This is definitely going to be a bit of a meditative thing.
Meaning that I don't want to just be here and rattle off a bunch of information for the mind.
And giving us a bunch of things to think about.
More so,
I want to invite you into a stillness.
That allows you to see something profound.
And the profound nature of it isn't so much going to inspire a bunch of thinking about it,
More accurately,
The profound nature of it is going to.
Invite a beautiful stillness.
It's almost as if we remember something that is so incredibly ancient and true.
It is a remembering of a wellness that has always been here.
And of course,
In remembering this,
It may.
.
.
Invite some flavor of healing?
That allows the mind to calm down.
That allows all of our fears to relax.
And somewhere in there blooms a great gratitude.
For simply being alive.
So I want to invite you to go on that journey with me.
Inviting you into this space of stillness.
That at least brings a willingness.
To be present.
Something in the heart.
Opens up.
Becomes humble.
It's almost as if we remember that there is this.
Sacred intelligence or sacred wisdom that we do have access to.
But it is only found in this stillness.
And we can.
Walk through that door just by simply remembering the breath.
Feel the breath moving.
Feel the life that is happening right now.
We are here.
We are awake.
And yes,
There might be so much going on in the mind.
But we can discern the difference.
We can see that there is the life that is here right now.
And sure,
There's a bunch of noise in the mind.
And in recognizing that,
We just invite ourselves into the life that is happening.
The title of this insight meditation.
Is understanding God's perspective.
Being at peace with all that is.
There's a particular challenge in this title.
And that challenge is using the word God.
And not.
Knowing what that word means to you.
For some people,
It can.
.
.
Be a complete turn off.
For other people can be a beautiful invitation.
We can have so many different ideas about that.
But for the sake of clarity.
When I use that word,
I'm simply pointing to something that we simply don't have the word for.
It is pointing towards an intelligence.
That holds this whole life thing together.
And I don't have any particular stories about it.
I just recognized for myself.
A presence that is there.
That holds space for life to be life.
And of course,
In attempting to point toward this something that I don't have words for,
I'm going to use a bunch of words.
And so I hope that we don't get lost in the words.
And just see what I'm pointing toward.
There's a beautiful play in this.
It doesn't have to be serious.
What is it to understand God's perspective?
Well.
.
.
In a simple way.
We could also say understanding the bigger picture.
To see more of what's actually going on beyond what we might call our very limited and narrow perspective.
A deeper understanding.
And perfectly in alignment with the nature of spirituality.
The deeper we understand.
Ourselves and life in others.
There is this flavor of compassion that emerges.
That in many ways is quite healing.
The deeper we go in this understanding.
In some way,
There is a recognition that all is well.
Maybe we can't go all the way there?
But maybe where we can go is to realize things are not as bad as I imagine them to be.
And so in understanding God's perspective.
Maybe simply we can just say,
Understanding the bigger picture.
There is an analogy that I use often.
And sometimes as I'm sharing,
I try not to use this analogy.
But as it relates to communicating this point,
It's still the best analogy.
And that is to take a walk with me through the forest.
And in this context.
We can ask,
What is God's perspective about the forest?
And we can see how similar it is.
To God's perspective about life.
God's perspective about you.
God's perspective about the whole thing.
Imagine we take a walk in the forest.
And what we see appears to be utter chaos.
Things are terribly unorganized.
There are trees falling over.
There's animals tearing apart other animals.
This colony of bugs is fighting that colony of bugs.
The rocks are all mixed in with the grass.
There's things on the ground dying and they smell bad.
There's beautiful flowers blooming.
There's beautiful trees swinging in the wind.
There is the immensity of life.
All happening at once.
And as we walk through this forest,
Sure,
We can see a lot of things that we don't like.
There can be a lot of things that we wish were different.
I wish the bugs would stop fighting.
I wish the trees wouldn't have to fall over.
I wish these animals would leave those animals alone.
