It’s through a spiritual lens that I try to interpret everything in my life. If you’ve read my previous posts, and particularly the series On Death, then you know that I have found overwhelming evidence for an afterlife and, by extension, a spiritual realm. Since a spiritual reality appears to be true, interpreting worldly events through a finite, materialist perspective without reference to the transcendent has become redundant and obsolete.
“Life happens as it should and couldn’t happen any other way.”
This phrase appeared in the monologue of my mind a few years ago. Quite unexpectedly, like a message in a bottle bobbing in the turbulent waters of my mental landscape, it made itself known. The phrase validated its own truth by its timely appearance. Any other time and it may have been overlooked as just more mental noise.
But what does it mean?
It refers to destiny and fate. Destiny is where you’re headed regarding your choices. Fate is where you end up despite your choices. Destiny is somewhat under your control. Fate is out of your control. Destiny is the destination you plan on Earth. Fate is the destination you end up on due to divine influence. Both are for our development.
Life happens as it should
The first part of the phrase points to destiny.
I am destined to have experiences tailored for my growth, those around me and humanity as a whole. Seen through a spiritual lens, all experiences become possible fuel for increased wisdom and compassion as a consequence of my existence, consciously or unconsciously. But for any growth to occur, I must have some awareness of what I do and what I’ve done, how I’ve reacted and how I’ve thought. I have to contemplate,
- the wrong things I’ve done for the right reasons.
- the right things I’ve done for the wrong reasons.
- the right things I’ve done for the right reasons.
- the wrong things I’ve done for the wrong reasons.
- the things I’ve mindlessly done.
- I have to remember this happens to others as well.
Yet, all these experiences had a hand in shaping who I’ve become. Every regrettable mistake I’ve made taught me not to do such a thing again. Sometimes I learned through immediate feedback, other times through consequences down the line, but mainly through an emotional conscience bitch-slap after the fact. We’ve all been there, doing something that seemed fine on the surface and feeling a wave of regret wash over us before, during or after. Something within was warning us all along, but we couldn’t differentiate between the emotional noise and the alarm of our conscience.
But that’s just addressing our personal choices.
The same can be said for the people, places and events that appeared in my life. Whether good or bad, right or wrong, loving or hateful, violent or peaceful, moral or immoral; all potentially influenced my perception as nothing else could. I often recognise how a particular type of person, event or memory affected me in the past but now no longer does. Even more confronting is recognising how specific types of people and events with similar qualities attracted or repelled me. Most of the time, I consented to many of the experiences in my life. I have to take ownership. Not only for my participation and consent back then but, most importantly, for disowning the consequential responsibility for myself now.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow.
But there’s a sweet side too.
The loving people and events in my life that persist are also a reflection of my heart. While I recognise my darkness in others, I also recognise my own disowned good. I love in others what I love in myself. I hate in others what I hate in myself. With this hidden slice of reality, we create our environments. It’s my tastes, interests and heart that select what to pay attention to and go towards out of the vast number of possibilities at any given moment. Those unconscious impulses reflect where I’m at and, paradoxically, can lead to the circumstances that help me to grow. Most importantly, this is happening to everybody else too.
If so, then everything happens as it should because I am the one constant among all the variables.
Suffering Shapes Character
One of the greatest choices I’ve made is sincerely listening to testimonies of people who’ve died, found themselves alive in a spiritual realm, and come back to tell the tale (NDEs). According to the overwhelming majority of NDEs, they found out that our current life is something we spiritually chose before birth (incarnation). We chose it not only because of our level of development but also because the circumstances we’re born into offer us the particular resistance (suffering) we need to evolve.
Why do we need resistance to evolve? Because discomfort causes change.
Why are we uncomfortable? Because change needs to occur.
Our suffering can reveal our bitterness, sorrow, prideful arrogance, entitlement, loneliness, shallowness and, most importantly, our weakness. There’s a whole array of possible revelations individually unique to us that only suffering can provide. But that suffering is solely responsible for allowing us to make changes. We can change for the worse, but that only reveals our character. We can eventually change for the better, which reveals our character too.
