Trust the Paradox
One thing I am starting to become acutely aware of as I become more faithful is the important of paradox in life. It’s not just that there are a lot of them, but it’s starting to seem like we have to actively engage with and accept them in order to make progress.
This is true for therapeutic or spiritual change in general - we have to both just sit there and do nothing, allowing Good (or God) to do Good work in our lives, and we have to be engaged in the process, operating with an appreciative, potent awareness, willing to both embrace a God-given opportunity or sit on our hands and wait for the answer.
Most people probably will find this part of faith BLEEPING infuriating. Many will consider it another reason why having faith is just a lot of hooey. I don’t blame any of us for feeling that way, but I also might challenge our most cynical selves to consider that maybe, just maybe, if we stop being so damn difficult, whether it’s possible that our lives might actually get easier.
See what I did there? Ha!
It turns out that the following paradoxes seem to be true:
Doing the hard work to change ourselves actually does make our lives easier
Being less difficult internally makes life simpler externally
Accepting ourselves as we are, even if it might feel like resignation or giving up the fight, actually allows us to love ourselves and be loved more - the person, the job, the life we want can finally make it’s approach once we accept that we may never be better or different and we don’t have to be in order to love or be loved.
Accepting other people for who they are makes us capable of loving them more, not less.
Accepting the way someone loves us, rather than wishing it was different, makes us appreciate their love more, not less.
Now, you might notice the word “accept” and variations of it in the above list quite a bit. You may be thinking to yourself, Hang on just a minute! Does this mean I have to be a doormat in order to be happy? Because I don’t want to be a doormat.
The answer is, yes and no.
The problem with agency and independence and manifest destiny and Godless(or Goodless)ness is that it leaves us with a sense that we have to do everything by ourselves all the time. Some people (a very few mystical creatures) are fine with that and may even flourish under such circumstances. But for the rest of us, it can be crazy-making. The little gremlin ego living in our brains grabs hold of every possibility, opportunity, chance, happenstance or fluke, and just worries the ever-loving BLEEP out of it. The what-ifs start rolling in and we start driving ourselves and, very often, everyone else around us BLEEPING crazy.
The alternative is to just hold very still and see what happens. Am I advocating for you to just lie down in your life and let people wipe their shoes all over you on their way in the door? No, definitely not. But there is a big difference between taking a passive approach to try and let fate/God/Good/the Universe handle something and being walked all over. They are very different gestures in life. We don’t have to be engaged (read: on edge) all the time. We don’t have to always be in charge. In fact, speaking for myself, life has gotten way BLEEPING better since I relinquished pretty much everything to something (Good, God, call it what you will) outside of myself.
Do I still do my work? Yes, obviously. I’m not an inanimate object.
Do I still make love or have arguments or worry? Of course, I am a human bean, after all.
Do I still make mistakes or get involved when I don’t need to and make a mess of things? Absolutely. It’s hard to let go of one of my favorite pastimes.
But now I also regularly tell myself Good will handle this when I don’t know what to do or I don’t know what to think. And when I have the intelligence or forethought to think such things, I genuinely trust that it will happen. By now, after all this flailing about (which you have been privy to, dear reader), I also trust the results will be better than if I get involved and start meddling around as if I have all the answers.
All the gurus of spirituality or self-help say this about the spiritual plane:
Do less, get more.
Pray more, do less, get more.
Have faith, let go, get more.
These are simple equations that none of us seem to trust.
I guess the only thing I have to contribute is try, just try to trust the paradox and see what happens.