We can very much see that there is a way that we want it to be,
But yet the forest doesn't seem to care about the way that we want it to be.
And of course,
In that resistance,
In that maybe terror of how things are the way that they are.
We cry out to God,
YOY.
Why is the forest this way?
Why is it such a mess?
Why is there so much chaos?
And of course God,
Looking down from above,
Says,
Come up here and sit next to me.
Now look down.
See the whole thing.
What do you see?
And of course,
This is what happens when we zoom out.
You zoom out and you see the whole forest and you say,
My God,
That's beautiful.
You see the way things are.
Is the way that they have to be.
In order for the force to be the force.
If the forest is going to go on being what it is,
It's important that the trees fall down.
It's important that everything has a beginning and has an end,
And ultimately gives itself back to life,
So that life can go on.
And we say,
But what's the point?
And God says.
While look at the forest.
Is life better than no life?
Once you recognize that everything is doing what it's supposed to be doing.
Don't you see how beautiful it all is?
But it's so scary.
God says,
My dear,
It's only scary because you don't understand it.
But things are dying and that's scary.
Because my dear,
You don't understand what dying is.
You don't fear the reality of the forest.
You fear your misunderstanding.
You fear what you turn it into in the mind.
You fear that somehow there is a mistake where there is not.
You fear that something can go horribly wrong when that's simply not possible.
Such an interesting question.
Why is life?
The way it is.
In such a simple answer to say so that life might be life.
And from a human perspective.
Something that I find so fascinating.
Is the question we ask that says,
But what about me?
What about what I want?
What about how I want things to be?
That really speaks to the nature of all of our resistance.
All of our anxieties.
All of our lack of trust as we fear not getting what we want.
And it speaks to the very innocent misunderstanding that we have as human beings.
Where we believe that life is about who we think we are.
Life is about us as something separate from everything else.
Not seeing that everything in life exists so as to serve life.
Why?
So that life can be life.
So that the miracle can go on.
It definitely invites the question,
What are we in service to?
And we can speak about this in a religious way,
But we can also speak about it in a secular way.
From a religious view,
We could say,
We are here in service to God.
Or we could say we are here in service to life.
To each other.
To the wholeness that is.
And how frightful this landscape becomes.
When we believe that we are here in service to ourselves.
What is it to be in service to yourself other than to build an idea about yourself that is better than others?
Isn't that interesting?
What is it to be in service to yourself other than trying to separate yourself from others?
And how is that going?
It seems that as we do that.
.
.
It just becomes.
More apparent that everything is against us.
Everything is in the way.
In the way of what we want,
In the way of how we want things to be.
It's like being mad at the trees for falling down.
Mad at life being life.
Saying life,
You're not serving me.
You're not helping me be more important than others.
There's definitely a spiritual quality to this,
And again,
I don't know what that word means for you.
But for me,
It points toward a real sacredness about life.
A sacredness that shows me this life thing is a gift.
And the gift itself is simply being alive.
To be here.
Right now.
And to be here right now.
Without the chaos in the mind of a separate self trying to become special or trying to separate itself from everything else.
To truly be here,
It is amazing what I find.
A harmony.
A peace.
A love,
A compassion,
A forgiveness.
A beautiful opportunity to experience the depth of what I am.
To explore the miracle of what we are,
And then to share that with others.
To love on others,
To hold space for others.
And maybe also what I find so interesting about that.
Is that in the play of my human difficulty.
That is,
In essence,
Fighting against life.
The pain of all of that.
Is trying to point me home.
Almost as if the suffering and the pain of it.
Is part of the design that invites me to let go.
So even that is perfectly placed.
Do you see how the design what I'm paying attention?
Is inviting me to let go of my own arrogance.
Is inviting me to let go of thinking that I'm better than others.
Is inviting me home to a humble heart.
That is in service to life itself.
Which could also be said to be grateful for life itself.
Not because I should.
Not because I have to.
But more so because it's true.
This is also like saying.
