“Kicking and Screaming” is the expression. Your child just won’t stop bike riding even though it is too dark outside, so you feel you need to pick her up and carry her “kicking and screaming,” if need be, into the safety of the house.

We children, as in “Be ye like a child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” also sometimes need to be, or will highly benefit by, the Divine grabbing us by the scruff of the neck, and pulling us to safety.

Other Divine strategies may be removing one of the veils of MAYA besetting us, making His existence and presence in the moment, crystal clear. It is said that only a parent or teacher is free to (or ‘should’) employ ‘Tough Love,’ when the occasion calms for it. One definition of Tough Love is deliberately avoiding to show too much kindness or love to one who has a problem so that the person can begin solving their own problem.

So, if our financial situation undergoes a shock, our health is less than ideal, our dog, cat, bird or goat is recalcitrant, best we have the mindset that Higher Power is exercising the prerogative of assuming the role of our de facto parent, and is Tough Loving us to safety, or to Him, or to our true inner selves. So be it.

Of course, the Law of Karma doesn’t cease to operate, so it may be that we deserve what happens to us and around us.

As disturbing—life changing, in fact—Climate Change is already and threatens to increase

drastically, (say most scientists not in the throes of political, financial, or emotional illusion)….

As potentially frightening or anxiety producing life today can be, we really have no viable choice other than to yield to God’s plan for us, and “get with the program.”

Failure to cooperate, can consign us to avoidable pain and dysfunction.

In our quest for improvement and evolution, we are unlikely to describe the process as EASY. However, it might help to remember that two highly successful ‘self help’ programs, Fivefold Path and Alcoholics Anonymous, stress that they are SIMPLE BUT NOT EASY.

Nevertheless, what other choice do we have? Surrender may be the only way out of our discomfort or misery—and perhaps a major component of, THE ONLY WAY OUT IS IN—and yes, the last three letters spell SIN (for the more religious among us).

Free Will and Power of Discrimination are givens—they’re not going away anytime soon—or ever—so best we exercise them.

Denying these inalienable powers—or ‘gifts,’ or trying to ignore them, won’t work. Denying or ignoring gravity doesn’t make its effects go away. Better than ignoring is igniting.

Let us ignite Agnihotri fires widely and consistently and lest we forget, the Mantra that is said after each of the two offerings includes IDAM NA MAMA, Sanskrit for NOT MY WILL BUT THY WILL BE DONE

If we choose to ‘misbehave,’ and avoid Divine Will, it may be wise to stock up on neck balm as we are carried or pushed or grabbed by the neck…kicking and screaming—or not—towards the Kingdom of Heaven.

We can “avoid the misery that is yet to come.” There is already enough to go around!