On this last New Year’s Day, a young woman who lives in my house said that her wish for the New Year was “Infinite bliss, right now”. I didn’t want to rain on her parade, but I think that the closest I could get to a neutral response was “Good luck”.
When she asked my wish for the New Year, I said that I want life to surprise me. And that is mostly the truth.
Oh, sure, I do have some addictive longings: I’d like more money and less stress. I’d like regular, more lucrative employment and more fun. I’d like to get to the mountains more. I’d like a girlfriend or at least to get laid. The list goes on. I suppose there is a part of me that also wants “Infinite bliss, right now.” I don’t hear it, but it’s likely to be there somewhere.
But I am less and less taking these kinds of wishes seriously. It’s clearer to me all the time that life is way smarter than I am. I would be a poor choreographer for my life – or stage director, traffic cop, etc. What life hands me is often not what I would have chosen. Sometimes I don’t recognize right away why this particular happening is the best thing for me – often I will never know.
Carlos Lopez, a student of Ramana Maharshi, likes to say that the clearer we get, the less we try to control our lives – which we will never manage to do, anyway – the more life tends to surprise us. And this is truly the best and highest aspiration - to be curious, open, observant, and to let life take us where it will. This is what it is going to do, whether or not we cooperate, and it’s lots more fun to cooperate.
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Yes, it is surely more fun to cooperate!
I remember not too long ago, thinking about my past (not a good practice for trying to achieve 'no mind', but anyway....) and I realized how things that have happened seemed to have happened for a reason, or at least some of the things that have happened.
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