About one year ago, my partner had a serious health problem. He was diagnosed with pneumonia, and he had to stay in the hospital for an entire month. Facing financial problems (something which is inevitable these days) and fearing for your partner's life is not an easy situation and certainly not one that you anticipate or are prepared for. You can't deal with one problem at a time, in this case; you don't have the option. So, what do you do?
What I did, was ask for help from a higher being (or higher spirit or guide, you can give it any name you like). That wasn't very difficult for me, because I happen to believe in the spiritual plane and have read many interesting books on the subject -- including the ancient Greeks, Plato, Pythagoras and the pre-socratic philosophers.
All of them, in their own words, described the infinite nature of spirit that also exists in man and woman. We have the answers. We know what has to be done. We know how we should be reacting. We just need to connect, which is an entirely different matter, because we all have our own way to connect to things and don't need to follow in somebody else's footsteps. Some of us might connect through our work and others through family or any other way.
The main thing, though, is to be aware of something that is greater than the everyday problems we face (or than the things that we believe to be important). There is something higher, and we are connected to that, we are a part of that. But, still, it takes a life threatening situation to realize it.
I lived day-by-day, pushing myself, asking for guidance, making mistakes, searching for solutions, connecting to people and feeling a wind behind me taking me farther. There is no easy way, but "easy" might be a fantasy word.
So, why do we have to go through all of these difficulties? I believe we need to because this is how we become better. We need to learn to "run faster" than our problems, the pain, the obstacles. We need to become Hermes with wings in our feet. We need to broaden our thoughts; we need to incorporate in them the spirit.
When Zeus sends a thunder down on you (to create a poetic picture in what otherwise is pretty agonizing) he sends you a message: "This is the way". The thunder opens up a road for you, and if you want to go through the situation alive, you have to ride the thunder. Failing to do that means you have to go through the situation again and again, until you decide to act in a certain way.
What helped me through the hurricane was an inner voice coming from a place unknown to me, like the "daemon" of Socrates. For the question, "How can he get over his illness and get well again?" the answer was: "He needs to remember his true self."
To do that one has to follow these three steps:
Step 1: Take the garbage out of the house -- get rid of all of the things that you know no longer serve you. These could be ugly thoughts, negative feelings or even objects that take too much of your space.
Step 2: Take a good look at yourself. Look as if you have never seen yourself before, and ask yourself: "Who am I really?"
Step 3: Awaken the spirit inside you, because there is a divine self in you who is fast asleep. When you do this you can contact the higher power because it listens only to its equal -- it can only listen to the divine spirit inside you.
When you take these three steps, you can acquire power, genius, alertness, consciousness and protection for you and your kin (and a desire to help your fellow men and women). This is the first and simplest initiation.
What my inner voice told me is that we need to stay focused on our truest self. When we stray from our core self, we fill ourselves with anger, anxiety and stress, which affects our mental and physical health.
The only way to be creative is to get in touch with our true self. And we get in touch with the true self only when we get rid of all the "garbage" that we have collected over time. In this way, what you become after going through all the difficulties you encounter in life is actually an initiated person.
So, my partner got better and had to start all over again, feeling weak but also stronger, no matter how contradicting that sounds. Life, after all, is full of contradictions and men and women have to go through it with the knowledge that nothing is in vain, nothing is by accident and we are all destined to be the best we can.