Waking from the Trance of Struggle with Mark Matousek

We are pleased to bring you this excerpt from "Waking from the Trance of Struggle" with Mark Matousek.  Learn more about the struggles many people face and how we seem to let it consume us, but how we can come to understand it and succeed without it.

This is a very important topic for many people who feel gripped with a sense that their life is an ongoing struggle, that their in a never-ending competition to be happier or healthier or wiser or more enlightened.  Whatever the aspiration may be. Do you find yourself longing for a simpler life?

That’s the question. The person you are today, right now, in this moment, is already more than enough. That’s what we’re going to be exploring together. Now, we’re addicted to struggle in the same way that we’re addicted to suffering. Though pain is a given, suffering is not, and in the same way, aspiration in our life is a given and is necessary.  But struggle of the kind that I’m describing really is not. This form of struggle which I think of as a toxic struggle is the near enemy of aspiration and achievement.

In Buddhist teaching, there is this notion that every virtue has a near enemy. The near enemy of generosity is being a doormat, then your enemy of patience is complacency, then your enemy of acceptance is resignation and then your enemy of aspiration and achievement is toxic struggle. Now, this form of struggle brings very different results and different choices than aspiration. Aspiration leads to fulfillment and curiosity. It leads to flexibility and a kind of prolific growth when we lean into our aspiration and give it our heart, but toxic struggle leads to diminishing returns. It leads to burnout and bitterness and narrow mindedness, a lot of anger and self-torment. Toxic struggle can also lead to a low grade despair that we carry with us without necessarily knowing where it’s coming from.  But there is a sense of never being there, never having enough, never being sufficient, never being satisfied and never being content or finding ease in our own lives.