Divinity School: A Meditation on Hardship
By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of Mindfulness+
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“Most negative states are the result of frustration — the frustration of desire, expectation, and love.” — Kabir Edmund Helminski
Scan your body, your heart, your mind, your world. What negative states are you aware of? If you're like me, you're probably aware of a lot of negative states. It's a challenging time, one replete with frustration.
So just look around for a moment. Ask yourself what has been frustrated? What is being frustrated? Maybe you'd like to be working more than you're currently working and that's frustrating. Maybe you were expecting to accomplish things in this promising new decade that will prove challenging with the current global health crisis. Maybe you find relationships challenged in this time either starved for attention because it's difficult to get FaceTime with somebody if not impossible, or maybe it's too much FaceTime, too much proximity, and that's its own kind of challenge.
At any rate, notice any negative states present in you and treat that as frustration. Negative states arise because our desires are frustrated, our expectations are frustrated, love is frustrated.
Take another moment with that. I'm not going to tell you to perform some magical mindful operation on your frustration, on your negative states, other than to just pour some spaciousness into the state. If you're feeling angry, resentful, cynical, hopeless, any negative state at all, allow yourself to totally feel it, but with some spaciousness in it and around it. You might say, “Okay, I'm going to embody this a little bit more and get to know it. I'm not going to turn from it, but turn toward it. Move into it.”
The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was said to have spoken these words: “Every prophet is a shepherd once, for God would not bestow the divine mantle on one unschooled in hardship. A long while I was a shepherd that I might gather calmness and fortitude.”
So here we are, all of the human race, in the school of hardship. And no doubt we are faced with frustration, feeling challenged — negative states arising and in the words of a prophet, God intends to bestow the divine mantle on us. But first we must be schooled in hardship.
So, what life is bringing to you right now and what qualities will you gather in this school of hardship? Really drop into this for a moment and feel this question resonate throughout your being. In order to receive the divine mantle, in order to become what you're meant to become, what virtues, what qualities will you gather? Feel in your heart, trust your inner knowing and intuition. These challenging times are smelting out the dross and you transmuting your lead and the gold. What qualities are already present, not somewhere in the distant future, but right now? Calmness, fortitude, humor, patients, forgiveness, faith.
Just for the sake of argument right now, imagine that the sum total of your life — everything you feel — everything in your awareness in your whole being in this moment is not random, but it's a kind of divinity school, one of profound sorrow, but one of equally equally profound joy. And I imagine it took intensive preparation to be accepted into the school, and it's like a dream come true to be here and you're just full of an energy of discovery and gratitude for this opportunity to have been admitted into this elite school. And of course you're going to be on time to every class. And of course you're going to give every single assignment, every task, every experience of the school, your entire being, all of your attention, all of your heart, because you recognize how important the learning is, how important the opportunity is, what qualities where you cultivate and refine in this school. It's okay if you don't get an answer right away. Allow yourself to just grow in the dark and wait and trust. And if you do pick up on a golden thread and you do sense a quality already coming through, already rising within you, just feel the goodness of it.
Feel how transcendent and sublime equality it is and see clearly that if you could have all of the fame, all of the fortune, all of the power and pleasure of the entire world, that all of those material comforts would pale in comparison to the wealth of just fully embodying the divine qualities already manifesting through you. Faith, humility, gentleness, peace, whatever it is that comes through you uniquely just trust it and then give this quality good soil to grow in.
Don't rush to reorganize your normal busy-ness. Just stay open, stay porous in this practice. Intention always guides and gives shape to attention. Whatever qualities you intend to cultivate, to gather in the school of hardship, your awareness will naturally be primed, will naturally see new opportunities to cultivate these very qualities. So in the good guidance of Kabir Helminski, the prophet Muhammad, and all of the innumerable mothers and fathers, the spiritual giants and mentors and guides who support us and fold us in their arms at this time, we move forward in faith and in practice.
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