self takes a beating. And through this process, we surrender (well, hopefully!) to a higher power i.e. a much higher power than the ego. Surrendering allows us to realize what the larger purpose of the pain is. Pain keeps you woke by pushing the ego out of the phantom driver seat it thought it was owning and you’re forced to ask yourself: “who’s running the show?” As we ponder that question more deeply, we are driven to connect with the boundless, infinite and omnipresent source of energy that is inside us - which is the truth of us. And once we discover that, i.e. the essence of GOD or the Universe inside us, it allows us to go beyond all suffering. You begin to realize that the ego is the source of all of your suffering. Ego in this context is much broader and deeper than just arrogance or narcissism. Ego is, as Tolle says, anything that we’re identified with - our thoughts, emotions, our possessions, our loved ones, our status, our money, our addictions - all the labels and roles we feel define our false, external self. Disidentifying with and shining a light on the ego requires us to be in a state of surrender, which is much harder to do when life is great and the ego is feeling like the King/Queen of the world. When we’re in pain, it’s easier to observe the ego and see it for what it is - aka not you. And when we do this, we end the suffering right then and there. We only know what it means to rise if we have fallen. We rise (connect with our higher power) through disidentification, observation and awareness, which are the ego’s greatest kryptonite. So, suffering allows us to become closer to who we are and it frees us from the pain and traps of the ego by strengthening our consciousness/awareness. Remember, pain is our necessary medicine or saviour.

I’m grateful for my life struggles because they have shaped me into the person that I am today and most importantly, they have given me a degree of strength and faith that I could never have otherwise acquired through pleasant, non-challenging circumstances. I have a lot of work to do in disidentifying with my false self (the one with good hair) but today I am a lot humbler, a lot more grateful and open-minded and a lot less judgmental because of the challenges I’ve experienced, at different points in my life. The darkness in my life has always brought me closer to the light - the light inside me (my soul/GOD). It brought me closer to the light because it left me with no choice but to surrender and turn inwards. No external person or occurrence could lessen the pain, no matter how hard they or I tried. It was only when I turned inward to something deeper inside myself that I found peace and repose. What resulted from turning inward was a strengthening of connection to, and faith in, that indestructible part of me. The same indestructible part that lives in all of us - our spirit/soul/true essence. It’s my foundation and I have learned now, through challenging life experiences, that while something can shake me (at the branches), it can never ever touch or harm my core (soul). And KNOWING THAT gives me a feeling of strength and assurance that I cannot describe in words. It’s like I feel deep inside that my soul is saying “I got you, like I always do” - and that is the BEST feeling in the world. It stabilizes and grounds me in a way that no external person, thing or event ever could. It makes me a more positive person and better equips me to face the inevitable challenges that life will present. The deep-rooted belief  that no matter what happens, I’m going to be okay, gives me courage to push myself to do things I find scary, and it gives me resilience and allows me to see each challenge or problem as an opportunity to learn and grow. Gratitude is a key virtue in my life and that’s only because I was able to walk through the darkness and into the light. Everything I’m grateful for stems from or ties back to the light. And I’m aware of the light because of the darkness, and that makes me truly grateful for the pain. It was a necessary catalyst (love that word!). I realize that we have to walk through the dark to come home.

Some of my closest peeps have suffered immensely through addiction (and are now reborn through recovery). They often say that while their addiction stripped literally everything from them - their loved ones, their livelihood, their homes and their respect - they are forever grateful for their addiction because without it, they would never know the incredible life they have today - a values-driven life of spirituality, self-love, community and faith in their higher power. Today, they are the best version of themselves that has existed, thus far. A version that didn’t even exist before their addiction developed and couldn’t likely have existed without the suffering of the addiction. In addition to the powerful internal growth that comes from dark times, externally, there are people we would never have met and opportunities we would never have been presented, without the pain and suffering. So, next time you see a dark cloud coming through in your life, embrace it, knowing that it’s an opportunity to bring about greater sunshine than exists today. Pain grows us into a better, humbler, happier version of ourselves and ultimately gives us a better life. Just to be clear though, and this is an important point: this revelation of being the light in the face of darkness can only come about if we choose to surrender and if we choose to rise when we have fallen. Not everyone chooses that path. This goes for addiction or any other struggle in our lives - big or small. We have to choose to turn inwards, to bloom, to do the difficult work, to pick faith over fear, to flashlight the ego and to surrender. Choose well friends.