There is a word--a concept in Hinduism that holds great significance. The Sanskrit word is "tapas." It means discipline, or more exactly, disciplining oneself. Monks know this word as meaning spiritual discipline and purification. The Buddha starved himself in order to find the meaning of life (and found that it did not work); this was his tapas. It is denying ourselves what we want for what we really need. Tapas is the opposite of indulgence. Anytime we are suffering and growing as a result, we are enduring tapas. We do not ask to suffer as the Buddha did-it just drifts into our lives with heartbreak, illness, injury, death, or a divorce...so many situations in which we are involuntarily thrown in the water and asked to swim. We suffer the most when we do not have the strength or the skills to stay afloat but are asked to stay in the water anyway. Suffering can engender a host of unwelcome emotions, namely anger, frustration, and hopelessness.
Likewise, when a seed is planted it does not know it already has everything inside of it, a blueprint for how it should grow. It only knows the repressive darkness and the heaviness above it of being buried alive. It begins to reach upward but finds no help, no light. This is an apt metaphor for growth. When we are in Tapasya we just want to cry because the tests and trails seem too much to bear. We wish someone would come and lend us a hand, but nobody does. We are being asked to grow into a form we have never been before, and like the soldier being whipped into shape at bootcamp, we cannot see the strong soldier we will one day be. We feel like GI Jane, being kicked in the face and defeated by her enemies. But something within us keeps reaching upward, even when we do not know why. We were all created to burst our confines and to bloom.
If you, like me, have been experiencing anger, frustration, or hopelessness, you may be experiencing tapas--being asked to let go of your lower nature so you can be purified. Growth is the hardest thing in the world. Most people don't grow very much because it is hard. Keep fighting and moving forward towards the picture you have of yourself, the purified and the whole you, remembering that suffering, or at least struggle, is the only way the seedling can bloom.