"Right now, you are trying to perceive the nature of life with a logical mind. You can try as hard as you want, but it is not going to happen. You are trying to figure out life with an instrument, which can never do that job. It is like your destination is the moon but you are riding a bullock cart. If you want to perceive the nature of your life, you must be able or willing to look beyond the limitations of the logical mind." - Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
If you are anything like me, then you too are constantly wondering why God never answers all our prayers, why bad things happen to good people, and if the Universe really listens and brings to us what our hearts desire. Existential questions don’t always come with an answer key, but these everyday ponderings of mine saw a sliver of illumination recently when my perspective on God/Universe was forced to do a complete turnaround. Ironically, this 180-degree spin also came with a 45-degree decline, which made me realize that the spiritual maze that I had been drifting in also has an underground cavern that I was not aware of until now.
Here’s how this new low in my spiritual journey came about –
It had been many years since I made it my lifestyle choice to never watch the news. I am not mentally equipped to process the dramatic aspects of the news without falling prey to its fear-peddling tendencies. So I’ve made it a habit to never watch the news channels, browse news websites or discuss any breaking headlines with my family or friends. And this foolproof system to keep disturbing news at bay had been working fairly well except for an occasional miss or two, which was usually combated with denial, indulgence in mindless distractions as a form of avoidance, anger, spiritual/philosophical ranting, and finally, acceptance of reality with a hopeless optimism about the future.
But my supposedly tried and tested approach faced an epic failure in the last month as a barrage of unsettling events kept gouging holes in my veil of ignorance. Ranging from unfortunate accidents where animals attacked kids to acts of horror executed by humans who were evil personified, I found the frequency and magnitude with which bad things happened in today’s world to be extremely distressing. More than accidents and natural disasters, the incidents happening with evilness and utter disregard for human life scared me the most. It made me wonder if it had always been like this from times immemorial and only now we have become aware of them due to information and globalization or if evil has gained undue power particularly in our times?
No amount of movie binging or funny meme surfing made this reality go away, which interestingly was the exact message of a book by Pema Chödrön that I read recently and chose to take lightly (more on that in the next post).
So I decided to resume my usual tiff with God/Universe like numerous times before with my first point of grievance being the Universe’s sadistic decision to allow an apex predator to prey on a toddler. When my own two year old screams because he is upset over something inane, I cannot help but imagine the piercing cry as that of the toddler’s who was attacked and it makes my stomach churn. For the life of me, I cannot understand how a loving God or the seek-with-all-your-heart-and-the-universe-will-bring-it-to-you kind of compassionate universe could allow such an atrocity to happen, and I kept repeatedly asking myself ‘where is the logic in all of this!’
I went on with this rambling for a good while when suddenly out of nowhere, like when sometimes your mind has this uncanny ability to bring up stuff from your subconscious just at the right time to make sense of your quandary, my mind pushed out this video clipping that I had watched many years ago. The video showed a seal dragging its bulk on a slab of ice when a boat pulls next to it and a man jumps out. I stupidly thought he was going to rescue it when the man hurriedly walks toward the seal, raises both his arms high above his head holding what I could only imagine was an axe or a club, and swings them down with all his might.
The video stopped right there and so did my heart for a moment. It was an animal rights commercial and I was their nth neophyte. Just as I remembered this video, I heard another voice in my head that said, ‘And where was the logic in all of that?’
This is certainly not to say that one death validates the other or that the toddler’s accident was nature’s way of settling score, but I am starting to think that there is no point in holding the Universe accountable because the Universe probably did not have anything to do with either of the events. The Universe probably has nothing to do with any of the events in our lives, good and bad, but since our logical mind wants to explain everything away, we are desperate to pin everything that is beyond our grasp on the divine.
Remember the movie Déjà vu where the scientist character declares, “God’s mind is made up about this,” – Now what if the Universe has already decided on the events of our lives based on a telescopic view that encompasses not just us humans who are probably just a blip on its radar, but everything else in the universe starting from an inchworm all the way to a collapsing star, because the bigger picture that we are failing to see with our limited logic is illogically and absolutely perfect according to the Universe.
Maybe there is evil in this world today, as it had always been throughout mankind’s time on earth, not because of the Universe’s conspiracy but because of humanity’s choice to keep kindness and compassion in short supply. Maybe unfortunate accidents happen because we are not being conscious and mindful of every moment of our lives.
Then why are little children born deformed or with grave illnesses? Well for this one, I don’t know the answer but like a nice rabbi once replied to me, if we did know the answer then we might brush off the issue and be complacent instead of being troubled; because it is from this troubled place that we try to find answers, fund researches to cure illnesses, able to feel compassion, and experience gratitude. Maybe this compassionate collective consciousness is the bigger picture that the Universe is steering us toward.
So maybe the Universe doesn’t care about what our hearts desire or listen to our every prayer, because it’s not the Universe’s job to align with our needs but rather ours to align with the Universe. I suppose this is the reason why awakened beings don’t seek anything from the Universe but instead tap into its flow and just be; and this is why even when they do ask, they ask only for grace.
But the new low from all of this pondering that is scaring the living bejesus out of me is this – what if it makes no difference to the Universe whether we pray with all our hearts or not pray at all; what if we are only deluding ourselves by thinking that God is listening and answering our prayers when our prayers do come to pass and that He has something better in store for us when they don’t; what if prayers are just our self-pacifying tool for a hopeful tomorrow and no matter how important our tunnel-vision prayers are, they hold absolutely no sway on the Universe because the Universe will still execute only that which it has predetermined, even if that includes something bad according to us.
