Art by Alfredo Moreno Tarazona

A few personal thoughts ...

You passed the day suffering agony in your mind and the night has passed as if lying on a bed of thorns. – Sheikh Farid in Granth Sahib

There is an old adage which says that “life is not a bed of roses.” Does that mean it is a bed of thorns?

Philosophically and psychologically thorns, have always been associated with the stinging emotions like a barb to the consciousness. Physically, thorns coming into contact with the body cause pain. Psychologically they can represent our personal grievances and perhaps mental miseries we have not yet expressed or worse, repressed. In a nutshell, thorns represent adversity in its purest form.

In reality, the sufferings of life cannot be eliminated and in some metaphysical camps, suffering is tied to needed growth. Attempts to eliminate all suffering in life has its own consequences such as isolation and loneliness, bitterness and despair. (Some sufferable situations are fixable and they should be fixed… they don’t have to be a sentence or a penance.)

If we don our metaphysical rose colored glasses, we see that:

Adversity is that great part of life which leads you towards the successful future. Adversity makes you stronger and enough capable to bear the entire crisis you face traveling through the different stages of life in order to make you stronger both mentally and physically. Hard times are like washing machines, they twist, turn and knock us around but in the end we come out cleaner, brighter and better than before. – Sakut Kumar¹

If we face our challenges and grasp life by the forelock perhaps thorns can take on another meaning for thorns are also symbols of protection. We can surround ourselves with spiritual thorns deterring external distractions as we complete our inner work. To do so is actually an act of non-action where through deep contemplation we can confront our inner thorns and see beyond them the intertwined wall they have created with a clear reflection of what is hidden in ourselves. We can clearly see the past and everything that took place to bring us where we are now. Then we can bless it and release it, let go of the past, reclaim our power and move on. We can avoid falling into lower forms of consciousness and inferior ways of thinking as we progress forward.

Maybe it has only been the Universe prodding us with thorns all along …

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us. - Voltaire
 

^{1 http://www.speakingtree.in/blog/life-is-not-bed-of-roses}