Hello my friend,

I was flipping back through an old journal and I saw an entry that made me laugh today. A few years ago, I was meditating very studiously and I was having a very blissful day — cloud nine, head in the clouds, and floating along. When a very negative, complaining, screeching neighbor decided to start banging on my walls and scream that I was chopping vegetables too loudly. It was like the Universe was saying, “Not so fast, Todd.”

Sometimes, let’s be real, life feels unfair. It’s like, we’re meditating, we’re working on ourselves, we’re taking responsibility for our energy and how we show up. Meanwhile, emotionally unstable people pop up out of nowhere, causing a storm of chaos. It’s a freakin’ minefield out there of angry, stressful, cruel people we have to navigate on a daily basis. Some days it can feel like there’s no avoiding a spiritual challenge, there’s no place of peace, and we can never let our guard down and just relax.

So what’s going on here? What is in our power when we feel like this? There are two things to remember when life feels too unfair and chaotic.

1. We’re trapped in our own story. No matter how spiritually evolved we think we might be, we’re still getting sucked into a narrative. We’re still blaming the world for our feelings and our reaction. We haven’t yet evolved to the place of total nonreaction, and we’re blaming our spiritual teachers (in this case, those people who drive us crazy) for showing us where we still have work to do.
   
   
2. If our expectations don’t align with reality, we need to adjust our expectations. It can be disheartening that the world isn’t as spiritually evolved, kind or wise as we would like it to be. But that’s like getting mad that there are young and inexperienced people in this world. We are all at different places. That is a fact. Some people are fast learners and some people are slow learners. And sometimes the fast people rush and don’t fully understand a topic, whereas the slow people just want to take their time to make sure they understand something very deeply.

We’re born into the human race, but we all start out at different points on the racetrack. Some of us are natural runners, and some of us are more like the tortoise — slow and steady. We need both. Teachers need students. Students need teachers. And spiritual seekers need to know suffering so that we can know the way out of suffering.

Life is our school. Chaos is our gym. There are no days off. And that’s a good thing. We don’t grow for others. We don’t grow even for ourselves. We grow because we’re alive and that’s what life does. Today, I’m just grateful for the opportunity, even if it comes in the form of mean neighbors.

Here are some other topics that I covered this week:

1. Why are we here? Does life want to live? Does life want to just reproduce and survive? And if so, why? For what benefit? Or is it all just random? (Watch Here)
2. Why is the smartest, most advanced species in the known Universe so confused, lost, anxious, and depressed? (Watch Here)
3. The 3 most important lessons Steve Jobs taught us about spiritual success (Listen Here)

Much love,
Todd