Seeing Challenge as an Opportunity

Being shy doesn’t necessarily make the world a better place. Nor do vulnerability and limitations.
Ironically challenges can serve as a catalyst for growth.
Just this past weekend I had a great opportunity to teach yoga a couple of times at a retreat to a large group of people. Sharing something that I have a profound love for, I realised that the doubts serve me to understand what it takes to come home into into my true self.
Therefore I could guide others into their true selves. The challenges as a result support to serve from a place of authenticity. They help me to listen beneath the pain of separation and discover who I really am.

After moving deeply into the world of my creative cocoon I discovered that I can trust the unknown places and find a beauty inside my soul I never dreamed of. That I could be with what I discovered within and unearth this through the pages of a kid’s book, Golden Dolphin, Rainbow Turtle. After more than 3 years of working on illustrations, they are complete. After doubts, personal reservations, struggles, holidays, relocations, successes and numerous life changes, the results are beyond what I ever dreamed possible. 

Staying present in the journey remains paramount. There is nothing more valuable than persistence. Persistence of-course with flexibility. Without the two, I doubt the book would be coming to completion in the way that it is.

Still anxiety visits. Thoughts about what’s next. The mind comes in and wants to know all the things to feel secure, to iron out any reasons for insecurity. Yet, there is only what can be taken care of in the present that supports a shift.

Anxiety arrives when I am not able to rest in the present. When my attention drifts into the future and wonders what may go wrong. Always, things flow when I let go and allow what serves to take place.

In exactly the same way all the money arrived to crowdfunding this book, there is a deeper knowing that beyond fear, a new paradigm of trust will unearth all that is required.

When we come home to what supports us, it is this, the capacity to quieten our inner world, the mind. To know that everything arrives from beyond the mind. To access this, be present with exactly what is in the present. It is our gateway beyond anxiety and into true freedom.

Jhana is a published author and illustrator. He draws on ancient wisdom and dreaming that reveal the bridge between consciousness and creativity. Discoveries of the healing capacities carried in painting, yoga, massage, meditation and art therapy inform his practise. He has taught, mentored and exhibited in India, America, Germany and Australia over the past 20 years. His writings have been published in newspapers, magazines and books across California, Byron Bay, Tweed heads and Brisbane.