This Rumi quote is one of my favourites:
‘Live life as if everything is rigged in your favour’.
How would things change if you really believed this was true?
I notice how much I suffer when I believe that something shouldn’t be happening. When I resist what is and fight against it. How I feel like a victim, and how this in turn makes me feel small, weak and powerless.
When I can believe instead that it’s all happening for me and not to me, even if I don’t understand why, everything feels better. I have a new lightness of being. I can relax, breathe and enjoy life. I can trust that I’m being taken care of and that I don’t need to see the bigger plan or picture.
This way of being does require trust. It requires believing that things are happening for you even when they really don’t appear to be going your way. It requires belief before you have any evidence or proof.
But how often do you look back and realise that things happened for a reason, for your highest good – even though they felt awful at the time?
Well I guess this perspective requires us to develop that trust in the moment, without the benefit of hindsight. Before we’re able to look back and know it for sure.
It’s far easier at times to be the victim. To fall into fear or panic. To feel like things are being taken away from us, to not understand what we’ve done to deserve so much pain or ass-kicking!
But is this really helpful? It might feel good to mope there for a while. And we need to feel all emotion that arises, fully. But if our minds are falling down rabbit holes and making us suffer more than we need to, we have to pull them back.
Often we don’t know why things are happening. And so there is no way to verify if they are good or bad, despite them feeling painful at the time.
So try choosing whichever perspective feels lightest. Whichever perspective brings you most comfort or relief. What is there to lose?
Why spend so long trying to work out what’s right, what’s true and what the exact explanation is? When you can let go and realise you don’t actually need to know. But you can trust that whatever the reason, things are happening for you.
Try it out for yourself. Next time something is happening that feels painful or that you’d really rather wasn’t, try looking at it from the perspective that everything is rigged in your favour. How does that change things? What relief does it offer? What peace does living with that level of trust and optimism bring?
Blind faith? Maybe. A more peaceful and joy-filled life? Definitely.
We get to decide.
With love,
Kelly x