Because it's true that God knows what God is doing.
Because it's true that there is a brilliant design to all that is.
And that invitation for me to come home.
Is simply an invitation for me to trust.
And again,
Maybe in a spiritual or religious context.
It's to put my faith in what is real and true.
Rather than putting my faith in my imaginary sense of a separate self-importance.
To humble myself.
Before life or before God.
And acknowledge that God sees the bigger picture.
God knows why.
Even when my mind isn't able to see it.
And again,
Not because I should,
Not because I have to.
But because my direct experience keeps bringing me back to see this same thing.
Is that not the consistent lesson?
Whereas it is an invitation to come home and not a demand about how you should be.
Much like how touching a hot stove invites you to not touch the hot stove?
The pain of which.
.
.
Invites you to not touch the hot stove because that's not how things work around here.
You're free to keep trying to touch it.
You're free to keep trying to fight against life.
This reminds me so much of the play of arrogance.
Or the play of thinking I know something that I don't really know,
Pretending to know.
And then life has its beautiful ways of humbling me.
Which is really just inviting me to be honest.
Which is simply inviting me to let the truth be the truth.
Do you see this?
In our humanness how much we pretend to know.
Whether that's how much we pretend,
How we know how life should be.
We even pretend that we know what we want.
Even what we need.
And we become so certain,
But how many times?
Have we thought we knew all those things?
Only to find out that we didn't really know.
I find that interesting because it shows me that.
I can't actually trust the mind.
Especially when I'm all emotional.
And the more at peace I am.
The more okay I am with just not knowing.
It's okay that I don't know.
God knows.
It's okay that I don't know why the tree fell over.
God knows.
It's an interesting way of being.
To somehow know that whatever is true It's okay that it's true.
Which then means you don't need to fight against life,
Which is to fight against what's true.
Which is also like saying you don't need to fight against yourself.
If you're sad,
It's okay that you're sad.
If anger is there,
It's okay that anger is there.
If you're happy,
It's okay that you're happy.
It's okay to let what is be what is.
Because surely we are aware of the experience of being worried about being worried.
Being angry that we're angry.
Suffering over our suffering.
Which is just pushing against what is.
And my point being.
.
.
It all has its place,
Even if we don't understand why.
And in that is the invitation to just breathe.
And I'll tell you this.
The more we can see what this life thing is really about.
Which is to say it's about life.
Than the less time we spend.
Fighting for what we think we want life to be about.
Which is fighting for life to be about who we think we are.
Wanting to separate ourselves to be better than others.
Or wanting other people to worship us,
Which is simply saying wanting other people to have certain thoughts about us.
Or not have certain thoughts about us.
Making life about us.
Rather than letting life be about life.
And yes.
.
.
Understandably.
It can be incredibly difficult sometimes.
And that too,
Is part of it.
This is where we learn.
This is when we are humbled.
This is how we grow.
It's okay that it's hard sometimes.
But what I notice for myself so often is it's so hard because I'm fighting against life.
It's almost like saying.
.
.
I'm not allowing what is hard.
To be hard.
By resisting how hard it is,
I'm making it more hard.
You know what this is like?
It's like honest conversations and relationships.
Sometimes their heart.
But thinking that relationships should just be easy and you shouldn't have to have hard conversations where it's hard to be honest.
Makes those moments way more hard than they actually are.
But when you understand that in order for relationships to have a chance,
It requires this thing called intimacy,
Vulnerability.
Honesty.
And sometimes that's really hard.
But we turn towards it because we know it's simply important.
It can be hard to get our egos out of the way.
It can be hard to be humble.
But what's happening is that we are honoring what is true.
Which in many ways is the whole point.
Honoring the life that is,
Which is the same as honoring God,
Honoring what's true,
Honoring what's real.
And as we do so,
What we discover.
.
.
Is that it's okay.
For life to be life?
It's okay for what is true to be what is true.
Which is also and importantly to say,
It's okay for you to be you.
