Life is Not a Mistake, Punishment, or Inconvenience
Are you looking forward to the paradise of the next life? Are you eagerly awaiting the mothership from outer-space that is going to whisk you off to the next level? Are you hoping to one day transcend this vale of tears through the power of meditation or psychedelic drugs?
What if we are mistaken? What if this is as good as it gets? What would happen if instead of treating life as a waiting room before we arrive at something better (even if our image of this ‘something better’ is nonexistence), we wake up to incredible gift of what is here right now?
The fact that we experience anything at all is miraculous. We all somehow appeared in a world full of people, animals, plants, technology, history, and stories. This world arouse in us like a dream, but because it was persistent, we were able to create a reasonably solid identity within in.
Stop for a second, look around, isn’t it incredible that all of this exists? Isn’t it strange and wonderful? Go outside, and look up. If it is a nice day, you will see an enormous burning ball of gas that we call the sun in the sky above. How freaking crazy is that? Somehow all of this is here. Isn’t it marvelous?
What if instead of looking for something better than this life, we started to value it. What difference would that make to our life? If you believe in an afterlife, what makes you think you will appreciate it anymore than you do this one?
As the poet David Whyte writes in his poem ‘Everything is Waiting for You‘:
“Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.”
