3 min read

Trust in the Mystery

Trust in the Mystery
Photo: Karl Blossfeldt (1928)

We are surrounded by unpredictability.

We suffer under the illusion that we can control our lives when, in reality, all of the big things in life, the big experiences, the most important moments, are entirely beyond our control.

We are powerless over birth, death, falling in love, or moments of insight and clarity.

These things hit us on their watch.

The universe orchestrates, and we are forced to surrender to a timing and a power that isn’t ours—a seemingly divine grace.

These moments reflect how little power we have over our experience here, yet we struggle and hanker endlessly, fighting against life. For what? A warped perception that we hold the reins. A delusional comfort that we know what's going on here.

We fear the unknown; we fear the Mystery.

Has anxiety about the future ever added a second to our lives? Has fixation on the potentially infinite tangents of your journey ever increased your joy in the moment? Of course not.

It robs us of our awareness, happiness, and ability to live the life unfolding before us. How often do we reflect on our lives, realizing we fretted and wasted time (our most precious resource) in agitation and rumination over something that never eventuated?

How silly we feel, how trivial when we realize what a commotion we made over nothing. How foolish we feel knowing we languished in feigned control over something insubstantial.

Science has taken us a long way and allowed us to flourish as a species immeasurably, but science without spirituality, consciousness, and awareness is a deadened path.

What we need now more than anything is balance.

Balance is the hallmark of the natural world, yet our civilization is sickeningly unbalanced. Our need to control and dominate every life form and process must be balanced with trust.

We need more trust in our intuition rather than our institutions. Greater trust in an intelligence that can sustain galaxies and maintain the laws of physics.

God, Yahweh, Brahman, Source, Allah, the Universe. Our names are irrelevant and divisive. We need to reconnect with the Other. The Mystery transcending pomp and politics. A reality evaporating our petty social, racial, and religious divisions like a dealer reclaiming cards from a deck.

And this begins with trusting in it. Surrendering our contrived notions of control and accepting that whatever holds the universe together is intelligent enough to provide us with the experiences we most need to expand our growing awareness.

We must hand the wheel back to nature and trust that we don’t have all of the answers, don’t need all of the answers, and that we probably won’t ever find all the answers.

And that, in my opinion, is the great, profound beauty of living.

Trust in life. Don't blindly follow a neurotic culture sustained and empowered by a desperate, perineal need to define the unknown. A society despising anything it cannot capture, measure, and control.

Trust in yourself, the goodness of human beings, the purity and majesty of nature, and mostly, in this infinite matrixical membrane we've called Life.

Trust in the Mystery.