Problems You Can't Solve

"I had learned that all the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble... They can never be solved but only outgrown."

-- C.G. Jung

How much time do you waste trying to solve insoluble problems? If you're anything like most of us, I'm betting quite a bit. We ruminate and stew and over-think things in the name of problem solving. We talk incessantly to friends, family, and sometimes complete strangers in a bar, about all the so-called problems we face. And yet, the problems persist.

Until we outgrow them. But how do we outgrow them? Sometimes aging alone is enough. Got too many romantic or sexual partners in your life? Don't worry, as time takes its' toll, that problem, along with your partners, will most likely disappear.

Other problems, though, are not outgrown by time, but only through your own personal growth. You outgrow your problem by evolving to a level of consciousness where the problem no longer exists. In this sense, you dissolve, rather than solve, your problems, both big and small.

Say you have a great problem with the fact that the world is unfair. This is only a problem as long as you resist and oppose the perceived unfairness. Once you quit obsessing on the unfairness of the world, the problem dissolves. No, the world hasn't changed, per se, but your relationship to it has, and that makes all the difference. Now, you can begin to change your world in small ways because you are no longer caught up in the epic battle against unfairness.

Furthermore, you know the world will never become completely fair, no matter what you or anyone else does, and so unfairness becomes a condition of life rather than a problem to be solved. Is winter a problem to be solved? No, it's simply one of the four seasons. Is sex a problem to be solved? No, it's simply a very enjoyable activity, which also happens to be the method by which we all arrived on this planet.

So, just for today, quit trying to solve the insoluble! Follow the Beatles advice and "Let it be." Engage yourself in meditation, running, lovemaking, macrame -- anything that helps you transcend the problem mode and move into a level of consciousness, even for a fleeting moment, where the world just is, you just are, and problems no longer exist.