We so blithely talk about having a “good” or “bad”
year. What we mean is a time in which we
got what we wanted out of life - we had health, a good marriage, a nice income,
low stress – or we had a time that presented many challenges, sometimes intense
challenge on one front – exceptional health challenges or frustrating
unemployment . My “bad” years frequently
feature being nibbled to death by ducks – dozens of mild to moderate problems,
but constant and relentless - that lead
your psyche to believe that the Lords of Creation have it in for you (as a
Christian client referred to it) or that life is just a constant struggle with
one stumbling block after another.
2015 was a difficult year for me. 2016 is shaping up to have lots of challenges
as well. I lost 5 weeks of my life to a
serious bronchitis attack and now my beloved sister is riddled with cancer and
breathing through her last weeks, the latter hitting with almost no
warning. Why did my goddess, angel and
animal spirit cards, not to mention my Akashic consults, all tell me that this
was going to be a “good” year? Are they wrong
– or nuts?
Maybe the latter is closest to the truth.
I think the disconnect can be explained by a story from one
of the Buddhist scriptures, which I will paraphrase and shorten. A farmer had a young son who was an excellent
helper. That’s good, his neighbors told
him. Then the boy broke his leg and it
set poorly; he would always have a limp.
That’s bad, his neighbors said.
Years pass and the nation is at war.
All the young men are conscripted for military service. All the fathers lose their young male labor
and have to work hard in the fields.
Except our farmer. Because the
boy limps, he is excused from military service. That’s good, the neighbors say. The young man
does not die in the war and remains to help work on the farm, albeit at a
reduced capacity.
This constant mental categorizing event outcome as “good” or
“bad” is the major cause of our life’s dissatisfaction. If things aren’t good or bad, but just are,
we can move on to maximizing the value of what we have, like the farmer. His emotions weren’t up and down, fluctuating
with the “story” that his mind created about reality, like his neighbors were
doing. Some people read the story and
think that the moral is that you have to wait to decide if something is good or
bad, because of course the story ends up “good” – the young man does not
die. But the real meaning is much more
profound.
So what about me? Maybe
I can be very sad, weep and journal and be hugged, but my sister’s untimely
death isn’t “bad,” per se, just very, very sad.
Maybe it just is. Maybe the
bronchitis just is. [Compare this with “the
bronchitis is actually good because it got me to cut back on the number of
overseas trips I was planning for 2016, which were exhausting to think about,
much less do” which is the psych cognitive-behavioral approach, and a very good
one it is, too, in getting us to see another possibe interpretation of the
available facts. But with all its
virtues, it is only turning bad into good, not walking away from bad and good
as categories, period.]
So I don’t think all those cards and Akashic messages were
wrong. It was my interpretation of them
that was off-base. They didn’t say I
would have a “good” year. They said that
many blessings were coming to me. It was
I who mistranslated that into “nothing sad is going to happen.” When I
take a more balanced look at the year, the blessings – so many more than in
2015 – stand out in stark relief. My gosh, what a shower of blessings, in
business, in health and in new friendships and spiritual relationships. Not
nothing but blessings of course. But
blessings there are. And all of it –
without being labeled good, bad or both/neither – just is.
If you ask me how the year is going, I may make you
comfortable by saying, “Many blessings,” because small-talk doesn’t require
philosophy or truth. But know that I
know what kind of year I’m having. I’m
having a year in which I am alive, and all of it just is.
