Say we are needed by nature to deliver a message to an old friend we haven't seen in a long time. Perhaps this friend needs to learn how to meditate. Nature doesn't say (generally) 'Call Jerry. He's having a hard time. Tell him he needs to learn to meditate.' Instead, nature may say, 'Wouldn't an ice cream be good right now?' Hm... what a good idea. An ice cream. So we head to the ice cream shop and there in the parking lot is Jerry. Before we know it, Jerry's telling us what's happening in his life, we tell Jerry we went through the same thing ourselves a few years ago, Jerry says we look pretty happy now. What did we do? So we tell him about meditation. Jerry feels heard. He has hope. He leaves. We wonder, 'now what was I on my way to do? Oh, yeah. Ice cream.' Only now maybe we don't want ice cream any more.

What a great system. As meditators, all we have to do is pay attention to what charms us, move in that direction, stay present and pay attention. Simple. But if we become attached to the goal (the ice cream, for example) as necessary for our happiness, we may be so focused on accomplishing our goal that we miss Jerry in the parking lot. Needless to say, the ice cream will not give us the joy we started out thinking it would. 

When our idea of fulfillment exists outside the self, we become attached to these ideas of charm nature presents to us. We may actually forego happiness in our life because of this idea we won't be happy until. Until we have the relationship, the job, the bank account, the baby, the perfect body. We must be rid of this misconception. We must find a different way of seeing the world. We must learn to trust.

Trust what? As meditators, twice each day settling into our least-excited state, we come to know ourselves as representatives of nature, expressions of nature itself. We are the way in which nature, Totality, experiences Itself, teaches Itself, loves Itself, speaks to Itself, enjoys Itself. We are individuality, and we are this One Thing as well. Think: waves upon the ocean, separate and individual but all from the same ocean, all made up of the same ocean water. Like this we are individual expressions of the One Thing.

This One Thing, nature, always and only is evolving. Evolution is all it knows to do. It cannot do anything else. Always it is moving forward. And as expressions of nature, so are we always moving forward, always evolving. Regardless of how it may look in a given moment, this is what we begin to trust:  

Evolution is all that ever is happening. Always.

Knowing that evolution is the only thing that ever is happening, we come to see every occurrence in our life as part of evolution, as just one more step on the way toward the perfection of the whole, and we begin to see that our suffering about any given aspect of our life really is the function of a lack of acceptance on our part, as if by not accepting it, whatever it may be, we may change things.

Things are. Things happen. People pass from our lives. Dreams and hopes are dashed. Careers change. Health may ebb and flow. What is our task in all of this?

• We know that whatever is happening is happening for good, for God, if you will, and that our inability to recognize this has to do with our perception, rather than the realities of life;
• We know that it is our job to choose a joyful experience of all that comes to us (which is not at all to say that pain does not happen. Pain happens. Life can hurt. The suffering is optional;
• We find the way, daily, to connect with this deeper experience of what we are, with our oceanic self, our Universal Self, in order to give ourselves the capacity to make this choice toward joy;
• We continue to stay in the moment, awake and aware for the cues that nature is giving us and will continue to give us as to what, precisely, we are to be doing next.  

Today I will insist on seeing some disappointment in my life as perhaps a step in the direction of evolution, in the direction of happiness.

Kolam Artist, Pondicherry, South India