Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.
—Thomas Merton
I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
—Kat Cathey
Most of us habitually try to control all aspects of our lives: our relationships, our work environments, our health, etcetera. We do this to feel safe and secure. We do this so that we can be happy. But we usually fail. The irony is that in tenaciously holding on so hard, we waste most of our precious energy in trying to control things. We exhaust ourselves trying to anticipate what may happen next and we squeeze all the joy, creativity, and spontaneity out of life.
By spending so much energy trying to make sure that everything and everyone in our life follows a specific script that we have in mind, we miss myriad opportunities to really enjoy and experience life. We never allow for life to simply come to us. We are constantly trying to force it to “go our way.” We leave no room for creativity, wonder, mystery, and magic.
We always want to know what is going to happen next, but by doing so we limit the limitless possibilities that are available to us. Life isn’t a script to be followed word by word, but a new, fresh potential that is waiting to be revealed one moment after another.
It is only when we allow for the unexpected and unknown that magic or real life can happen. All that is new, fresh, and joy-filled can only be found in the unknown. The known is stagnant and calcified.
Embrace the unknown and there you will find life. Tenaciously hold on to the known and there you will find stagnation and limitation.
Allow for the mysteries and magic of life to delight you. Learn to live in the moment, to be free and to be a master. Learn to trust that you live in a “friendly universe” and it is all there for you. Each moment will take care of itself. Each moment is a new blessing—a new revelation. Become a master of the mystery, majesty, and magic of life.
Cease trying to work things out with your mind, it will get you nowhere. Let your whole life be led by intuition and inspiration. Let your whole life be a revelation.
—Eileen Cady
In order to allow yourself to be in the moment, to experience the mystery and magic of it all, experiment with the following. Whenever you can, just stop, take a couple of deep breaths, and then become aware of your body by doing a brief body scan from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. This will bring you into the present.
Then allow your attention to be simply in the present, only focused on the rise and fall of your abdomen as you breathe in and out. Suspend all thought and then just feel. Don’t think. Feel. Then ask and allow for an insight or an inspiration to reveal itself to you. And sit back, with your mind disengaged, and absorb and enjoy whatever you receive. It may come as a thought, an impression, an image or a feeling, but most importantly it will be new—a mysterious, magical, majestic new moment/experience that the Universe wants to reveal to you.
Be quiet in your mind, quiet in your senses, and, also, quiet in your body. Then, when all these are quiet, don’t do anything. In that state truth will reveal itself to you. It will appear in front of you and ask, “what do you want?”
—Kabir
Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence.
—Deepak Chopra
Allow yourself now to drop into the essence that is beyond the limitations of any of these words.
Whenever we moderns pause for a moment, and enter the silence, and listen very carefully, the glimmer of our deepest nature begins to shine forth, and we are introduced to the mysteries of the deep, the call of the within, the infinite radiance of a splendor that time and space forgot.
—Ken Wilber
A tremendous “knowing” comes effortlessly into the mind when it falls into Silence, when it gives up trying to understand, when its reel of stored images no longer projects abstract pictures onto the clean screen of simplicity.
This kind of knowing is transmitted to us as pure revelation, as a clarity untouched by words or other symbols of meaning. When we allow this knowing into our minds, our very lives become as clear and startling as this knowing.
—Robert Rabbin