Have you ever heard this saying?

It’s telling us that no matter what is going on in your life, it’s so that you can learn from it. No matter how bad or how good, there are lessons to be learned, if we can only see them.

Sometimes, though, it’s really hard to feel that this is all happening for your highest good. It can be extremely tough to get your head around what the ‘learning’ is for whatever particular scenario you are encountering at the moment, and it sometimes feels like life is dishing you up a whole bunch of lemons - and very tart ones at that!

A long bramble filled journey

It’s been a tough journey for me over the last six years, and it hasn’t finished. I’m still crawling through the brambles, trying to find a path with less obstructions, but it seems that the brambles ARE my path. That’s where the lessons are. In fact, I even had a vision in a meditation where there was a lovely, sunny, easy path ahead of me that everyone else was taking, but my path was literally to go off the beaten track and crawl through the brambles, getting cut, scratched and stabbed along the way.

As the saying goes “A smooth sea doesn’t make a good sailor” so walking down a bramble free path wasn’t going to teach me anything. But I so often long for that sunny, open, easy path.

It’s all about the journey

I realised recently that I had been looking forward to the end point of the journey - where I feel fully healed, full of positive vibes all the time, and back in control of everything. Where I laugh and smile, and life is going swimmingly for me in every direction.

And therein lies the problem.

There is no endpoint - only the journey.

It’s ALL about the journey, not the destination. And the funny thing is, I already knew that. But it hasn’t stopped me from wishing for the end result and hoping I’ll get there soon, because quite frankly, lately this journey has sucked. There have been more downs than ups, more lows than highs, and it doesn’t matter how much I focus on the positives and do all the things to lift myself up to a higher vibe, sometimes it’s just not enough.

It can be so hard

There are days when I wonder what it’s all for. Days when I truly wonder whether I’m on the right path. Days when I just want to stop altogether. To give up and curl into a little ball and just cry.

I’ve been at rock bottom. I’ve experienced that place and it was somewhere I truly never thought I would go. I’m a cheery, calm and generally upbeat person, and this place I was in was dark and it was hard. The most difficult thing I’ve done in my life was to climb out of that hole and get myself back to the happy person I used to be.

Except I can never quite be that same happy person again, because the experience changed me. I understand now, the difficulties that others face and how hard that journey is. I understand what it’s like to completely lose all hope and how important just even a tiny bit of hope is.

And I understand now the lessons that came with that experience. It was incredibly, incredibly difficult but when I look back at it I can see the learning that came out of it. It’s not something I ever want to repeat, but it is something that was valuable in its own way.

You are not being punished

So don’t ever think that life is punishing you for being bad, or putting obstacles in the way just to be difficult. As painful as it is at the time, and believe me I know how awful it can be, there is a reason for the difficulty and the obstacles. It may not be clear now, but if you reflect back, it will become clear what those lessons were.

And once you’ve reflected back and seen the lessons, chances are you won’t repeat them. You will have learned and grown. It’s when people don’t reflect back, and don’t see the lessons that they get caught in a loop, repeating the same pattern over and over again, variations on a theme until they finally get it and change something.

This is not for the faint hearted

This journey we are on takes strength and courage. It is not for the faint hearted.

So, if you are like me and stuck in the brambles, know that there will be a point when you will be able to look back at this time and understand what you learnt from it. That you will come out the other side with more strength, more knowledge and more wisdom.

And if there is something that gives you hope on this difficult journey, focus on that, because hope and looking to the future is everything.

With love

Karen