It's a good question, really.
I've readily admitted through my writings and songs that inner alchemy and following my truest path in life is the.hardest.thing.I.will.ever.do. (and again and again!)
But does it have to be so hard? And if so, why even do it?
If you're like me, (and I am gearing this to those similar to me) we have no other choice. All other roads have led us here. All other available means of transportation have run out. Distractions, denial, and illusions only last so long. And then the sometimes cold sometimes hard truth comes knocking on our doors. So we turn inward. To the unseen, larger parts of ourselves. For the more that is inevitably there.
And yeah, sometimes that hurts. But, I have a few things to say about that.
It is what it is.
I'm not trying to be mysterious by talking in riddles here. It's just that it really IS what it IS. It's as hard as it needs to be. Or not. It's very individual. If we signed up for certain things before we came into this life, then maybe we had to make it be as hard or as easy as it needed to be in order for our souls to learn, to gain, and to become whatever we wanted out of it this go around.
So, if you're following your true path, and it's easy, then so be it. If you're following your true path, and it's hard, then so be it.
Most of us will have hard seasons and easy seasons with plenty of somewhere in between seasons, too. The trick is knowing, honoring, and accepting your truest path, your current season at any given time.
Showing up to meet yourself where you are instead of where you wish you were or where you think you should be is where the truest magic begins.
There are different types of hard.
There's this ridiculous stigma in religions, dogmas and other spiritual schools of thought within our culture that don't present the whole picture: if you're struggling, you must be doing something wrong. You must not be praying enough. Or visualizing the love and light enough. Or thrumming at the correct vibration. Or maybe you're eating too much meat. Too much of this too little of that. If it's hard, something must be wrong with you. Um... I call bullshit here.
There's a difference between a path being hard in order to refine you and a path being hard because it's a path that goes against your inner alignment.
It's up to each of us to learn the difference between those types of hard. And... to shed the cultural guilt stigma surrounding roadblocks, depressions, obstacles, and breakdowns. Because those things are intricate, oftentimes necessary parts of the alchemical process.
If it's hard, and it has to be, know this...
Something beautiful is trying to happen. At least that's what I tell myself. And it usually works out that way, too. And if it doesn't, it's because I'm not through burning, hurting, falling, grieving, learning, shedding, emerging, becoming, rising, loving, shining...Fuck.
It's a beautiful paradox, isn't it?