How can we know whether the challenges and upheaval we face in life move us forward on our spiritual path or if they are an indication that we’re going in the wrong direction?
Good question. This is a subtle distinction, the edge between awareness and sleep, between floating along with the current and being pulled beneath it. As long as you are able to surface from the waves to catch even a moment’s breath, you can consider that you are on the path of growth. When you are dragged under by the tide and lose your bearings, the time that you struggle to find your next breath is rich in opportunity if you have the presence to take hold of it. The opportunity is that to surpass yourself, to step beyond the complete immersion in the illusion and to raise yourself out of the consciousness that believes it is possible to drown.
It is true that in the drama of life, there are many whose corporeal form does indeed fall prey to death through drowning, but here we speak in metaphor. Realize first that this grand passion play of life that ends reliably in death is nothing more than a grand illusion. As you fondly describe it, it is indeed the 5 ticket ride, an immersive experience of consciousness streaming into material form. The limitations that you experience are fabrications, as is the entirety of your experience on the material plane.
The experience would have no value if you did not interpret it as real. The challenge is to be in it and not of it. The challenge is to remember yourself, your true self, the self that is not bound by the body, that is not bound by the material limits of form. This grand and boundless self cannot be contained by the role you play in the constantly unfolding drama of your existence here on this green planet. So the challenge is to be at once in the experience, but not of it; to stand outside the drama, to be the observing participant.
The duality is the duality of immersion and observation, non-attachment. On each plane of existence exists an inherent duality: good and evil on the plane of causation, love and lack of connection on a more spiritual plane, attachment and non-attachment in the realm of transcendence. For what is transcendence if not literally the ability to remove oneself from the perilous ups and downs of an existence defined by the absolutes of life and death, and characterized by the suffering in between.
The purpose of the suffering is to transcend the suffering. We realize that there is great irony in this statement, however this is indeed the case. You create the suffering so you will find a way to move beyond it. You create death so you may find a way to embrace life. It is by taking ownership of life that you empower yourself and subsequently raise the frequency of the the planet, loosening the grip of suffering through the cycles of death and renewal.
So, back to your question: it is all on a path of growth, The choice is whether to use suffering to beget suffering or to use suffering to transcend it. Transcendence comes through embracing the experience wholly and without resistance. In so doing, the nature of the experience itself changes fundamentally. The tendency is to resist, react, and to want to rectify. The choice comes when the resistance is dissolved, when one enables what is, simply to be.