Darkness is Your Candle

"What hurts you, blesses you...  Darkness is your candle"  ~Rumi

We find ourselves wanting to be left alone.  And the more we want to be left alone, the more intrusion there seems to be.  We want life to just be smooth, and clean, and easy for once.  But the more we keep waiting and hoping and wanting that, the further away it seems to appear. 
We also find ourselves in a perpetual game of seeking, capturing, and holding pleasurable situations, looking for a final end to the painful ones.  This also is met with a huge struggle, and lots of heartbreaking disillusionment. 
There is another way.  It is Rumi's way, or rather, the way of all those who dared to wake up and live with the fire of true life.  Only this way honors the brokenness, the darkness, the terror as the greatest  ally to living in truth. 
If you truly are an adventurer of the soul than you are severely interested in what hurts you.  This means that 'real waking up'  is not a fairly tale, nor is it a grim story with a happy ending.  It is the end of the end of the end. 
Here, where all you have is your pain, and sadness, and anger as truth....here is where you can use your pain as a bucket of cold water on your sleeping self.  Here is where you can be startled from your sleep by the alarm of your own discontent.  This is the most reliable information we have for waking us up.  These are truly our most supportive friends on the path of being real.
Everybody celebrates joy and pleasure.  If one were to take just the smallest fraction of that gratitude and apply it to your pain, your whole life would up-end itself.  You'd find yourself on the floor, with sleep in your eyes, but damn it---you'd be awake.