There are days when life feels like too much to carry.

Not in a dramatic way - just quietly overwhelming. Relationships ask more than we know how to give. Finances demand attention. The body makes its own requests. Some of these concerns are manageable. Others feel opaque, even immovable. A few days ago, I was in that place—holding many threads at once, unsure which deserved attention first.

A few days later, I found myself relaxing near the ocean in Laguna Beach in a state of perfect contentment. The problems hadn’t vanished. But something fundamental had shifted.

What changed wasn’t circumstance. It was how I was relating to what was happening.

There’s a familiar spiritual promise that relief comes from fixing life—resolving problems, finding answers, arriving at clarity. But another possibility exists, one that Mythava takes seriously: what if suffering does not come from what we are facing, but from how we are relating to it?

There’s a line I once read that stayed with me:
An “okay” life should not be accepted by any intelligent being.

At first glance, it sounds provocative. But underneath it is a precise insight. An “okay” life is often a negotiated life—a life managed, tolerated, survived. It is a life in which we remain entangled with our inner commentary, constantly evaluating whether things are acceptable yet.

A fully alive life is different. It is not problem-free. It is unburdened by unnecessary resistance.

From a Mythava perspective, the issue is not that we have problems. It’s that we carry them as identities—clutching them as evidence that something is wrong, incomplete, or unresolved about who we are or where we stand.

So what happens if, even briefly, we stop doing that?

Not by pretending everything is fine.
Not by spiritually bypassing responsibility.
But by releasing the reflex to grasp.

This is where a simple but demanding practice begins.

For a few minutes, one deliberately stops holding life as a problem to be solved. You don’t deny the facts. You don’t suppress concern. You simply set down the internal posture of struggle. You allow yourself to rest in the possibility that reality does not require your tension in order to function.

This is not resignation. It is yielding unnecessary effort.

When this shift happens, something subtle but reliable follows: perception opens. The mind becomes less crowded. Intuition has room to speak. Possibilities that were previously invisible begin to appear—not because the universe intervened, but because you are no longer obstructing your own intelligence.

From this orientation, action becomes cleaner. Decisions are made without panic. Challenges are met without dramatization. You still engage fully with life, but without the weight of self-conflict.

This is why Mythava does not teach the elimination of difficulty. It teaches a different relationship to difficulty—one grounded in clarity, responsibility, and trust in lived experience rather than belief.

You can practice this at any moment.

For five minutes, consciously release the effort to manage everything internally. Let go of rehearsing outcomes. Let go of demanding reassurance. Notice what remains when you stop insisting that life be other than it is.

Often, what remains is not emptiness—but steadiness.

From there, life may not become “okay.”

It may become alive.

If you try this today, approach it gently and honestly. No forcing. No expectations. Simply notice what changes when you stop carrying what was never meant to be held so tightly.

And if you find yourself unsure how to work with this - if questions arise rather than answers - that, too, is part of the practice. Inquiry begins there.

Warmly,
Chris von der Mehden

This essay reflects Mythava’s approach to lived inquiry and responsibility for how one lives.