I said that I resolved to be more childlike, but old habits of mind can be hard to break. I had come to like my truth in nice categorical packets which I could shuffle and correlate to each other, and I still had the habit of assuming that nothing very wise could be expressed simply and taken at face value, as if a diamond found laying on top of the ground couldn’t really be a true diamond. Everybody knew you had to dig deep and labor and sweat to find a true gem. This was a recurring theme in our conversations:
"You try too hard. For instance, when I tell you to cultivate the habit of peacefulness, you want it to be something very mystical, that is the bent of your nature. But I just mean to stop letting things bug you so easily. That's not mystical at all, it's simply a moment by moment choice, and is actually much harder than a meditation practice on peacefulness. When I speak about synchronicity, about times of sudden happy coincidence or answers to prayer, you want to figure out whether it is an act of God, a result of the forces of nature and statistical chance, or some specific, definable combination of the two. But what difference does it make? If you need rain and get it, why hassle over primary and secondary cause instead of simply enjoying the rain with thankfulness to a God who provides on a number of levels which we can only guess at? Stop trying to categorize everything and enjoy it. The whole point is that if you could know it all completely, you wouldn't understand it anyway. That seems to be the hardest idea for modern man to swallow but it is true nevertheless. Man is a creature of incredible potential and untapped abilities, but we are not God, we are man.
Think of a wheel like you would find at a carnival, with numbers all around and a pointer at the top .
All of your understandings, every facet of your experience is found on the wheel. The wheel is always turning, and at any given point in time a different facet, a different piece of your understanding is on top, under the pointer, under your strength point. Sometimes you are stronger analytically, sometimes emotionally. Sometimes you are more aware of the mystical nature of your life, and you are very receptive to spiritual understanding, other times you may find you tend towards the practical. It is wise to recognize these changes and flow with them, gaining what you can in each phase. However, while our ways of knowing can be distinguished, the actuality of our existence and the creation around us goes on in all of these aspects at all times. The distinction is in our ability to see and to understand, not in existence itself. Because of this, we generally only get a glimpse of the whole at any one time. To take this further, the relationships between the different aspects on the wheel are also always changing so that what lies under your strength point will have different sets of supporting abilities on either side over time. In other words, there are different combinations of strengths that you experience, and different combinations of weaknesses as well. That's why understanding comes more easily at some times than others. Rather than force the wheel, attempting to understand all things at all times, why not learn to understand where you are at the moment and adjust your actions accordingly? If it’s important to your growth the understanding will come in its' time, with the turning of the wheel. If not, then you didn't need it. You have to trust that.
Wanting to understand everything for understandings sake is vanity and you will always be behind, struggling to catch up. You are struggling now, but life is not a struggle, not a subject to be mastered, it’s a dance. The music changes, the tempo shifts, the melody is sometimes hard to find in the counterpoint but the key is to learn to flow, to let the music set your rhythm rather than trying to force the universe to play your tune."
