Life shows up in unexpected ways even when I am busy making plans and believing I am personally holding it together. There’s nothing wrong with pretending I’m in control of my life, as long as I’m not blinded by my own pretense.
It was a wise person indeed who suggested that the way we make God laugh is to make plans. I may be able to laugh right along with God if I’m not too attached to my ideas about what should and shouldn’t be happening.
If I live my life doing what I think I need to do and at the same time seek to maintain a level of curiosity and stay open to spontaneity, life feels endlessly interesting and enjoyable to me. However, if I think it has to look just the way I think it should, I am in for a lot of suffering.
I had a profound experience, which I now see as extremely fortunate. At one point in my life, I was at a complete loss. I had no idea what I should do. The situation required that I do something, but I had no idea how to proceed.
I threw my hands up in the air and said, “Universe show me what to do, I have no clue!” It was an authentic surrender, a complete letting go of trying to hold on to control. What took place after I tossed my fate to the winds was an unbelievable chain of events I could never have imagined myself.
The experience felt like being gently carried down the river of life on a raft of pure grace. It changed me forever. I still try to organize my mornings, days and months, but I know that existence may have other things planned for me.
The surrender experience taught me that there are amazing and remarkable possibilities that I can’t even see.
- Now I don’t get too attached to my plans:
- I accept as a certainty that, when I open enthusiastically to life as it is showing up and accept it as perfect for that moment, I free myself from the suffering that my own resistance brings.
- I try do this even when what shows up doesn’t look or feel agreeable.
- I know from experience that I am probably not seeing the big picture and, even if something feels uncomfortable at a particular moment, there is one constant in life and that constant is change.
Life is like the weather in Kauai, if you don’t like the way it is now, wait five minutes. If, in that five minutes, you are moved to do something to alter the situation, that’s perfect too.
Jarl Forsman
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