A photo posted by Elephant Journal (@elephantjournal) on Aug 16, 2016 at 6:03am PDT

When life gets hard, most of us find ourselves craving peace.

We wish our home environments were peaceful, we wish our relationships were easier, and we wish that our own minds would just calm the heck down and let us be.

Often when making life choices, we find ourselves looking for the fastest shortcut just to feel better.

But is that what is really good for us?

This is an important question to ask.

I found myself asking my own soul this question last week.

A situation arose in my life that I intuitively wanted to say a loud “yes” to—although saying yes was a very impulsive choice that I hadn’t really thought through.

I paused for just a moment (okay, after already saying yes) and realized that what I was saying yes to was going to be a messy situation.

I wondered if I should backtrack on my decision.

And then I realized all the best things that have happened to me have been extremely messy.

I remembered that life isn’t about skirting the edges of the mess, but instead is about going to the center of the mess and seeing what there is for us to learn in the middle of it all.

So, I decided to stick with my yes to a new unexpected, messy situation and what the ride ahead had to offer. And I feel great about this choice.

Because spirituality isn’t about avoiding life. Instead, it is about staying in the middle of life and showing up with as much love, learning and energetic awareness that we can muster.

All the best things in life are messy. Relationships, nature, food, sex and children to just name a few.

When we think that the mess is a sign of failure, we miss the wealth of experience that is available to us.

We aren’t here on planet Earth to get anything right or even be good at anything.

We are here to get messy with experience and see what we can learn, how we can grow and how aligned with love we can become.

This is a quite personal journey, but one thing we all have in common is that the journey will be messy.

~

Relephant:

The Whole Point of Life is to Be Part of the Mess.

~

Author: Ruth Lera

Image: Instagram @elephantjournal

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina