Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?
Life is change, and this way it will be up to our death. At that point, a certain range of changes terminate while other processes of change happen to the remnants. There are changes in our lives we like and others we don’t. We have the natural impulse to reject what does not fit to our expectations and to want more of the things we like. But change has already taken place without asking us whether we approve of it or not.
The weather has turned bad as I wanted to have a walk. I am annoyed and blame the weather for my bad mood instead of being able to enjoy a nice walk. I press the wrong button on the computer and the work of an hour is gone. To blame is this stupid machine which reacts so senseless.
Immediately, as soon as something happens which breaks our expectations we react with stress, with inner tension. We have to organize and orientate ourselves anew, sometimes under pressure of time. This is an effort which our system has to provide. Next come our feelings which have been a joyful expectation of a walk or a creative phase of work. They change all the sudden and give way to unpleasant feelings like disappointment, anger, frustration. They cause an extension and enforcement of the inner stress, so we cannot relax. For this to happen, we would have to return to our pleasant feelings. But as the circumstances have changed to the worse, this is not possible.
So it is the circumstances which cause the way we feel – the weather, the silly machine etc. We are the victims of higher and uncontrollable powers. When we cannot turn this causality around, we have no alternative to opposing life and its circumstances.
Our tendency to keep resistance against life does not disappear by building up a resistance against the resistance by fighting life. Resistance against resistance is useless. “When you fight God you always lose,” is a wise saying.
It is clear that we cannot escape the trap of resistance with this strategy. On the contrary, we feed it even more and give it more importance. Perhaps it allows us to get rid of our aggressions when we start to bluster and curse. But the resistance will reappear as strong as before at the next opportunity.
Why do we use the term “creature of habit”? Because habits are not genuine human. The special aspect of humanity starts where habits end and creativity starts, with new ideas and energies.
Expectations are just extensions of habits: Every expectation is tied to something already known, something which has already happened before. I remember the taste of a certain wine and expect the same pleasure as before. In this expectation I order the glass of wine and two options are there: The expectation will be fulfilled or disappointed. The expectation story overlays the experience of tasting and enjoying the wine.
The only way to weaken our resistance thoroughly and permanently is acceptance. Usually well informed sources say that accepting one’s resistance leads to melting it. And as a profit from this change of attitude, we find important resources behind the adverse circumstances.
So: When resistance appears (and this happens all the time), it is worth the experiment to take on the role of an interested host. There comes an unannounced guest and he does not look the way I would have liked him to look, but when I greet him in a friendly way he will sooner or later turn into a nice guy.
By learning to accept our resistance to life makes it easier to accept life and its circumstances, so we more and more come into an attitude of equanimity. We take what life offers to us with ease whatever the circumstances are, and stays in an inner serenity even when there is nothing to be amused about. If the consciousness is more focused on the moment, it is no longer dependent on expectations. Expectations constrain our inner world and block our creativity and flexibility, key elements of the growth in nature and in humans. By expectations we want to rule the future in an absolutistic way. We imagine how something has to be, and react with indignation when life has different plans for us and we do not like them.
We also feed our negative expectation, our fears and anxiety of the future. Sometimes our mind uses such projections into the future to anticipate the worst which could happen by assuming that the worst would be less bad when anticipated.
The most difficult situation for the mind is being confronted with anything without preparation, with no strategy at hand. This is when our minds would have to render its control, and keeping up control is the main task and the mere reason of its existence. So it is often with surprising situations, that our mind pretends it had anyhow expected what has happened. Our minds do not like surprises as they represent the unknown and the unknowable. So our minds tend to exclude miracles from our experience.
Miracles exceed our control patterns. When the expectations vanish we do not move through life according to a plan – now I take my breakfast, kiss my beloved, go to the train, get on etc. Instead, life flows as it flows just as described previously, but differently as it is full of wonder: how tasteful the breakfast is, how sweet the kiss, how marvelous the flowers on the way and how interesting the sky – such new and unique impressions become significant and not the planned processes. This is not a life of chaos, all proceedings have their logistic and follow the rules of reality but this aspect is less important. It steps back and gives way to the experience of miracles and uniqueness.
The rules are taken from Elif Shafak's novel “The Forty Rules of Love” (Viking 2010). They are inspired by the Sufi tradition and worded by the autor's imagination. www.elifshafak.com
No comments:
Post a Comment