Turning Our Lives Right-Side Up

Sometimes it feels as if everything is upside down and as if we are on our own, trying to find our way out of the darkness. As the Yiddish proverb goes, we plan and God laughs. God sees us go down so many roads trying to direct our lives, yet we have no control.

The only expectation we can really have in this life is that nothing goes according to plan, so we might as well expect the unexpected. In fact, unexpected things are happening all the time. So why not relax? All we really need to do is to search for the Lord and then let everything else go however it goes. Eventually we learn that things have a way of working out. But until we realize and acknowledge that we are seeking the Lord, everything continues to feel upside down. We feel dissatisfied, disoriented. We know that things are not quite right. So how do we turn our lives right-side up?

We need to find a Master and follow his instructions. Or rather, we need to trust the Master when he finds us. Life feels upside down because, without a Master to guide us, nothing makes sense. We need the Master to put our lives and worldly events into context for us, to give us a spiritual perspective, to show us what is important and what is not.

For example, unless we search within, our focus continues to be outward on temporary, fleeting things. Over time we find we need very little to be both comfortable and happy. But most of us own much more than we need. We have closets so stuffed that we often can’t find what we already have. Rather than clean out and simplify, we tend to just go out and buy more stuff. We may even buy a bigger house or a second home to hold all our possessions. Having so many things becomes a burden, unnecessarily taking up our time and attention.

Maharaj Charan Singh used to say there are three things you should never get rid of in life: an old pair of shoes, an old coat, and an old friend. These things comfort us. An old pair of shoes helps us walk easily in this world; a comfy coat keeps us warm; an old friend supports us through both good times and bad. In general, everything else is window dressing – just outward accessories that divert us from putting our effort toward going home to the Lord. Everything has an expiration date – our things, our families, our lives; only the Lord is eternal. In his poetry, the mystic Sultan Bahu shows us the simplicity of true spirituality: “I fixed my attention on the Lord. I then placed my soul in his protection.”

But fixing our attention on the Lord is challenging. Because the Lord is a mystery, we may not fully trust or believe that he exists. We need to push ourselves within, while placing absolute faith and trust in the Master’s guidance. A story that demonstrates such trust is of a woman who decided to take up free diving in her forties. Despite having no experience, she showed extraordinary talent. Early on, she did not see diving as just a sport. She realized that it required much more than physical training in swimming, breathing, and timing. To dive deeper and deeper, she had to enter a different state, one in which she let go of the “surface fuss,” as she called it, until everything extraneous to her goal faded away and she became one with the water.

This is what we need to do in meditation: eliminate the surface fuss and dive deep into the silent, still water of the Shabd. But we need a Master to facilitate our journey. In the book Heart’s Witness, we read these words by a Sufi mystic:

None blows fire
Into our hearts
Like him,
None makes short
The path to him
But him

Without that fire in our heart, we get tangled up in the world. When that fire is finally lit, we seek peace within and enter into communion with the Lord. We live within the Lord’s shelter. To fully traverse the path within, Buddha told his disciples to do two simple, practical things: start and don’t quit. If we want to go home to the Lord, we must turn our longing into the practical steps of meditation and then stay with it. We need to make a commitment to keep trying.

Meditation is like walking, in that we have to put one foot in front of the other. We need just to keep doing the actions that will move us forward. After all, we don’t typically walk backwards or sideways. Just like following our natural inclination to walk forward, we need to deepen our inclination to meditate. When we want to get someplace, we do what is necessary to go there, even if we think it will be hard or beyond our capabilities. That’s how it is in meditation. We need to just do it. We need to make it the centerpiece of our life.

Saint Teresa of Avila, a 16th-century Carmelite nun, led an extraordinary life. She challenged the church hierarchy, was in a coma and paralyzed for years as a young woman and eventually recovered. She committed herself to leading a monastic life and devoting herself to God. In the book Let Nothing Disturb You, she is quoted as saying: “If you have God you will want for nothing.” All of her writings convey that life is an empty journey without God’s companionship.

Joseph Campbell tells us (in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living) that “we must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that’s waiting for us.” To heed this wise advice, we need to ask ourselves how to turn our lives right-side up; how to put our hand in the hand of the Lord and follow where he leads us. If we open ourselves up to his companionship, the life waiting for us is divine. In spirituality we must be ready to surrender, to start and not quit until we are truly liberated and can live the life that’s waiting for us.