There are times in everyone’s life when the emotional anguish of simply living becomes nearly intolerable.

The weight of one’s imagined future becomes too heavy to bear and the dreams which once gave direction and meaning to life no longer motivate. Often times the malaise is so thick we cannot even identify the reason for it.

And it crushes and grinds like an open grave of stone on bone. Why can I not breathe; why can I not move? It is moments like this when Hamlet’s question becomes most poignant in the asking “To be…or not to be.”

“Get up…get over it,” your friends say. “Suck it up and get moving.” But that is a thing easier said than done to those who are drowning in the deep. It reminds me of a lesson I once had in the house of my master.

Student: How do you raise your head above the waves when you do not know which way is up?

Master: You must stop fighting the current and give yourself to the sea.

What I have learned in life is this: Dreams are amazing things, but they can be entirely paralyzing in their intensity. Human beings are innately aware of their own mortality (at least the ones I know who manage to live past 30). We, by our very nature, want everything right now. In our eagerness to see everything, experience everything, achieve everything, we forget the steps it takes to get us there.

Our dreams often seem walled off and unattainable. We become fearful and doubt our ability to achieve, so we choose to do nothing, and then ask ourselves why and berate ourselves for a failure that never occurred, because we never tried.

Sometimes the paralysis is the result of ignorance we must correct. If we wish to dance we must learn the steps. But knowing the steps doesn’t always ensure success. You must learn the steps to the song of your own life.

It doesn’t help to learn to tango if the music of your life is a West Coast swing. Enough with the dance metaphor for now! Metaphors are noble placebos when the weight of your own existence is simply too much to bear and all you want is the perceived normalcy of someone else’s life.

Master Rumi said, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. Where the soul lies down in fragrant grass and the world becomes too full to talk about. You will meet yourself there.”

Everyone has the key to unlock the gate to the garden of their destiny in their own hand for it is their garden, and they, its only steward. Our gardens are our chance in life to move beyond the suffering of inevitable pain and the frustration of inevitable challenge.

To enter the garden all we need to know is where to find the lock, and have the courage to enter through the gate once the key has been turned. Once inside we discover the wall is not around the garden… it never was.

Student: Master, what is this key?

Master: It is the word that remains unspoken.

Student: Where can I find the lock?

Master: It is hidden.

Student: But then how can I find it?

Master: I can teach you how to look, but you will have to find it for yourself.

To discover the lock and key is not easy. It requires practice. It requires discipline. You must wake up very early when the animal in you only wishes to sleep. You must reach out with your mind while the animal in you only wishes to lick its wounds. You must befriend your own mortality and learn to die with dignity and honor. You must learn to breathe and dance in the spaces of your breath.

Breathe. Put all things out of your mind until you discover the silence. If a thought pops unbidden into your mind you observe it carefully, give it a name; is it friend or foe? Catalog it, and then release it, because in truth it doesn’t matter—a thought has no weight of its own, it is merely an illusion without form or substance. Don’t worry about losing the thought because nothing you have named will ever be truly lost. Then…

Breathe. When you have dispelled every thought and achieved silence, you must put that too out of your mind. You must give yourself to the silence so that it is no longer observable, and you must stand naked and vulnerable in the midst of nothingness. Then…

Breathe. The nothingness is the moment of your death to care. It is both the essence of the darkness in which everything is illuminated and the illumination which reveals itself only in the dark. By it everything is made known. To realize truth is to know the lie, for the lie can only be perceived through the light of truth. Light and Dark; Life and Death; Matter and Energy; Time and Love are the foundation of all unity. I am. It is. We are. Duality ceases to exist only when we are aware of the true nature of things.

The moment you, as a spark of sentient energy, took breath in the body of a mortal, you committed yourself to death. Death, not life, is our constant companion. In the realization of this you perceive the essence of the self, the still small voice.

It is you that gives meaning and color and music to the universe, not the other way around. Your goal? To rest a moment from the chaos of the universal symphony—to create a melody of meaning for only a moment—to interweave the solo melody of your life among the harmonic resonances of your fellow beings and simply be… beautiful, unique and at peace with the reality of your death, because death won’t last forever. Then…

Breathe. Focus on the in-and-out rhythm of your so called life. Feel the pulse in your veins and the warmth of the blood that rushes with each pump of your heart. Awaken to the temperature of the air on your arms and the sounds and sensibilities of creation. And celebrate every waking moment in this communion with the power of life and death for you are the embodiment of love embedded in a moment of time within an otherwise silent cold universe. Then…

Awaken to the resurrection of your awareness and rejoice in every single moment of your so-called life. Imbue each moment with meaning and realize that you were never paralyzed, only confused for a moment by the steps of your own dance.

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Apprentice Editor: Ffion Jones / Editor: Travis May

Photo: Pixoto/Abie Azhari