Laughing At The Sky.
“When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky”
-The Buddha
Sometimes you have to give up the illusion of control to the universe and cease the struggle against the currents we all float along in. Regardless of the provincial names we assign the forces that govern the current and tides in our lives, they are forces far greater than any among us could hope to comprehend. We suffer and hurt no more or less than we are meant to.
Perhaps in the end, the value and richness of our life isn’t determined by a net sum of our positive and negative experiences reconciled against one another to yield a “final accounting” of how good our lives were. Maybe the people who have the most of both overall should die the most satisfied.
Your heart, adrenal glands and tear ducts don’t know the difference between positive and negative stress; crying and trembling while your heart pounds because you just threw away the love of your life or because you just got the love of your life back. Our bodies don’t know one from the other. At the fundamental level of our physical existence, our autonomic functions, we experience emotion objectively, with no regard for its nature. The only thing our bodies respond to when we experience emotion is its intensity.
My studies up to this point dictate that the more spiritually engaged individual should follow suit, with detached gratitude for the highs and the lows. I know I will endeavor to do so.
My core spiritual value, as always is reinforced by this experience. Gratitude not for the way things unfolded from one moment to the next, relative to my fleeting desires and thoughts. Gratitude for the way things ultimately are: perfect. I will continue to laugh at the sky.