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Hi Friends,

Greetings from the other side of a funk, the other side of woe is me and what’s the point and this world is a nightmare. Do you know the funk of which I speak? What a relief to have returned to a place where clarity, possibility, and even excitement, live. A place where I not only recognize myself but genuinely like the person I see. Where beauty exists, again, all over this too-often brutal world. Where I feel much less lost and much more at home.

Let me tell you, it’s good to be back.

One of my favorite mantras has long been this too shall pass. It’s most commonly credited to the Sufi poets of medieval Persia, and even featured in a speech by Abraham Lincoln in 1859:

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!

I’m not sure the phrase is always appropriate but it really is true, in all times and situations, and certainly has offered me some consolation as of late. There have been no words I’ve said more often to myself this past month than this too shall pass. Sometimes paired with you will get to the other side, or just ride it out, or for the love of God hopefully sooner than later.

Ya see, my friends, my cache of personal development tools and tricks was not doing its job. I threw everything at the funk: meditation, breathwork, journaling, prayer, conversations with friends, long walks, longer hikes. Nothing worked, not really. I tried all the escapist routes too, of course: TV binges, processed foods, sugar, bong hits, more sugar, porn. No luck there, either.

So I continued to remind myself, this is just what's happening right now, and this too shall pass. And it did. It has. Again.

I’m not saying breathwork and prayer and nature walks and all the other mindfulness practices didn’t help; these choices are always of service in some way. But I don’t believe they were the main factor in finding my way to the other side of this particular funk. Actually, I don’t even think I found my way there at all. I simply arrived. I this too shall passed the hell out of my day-to-day, and eventually woke up remembering myself.

I’m someone who gets a lot of strength in knowing I have the power to create positive change in my life by being purposeful with my thoughts, words and actions. I’ve benefited again and again by living with intention, and visualizing, and reframing self-abusive thoughts. I’ve gotten better and better at becoming the sky and letting my thoughts be the weather. Still sometimes, at least for me, none of it works. My mind becomes so committed to its misery it blocks out my heart and soul entirely. Well, not entirely, but mostly. Enough to dominate my experience. Can you relate?

A while back, I wrote the following:

I have too often projected expectations onto others and then condemned them for not becoming the fictional characters I alone had created.

We all do this at times. We want others to conform to our expectations, whether or not they have committed to doing so (or are even capable of doing so), and then we resent them for not mirroring our projections. I used to do this to myself all the time, too. I would expect myself to show up for my life in a more enlightened way and then judge myself against the enlightened version that was never real to begin with. Talk about a recipe for misery.

It’s true in this recent funk I felt disheartened to be circling back through the same fears and insecurities with the same level of intensity I’ve experienced in the past. I know the reality of life is in part a journey through unhealed traumas, relentless conditioning, and the fear and self-loathing born from both, but I also know the work I’ve done on my growth and healing has strengthened my ability to face the more painful aspects of life with a bit more detachment and peace. That’s in part why I felt so blindsided by this latest funk: the only detachment I felt was from any sense of peace. It was as though I had done no work on myself at all, as though I had only just begun. Again. Can you relate?

I think about acceptance a lot, and how much peacefulness gets created within the energy of acceptance. How much liberation exists there. Life showed me, once again, how little I know and how little I can control. I can either accept or resist this reality. When I expected myself to know and be able to control more during the funk, I compounded the suffering. I am who I am, I know what I know, don’t know what I don’t know, often don’t know what I think I know, and sometimes can’t even control the things I actually am able to control. When I reminded myself of these truths, I still felt like s**t but suffered less than when I expected myself to be more enlightened and feel otherwise.

When I accepted the reality I was in a funk and unable to do much about it that felt particularly helpful, I returned to the one knowing that did in fact create a smidge of peace during those dark days: you guessed it, this too shall pass. It always has, my friends, and it always will.

So much love to you all,

Scott

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