Seeking ease kills the Seeker

Tension and strife are necessary for power, growth, strength, survival, and attainment of spiritual gifts.

The urge to avoid this that is so endemic in the modern culture in various ways from focus on life-after-this-life to "manifesting with ease", that I cannot help but wonder what nefarious forces are at play that make people spiritualize the very ignorant act of avoiding strife by denying its essential function of strengthening.

By seeking ease in a way that attempts to minimize that which tests, reveals, and strengthens (or kills), we cut ourselves off from a profound metaphysics. Indeed, we cut ourselves off from life itself.

By focusing not on avoiding or minimizing and instead switching our attention and effort to skillfully meeting and being able to "handle" WHAT IS, many secrets are revealed and much is cultivated in us that might prepare us for real magic and power.

Too many people seek out magic and power without essential preparation and self-cultivation and wind-up harming themselves or others.

Modern arrogance says we should simply have access, to whatever we want, that we create reality. How? Through thoughts? What aspect of self is thinking those thoughts? Through words said a certain way? And what empowers those words? Do you think words have power without the key that unlocks them? Do you know what your breath is? Have you learned to join your breath with the sacred breath that is the power of life? How did you learn this? It is earned through sacrifice and trial. It is won. It is not a product of the mind or belief or ego.

I do not say these things to criticize. I say these things out of care for those whose feet are truly meant for this path. Beware the sources you seek for "wisdom". Much that is brandied about as truth these days is actually various formulas to stay insulated from what life is. If you cannot meet what life is, you do not have power.

The true seeker pursues how to meet what life is. First is to gain understanding of Life. Next is to cultivate the self to meet it. Next is to let it re-form you. Then you sacrifice the small self to the Self by allowing the hunger in you to pull you places the conditioned self simply cannot and will not go. Then you see what is revealed there to you, according to your wyrd and your character and your path. Then you deepen and do it all over, again and again and again until some skill and wisdom and power begin to rise in your being. Do not denounce or misinterpret strife. Do not think it means you are "doing it wrong". Understand that you are revealed to yourself through strife and suffering. You have the opportunity to become stronger. And Strength is absolutely required for the deeper aspects of a spiritual path. There are simply places you cannot go, or will be injured if you do go, if you lack the benefits of what you earn from facing, and surviving, the trials we must face in life. Life is revealed in the living of it. We learn very little, and gain even less, by avoiding it or overly insulating ourselves from it. The wilds of life, outside of the human created, is where the wisdom is. Being able to go there, and survive, is what seekers of truth must earn. We earn this with our blood, sweat, and tears. That is the only way.