What makes anything a challenge to us is that we have simply not developed or refined the inner qualities needed to overcome it with ease. To someone who lacks height and leaping ability, running toward a fence he must scale to avoid harm would be a challenge, but not to the person who has the ability and has cultivated the skill. To them it would be a thrill. The challenge or “trial” is constant, it is only the variable of the maturity of the soul’s inner qualities that makes it a challenge.
To test this in our experiences, think of emotions. Emotions are the barometers of our inner condition. Just like fire emits heat that warms or burns, so does the “inner condition” of the soul emit emotions that manifest as the chemical state of feelings in an experience. Thus, emotions (“a motion”) are the energy waves the volition of the soul emits, whose frequency and nature awaken like chemicals in the body we experience as feelings.
When we face “challenges” or “trials”, the type of deep inner emotions it elicits reveal the condition of the soul’s inner qualities with respect to the experience it is facing. Fear, anxiety, stress, doubt, confusion etc… are just “energy states” that measure the exact distance between the soul’s current condition and the ideal condition needed to win through, the same way sickness is just a measure of the exact deviation (or distance) of the body’s condition from natural health.
So, when I experience something as a challenge and feel daunted, I see it as a subconscious recognition of something inwardly lacking that needs to be cultivated and/or refined. The emotions become barometers of the unity or deviation of my inner condition from the ideal state needed to win through. In this sense, a challenge or trial becomes an honest opportunity to inwardly mature in some way.
These thoughts resonate with the sense of the often quoted phrase: “in the midst of difficulty lies opportunity”.
~Dr. Ikenna Q. Ezealah
Foundation for Ascent 