Sometimes life offers pain, confusion, and sorrow. There’s no way to stop those circumstances, nor to stop the difficult emotions that might arise alongside them. This week, Frank Ostaseski offers a meditation to investigate all of the circumstances of our lives with curiosity, and that can help us welcome everything that comes, or at least allow it. When we allow what is to simply be, we relieve ourselves of the suffering that can get heaped on top of our moments of difficulty. That extra suffering is optional, even if the difficult causes and conditions are not.

To welcome something doesn’t mean we have to like it, and it doesn’t mean we have to agree with it; it just means we have to be willing to meet it. In this practice which you can also find in the February 2022 issue of Mindful magazine, Frank Ostaseski offers six steps to open up to the present moment—whatever it may bring.