All is Well: A Journey in Contemplation

g Reality

It may seem like a strange question, but: what is reality?  It seems to me that in the clamour of modern life we have lost our hold on what reality is.  Many of us know this through our experiences of social media.  We scroll through posts and know that, whilst we can touch base with people, much of what we see is not ‘real’.  More than ever before, we have the opportunity to curate our own lives and to portray a life that is not real.  We can reach across the ether and ‘hold hands’ with a friend – give them a virtual hug – but this can come at the price of not living in the present: not interacting with the people on our doorstep and the environment in which we live.

Human beings are amazing creatures and the exponential rise of technology means that many of us – especially in developed nations – live lives that are insulated from what it means to be alive.  We don’t have direct contact with the source of the things that enable us to live: our water comes from taps; our food comes from shops; our heating comes through radiators.  We take for granted: shelter; full stomachs; clean water and warmth.  And in the same way that we have lost contact with the physical sources of life, so too have we lost touch with the spiritual source of life.  God/Love gets lost in all the superficial things we hold onto and we seek solace through various forms of addiction – to food, drugs, alcohol, pleasure.  Always seeking more, bigger, better.  Trying to hold on to youth and beauty instead of seeking the inner wisdom that comes from a life in touch with reality.

This is not to say that life is easy.  Life trips us up all the time.  It throws ‘curve balls’ at us that knock us off balance.  And sometimes that fall is exactly what we need.  Sometimes that fall takes us face-to-face with reality and we are able to let go of the things that have blinded us.

It is a hard message to hear, but a true one.  We need to spend some time in darkness, and we need to recognise our current trajectory given our lack of care for our planet.  Human beings are amazing creatures, and yet despite all our knowledge and scientific discoveries we too often run away from the truth.  When there is bad news there is only so much we can take and then we seek comfort – comfort that is often taken at the expense of others who are far away enough for us to ignore.

I struggle with this.  I struggle to live in a world where I know that other people suffer, where the planet is being exploited and destroyed, where it seems that too many of us – and in that I include myself – are too lethargic, or scared, or selfish to act in love for the whole of humanity and the planet.  It is all too much – the problems seem too big to even conceptualise, so I disappear back into my comfort zone.

I believe that God wants us to live in reality.  To face the darkness and, indeed, to dwell in it sometimes.  It is there that we can escape the clamour of the world: we can find God and God can find us.  It seems counterintuitive in many ways and yet it is the pattern of nature - life leads to death and death to life – the very pattern that Christ as a man lived out in his time on earth.  He did not turn his back on the realities of life – he reached out in love and when death sought him out he absorbed the hatred that put him there and accepted his path.  In accepting his path, he found life.

In many ways it seems crazy to be writing these thoughts and ideas under the title of ‘All is well’ when our world is such a mess.  But I honestly believe that when we face the reality and ugliness of our world and ourselves, it is then that God/Love enters us with the reassurance that ‘all is well’, and we become aware of a bigger reality.  A reality that is cosmic and beyond our understanding. We gain a peace that we don’t understand and yet is more real than any we have previously experienced.

Meditation has been described as ‘practising dying’.  In meditation I sit in silence and I let go of all that is inside me: I just sit.  The way of contemplation is a ‘letting go’ not just of the physical, but also of the ego – a letting go of myself.  Jesus taught us to give up our lives and take up our crosses.  Why such a tough request?  Because that is the way of life and peace.  God does not come to punish us in this, he comes to us in Love and wants us to find the Love that he planted in our souls at the very beginning; that he planted in the whole of his creation.

The darkness we experience is sometimes an unknowing.  Whilst I am energised to understand more about how our universe functions, I am conscious that there are always more questions.  Whilst I love to find out more about how people work and to find empathy, I am always faced with people and situations that surprise me and that I don’t understand.  Sometimes I need to let go of the desire to understand and sit in the mystery of it all.  God/Love is mystery and sometimes our journey is a road of un-knowing.  Sometimes we need to unpick what we thought we knew and trust the falling; trust the mystery; trust the darkness.  Let go of our need to be in control and trust that God/Love will always catch us.

Through darkness we find light.  Fighting for justice and peace, valuing our planet and every human life, is not something we can do without this inner journey.  We will burn out; we will lose hope.  We need to do the inner work that takes us to the real reality; that affirms that ‘all is well’.  Then we will live in hope and faith, and love will be our source and our guide.