It is the nature of the human mind to work to improve things.
We want to improve ourselves and/or we want to improve our world, or at least the people around us. (It's a particularly annoying thing when people try to improve those they love, which I'm sure you've experienced at some point in some relationship.)
We do this out of a desire to make our lives better, and perhaps a desire to make the lives of those around us better too. We think we can achieve this if we're smart enough, if we try hard enough, if we're lucky enough or have the right timing.
But what if the only thing interfering with our perfect happiness was this belief that life needed improving in the first place?
There is a teacher named Adyashanti who talks about letting things be as they are. There is a lot I've learned from many great teachers over the years, but this one I keep coming back to.
To let things be as they are doesn't mean that we call things that are clearly undesirable "good." We don't think, "Well I'd really like to be able to walk, but I guess if I get hit by this car that ran that red light it's all good." No, we jump out of the way! We take responsibility for following our intuitive knowing of what is called for in any moment. We cooperate with how life is guiding us, loving us, blessing us in each moment, instead of insisting that it shape itself to our ideas about what it SHOULD be.
And that's the bottom line right there.
Instead of rejecting the contents of this moment, whether in how we are being or how someone else is being or how a situation is being, we accept that it is what it is and then we choose how we will respond to that from a place of truth.
We let what is in us move us from a place of love for us and all others, instead of being directed by an aggressive stance that can only create by first rejected what exists.
Do you know people who are constantly in a stance of, "No?" I do and they aren't very pleasant to be around. I observe that the worst experiences always accompany hanging out with them. We get the rude waiter. We pull up to the parking spot just before someone pulls in head first from the wrong side of the street. We just have rotten luck when hanging out together.
Meanwhile, I'm accustomed to always driving right up to wherever I'm going, no matter how busy a place I know it will be, because I know a spot will always open up for me just as I arrive. And one always does. Why? Because I cooperate with that unfolding for me at so many steps along the way before that, from the time I start getting ready to leave the house, to the things that either delay me or speed me out the door. I show up however late or early I need to be to have that spot waiting just for me, and I don't fret along the way about being early or late because I know whatever is moving me with that timing is doing so for that reason.
What would your life be like if you greeted every single thing as a blessing unfolding, even things that go against your mind's ideas about what would be ideal?
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What if there was truly nothing else going on?
It's hard to greet some situations like this. Illness, suffering of those we love, dream jobs given to someone else, having to sell a beloved house in order to stop being a workaholic (as I'm doing now), seeing a relationship end before you feel it's ended for you, and so on. There are so many frustrations of life, so many times things work out different than we would script them.
But what I've seen is that if I fight those occurrences, then they do seem to stay unfortunate pivot points in life. But if I greet them with positive expectation and look for the blessing, eventually it reveals itself. It was just that I had so much resistance to something greater than my plans coming to me, that I first had to lose something to be shook loose.
So here is my admonition to you: Don't require of life that it shake you loose. Be willing to flow with the goings and comings with trust that you are loved by an awareness that is wise, powerful, and is actually better than you at this whole "happy life" thing. Let it bless itself as you.
Take a default stance of, "Yes!"
(Photo source: Unsplash)
Resteems always appreciate!