While I was doing physical therapy one of the most torturous exercises that I was subjected to was a balance exercise. Sometimes they had me on 2 feet on one of those wabbling boards and other times they had me on one of those BOSU balls on one foot. My frequent compaint was that it was hard and that I wasn’t any good at it! To which they would always reply, ‘if you were good at it, there wouldn’t be much point in doing the exercise, now would there?’ The point being that there was a certain amount of failure that was necessary to gain strength, and that once that threshold was crossed it would be time to move on to a more difficult exercise.
It strikes me that spiritual practices are like this, too. There is a certain amount of ‘failure’ or struggle inherent in the process. We reach and stretch to the point of strain (not pain!) and grow from that point. Difficulty is a not a sign of failure, it’s a sign of growth. If we can allow ourselves to be okay with that discomfort- we can grow through it.
