Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk about the possibility of carrying peace with us through challenging times. So we may hold the belief that life should be smooth and that we should always be happy. But this is really just not the nature of human life, as you may have noticed, right? Human life is beautiful sometimes. Absolutely.

But human life is also messy, challenging, and difficult sometimes too. And the idea that it's not meant to be is probably one of our greatest forms of suffering and discontent in this life. You know, we often have this sense that something's gone terribly wrong when things don't go the way that we want them to, or we experience difficulty. You know, in those times we often despair, resist and rail against what's happening. But here's the thing.

For all life forms, life is challenging. Now you might be thinking, 'Well, thanks for the inspirational talk Melli.' But look, here's my point. Challenges, yeah, they might not always make us happy, but they do give us an opportunity to grow, evolve and awaken. Challenges not only kind of shake us up and disrupt kind of our lives, our equilibrium, but they also wake us up and they open us up to entire new ways of being and living. This song of life is composed with high notes and low notes.

And the truth is, is that to live a full human life really means to experience the full range of human experience and emotions, the full symphony, if you will. In knowing and accepting this simple truth, we can discover a greater sense of peace and acceptance in challenging times. It's a little bit of a paradox, but when we accept this truth, there's a deeper sense of inner peace and contentment that arises within us in those times. And it's a form of peace that exists beyond or beneath that emotion of happiness that we're often chasing. This background peace can be there in the good times and the bad, the high times and the low.

And it comes from having a state of mind that's not resisting anything and so is it ease with whatever arises, both within and without. So in times of challenge, instead of resisting what's happening or feeling that something went wrong instead, just try waging peace with it, courageously participating in it. And the more you're able to do that, the more you're able to find that sense of inner contentment and ease that you can carry with you no matter what life throws your way. So that's the invitation for today. And as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us.

And so now let's just settle in for today's meditation.