Use Unpleasantness to your Advantage - Unpleasantness is a skill
Although is possible to side-step the complexities and nadirs of life, this only provides a frail illusion of inner peace, fragile and easily shattered.
If you deepen your meditation practice, you will begin to observe within yourself the capacity to deal with profound unpleasantness.
Being able to sit with unpleasantness, observing only, without reacting, without retreating from it, means you have the skill to heal and emerge with a calm, stronger mind. To be able to sit with and observe unpleasantness is an achievement that will bring you closer to more permanent inner peace.
It means we become less emotionally reactive, but this doesn't mean we become passive or inert. Peace of mind is the result of a very dynamic way of living mindfully, with intention, appreciating gains as well as losses, victories as well as defeat. Inner peace is a result of living beyond the inevitable changes and instability of life.
Often our coping skills become more rigid and fixed over time. But with self-observation through the practice of meditation we gain an understanding of our own nature. By knowing our nature, we may be able to adapt to a more flexible perspective and perhaps even make a few new life choices.
