Sweat & Smiles: The Illusion of Control and Stability and Cultivating Mindfulness, Meditation to Accept It
By Melissa Romano on July 18, 2020 from Sweat & Smiles
Everything does not happen for reason. You have never been in control. At best you have had enough days similar to previous days that you’ve been awarded the illusion of stability.
You can have a strong faith while also understanding the complex nature of the universe and the fact that humans have free will. Most humans, at least in this western culture, do not like to be uncomfortable. You’ve been taught that undesirable feelings like frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear are bad. You’ve been taught to find the closest exit out of those feelings. Those exits usually look like burying feelings down or spiritual bypassing which is tendency to use spiritual ideas and 
practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues.
practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues.
Either one of those paths leads you straight into overwhelm when you are faced with experiences that are beyond reason and/or experiences that remind you, with terrifying clarity, that you are not in control.
I have a whole host of certifications, and life experiences, regarding the mind, body, and spirit and the only things I recommend for every human are good water and solid meditation and mindfulness practices. These practices will be your training for the battle that can be life.
Everything does not happen for a reason. And for the love of all things do not say this line to another human as they are facing unimaginable grief, pain, despair, or decisions that feel impossible to make. The universe, your life, and your emotions are much more complex than that.
While I respect and honor the well-intentioned positivity, you have to stop saying it because it’s simply not true. The tragedies you can and will face in life are unfair, unsettling, deeply painful and completely without reason. While pain is a part of the universal human experience it will not seem that way when you are in the midst of it. In fact, your pain will feel deeply personal.
The fact that pain is a part of the universal human experience makes it, on some level, sacred. When you are able to feel the width and depth of your pain, process it, and engage mindfully with how you choose to move forward then you have the opportunity to use your pain ‘for the greater good’; even though the circumstances for that pain are completely without reason.
The illusion of control and stability is what you see when you are sleepwalking a bit through your life. When your days begin to look just similar enough strung together that it seems you are the one driving the whole ship of your universe. The small irritations of life like sleeping through your alarm, getting stuck in traffic, a slightly fevered child that can’t go to school or the sitter, and the thousands upon thousands of things that can and do happen that give you a tiny opportunity to practice knowing that you are not, in fact, in control.
The problem is you don’t use those annoyances as opportunities to practice. With initial curiosity about meditation folks usually give it a try once, declare they are no good at it, and put it in the box in their mind labeled ‘does not work for me’. If that sounds familiar to you then you, like many of us, were trained to run for the nearest exit when faced with discomfort (or things you aren’t ‘good’ at). Meditation is meant to be a practice. A regular practice. You are not supposed to be good at it. You are supposed to practice it so when you are faced with these external stressors - as you always will be - you are prepared to see and use them as opportunities.
As you begin to cultivate mindfulness and meditation practices you will begin to see with clarity and acceptance that you have no control until it comes down to how you choose to engage with the unreasonable and uncomfortable experiences of life. As you practice mindfulness and meditation you will begin to wake up to each and every moment of your life. You will begin to accept the undesirable feelings like frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear and understand their existence in your very human
experience.
You will find opportunities, teachers, and lessons within them. You will begin to know that this very moment is not good or bad - it is exactly where you are and you’ve cultivated the ability to be fully there.
With eyes and heart wide open,
Melissa
www.melissaromano.com
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