If there is one secret to happiness above all others it is the willingness to let everything show up as it is, to cease all our arguments with existence.
Imagine it. We, with our little 3-pound brain, are going to tell the infinite how the universe should be. It should have more of this, we say, and less of that. It shouldn't contain this, we say, but it should contain that. It's as if we're saying to the ungraspable, "You know, God, you got this universe 98% right—but let me fix this 2% for you."
And most of all, we tend to apply this to ourselves: "I should be more this way," we say, "and less that way." Perhaps the hardest—and easiest—thing in life is to be willing to have everything whatsoever be the way it is, and let that include ourselves.
A metaphor: Suppose God came to you and said "I'd like you to be this way, just as you are now. I'd like you to have exactly the so-called faults and weaknesses you have now, as well as the strengths and beauties you have now. Would you do that for me?"
Would you? Because, in effect, that is what the non-locatable is asking us to do. It is not asking us to be like somebody else, or to be a "better" version of ourselves. The vastness is asking us, in effect, if we're willing to be the way we are. Are we willing to show up as this?
Am I willing to show up as this now? The way I am? Am I willing to let the various thoughts and emotions and desires show up inside me as they are? Am I willing to have my actions, including my unskillful ones, show up as they do? Am I willing to have the "flaws" that I do? Am I willing for others to do the same? Am I willing for the world to be its "imperfect" self?
Ask yourself: Can you be any different than you are in this moment? Maybe next moment you'll be different in some way, but can you help being the way you are right now? I don't think so. Maybe the world is the same way. Maybe everything can't help but be the way it is at this moment.
Seeing this, our heart can open in forgiveness of the world, and of ourselves and others, and see that there's nothing to forgive. Paradoxically, without that resistance
our actions to nurture the world, or our corner of it, actually become more effective.
And that is the biggest secret.
—jim sloman, fall 2000 for Apr 26
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