In its flourished state, suffering opens the heart through humility and compassion. I begin to understand I have no idea what I’m doing, and command no final control over the theatre of my life. All I can do is play my part to the best of my ability. I feel like clueless plankton in an ocean of divine mystery. Life’s suffering is there specifically to shape my character. Pain makes me move, often impulsively in the wrong direction, but I try to eventually course correct, hopefully.
Suffering is meant to humble us; to make us notice others suffering too. You only understand someone’s suffering when you’ve been through it yourself. Suffering knocks us down a few pegs and exposes the lies we tell ourselves and others. It’s meant to wake us up. To forge us from iron to steel.
Suffering leads to humility; humility leads to compassion; compassion leads to the good; the good opens our hearts; an open heart guides us to do what’s right. While the good grows my heart, the right strengthens it. The Good and the Right finally determine and guide my destiny.
The good and the bad, the right and the wrong, happen as they should . . .
and couldn’t happen any other way.
The second part of the phrase points to Fate.
To contemplate fate is to be humbled. Fate suggests that some events and my time on Earth are set. It doesn’t necessarily mean a predestined future life (although some events and encounters with fellow souls are), but it may mean a predestined timely death. This explains early and surprising deaths. I found this hard to accept. But after a long while of contemplation from a spiritual incarnation perspective, it makes perfect sense. Actually, I found reference to the predestination of death in the New Testament’s gospels, too, as Jesus foretells his own death and those of his apostles. I found the same in the conversation between Lord Krishna and prince Arjuna on the battlefield in the Bhagavad Gita. In fact, every religion has a teaching or reference to our days being precisely numbered. “God willing,” they say, affirming the outcome (including their life and death) is out of their mortal hands.
We seem to have a predestined amount of time on Earth, and there’s nothing we can do about it. When it’s our time to go, nothing will be able to keep us incarnated. Otherwise, nothing will take us if it’s not our time (including a terminal disease). This explains “lucky” escapes, extremely unhealthy lifestyles living to old age, and extremely healthy lifestyles that die young. My ALS prognosis is a case in point. I was given 3 – 5 years, and here I am still after 17 years (and smoking too until early this year). I’ve done a lot to keep myself alive, but perhaps my choices together with providence were destined to happen so I could keep my date with fate.
All my choices, however, are like stabs in the dark with a broken stick while blindfolded. I’m keenly aware that I have no idea of the possible future consequences of any of my “rational” choices. A small, seemingly inconsequential choice like a word, a look or an infinity of other actions could set in motion a cascade of events that can completely alter my or someone else’s life. (Stop reading for a few minutes and see if you can remember how one seemingly small decision in your past changed everything in your life). It’s an obvious conclusion, then, that if everyone else is stumbling through the dark as I am—making blind consequential choices that alter their trajectory in life—and are just as unconscious and clueless as I am, then how can I not try to feel compassion?
How could they or I do any different? How could the effects of my existence happen any other way?
Signatures
I can’t be different to who I intrinsically am. My energetic signature is born with me. I can’t take credit for it any more than I can take the blame. Throughout my life, people, environments, and circumstances fine-tune my signature for better or worse. You know this if you’ve been around as a baby grows to adulthood. They have an energetic signature that remains despite circumstances and their evolving personality. Some people have a melancholic nature, others a vivacious one, some are energetic, while others are much slower-paced.
They could no more be like me than I could be like them because their signature is the revelation of a soul independent of but animating their body.
I’m incarnated and embodied in a flesh suit built for a specific purpose. My flesh suit (body) is exactly what’s needed to experience earthly life’s resistance in a way no other body could. If I had someone else’s DNA, signature, upbringing, neurohormonal makeup and spiritual mission, would I be any different to who they are? Would or could I have done differently? Obviously not.
In your flesh suit, with your history and soul, I’d have no choice but to have your experience—it couldn’t happen any other way
Therefore, nothing could happen any other way because it hasn’t happened any other way—for you and for me.
Yet, it’s taken this fool 50 years to learn the concept.
In contemplation, I often shudder with contrition. Why? Because most of the time, I’m not in control of anything. I’m mostly unconscious, reacting to my mind, hormones, events, and people’s vocal sounds like a puppet. Even these words that I’m writing right now are coming from somewhere beyond me. I’m only aware when I stop and revise what I’ve written. But this, like most things I “do” in my life, is completely automatic and beyond my conscious awareness. It’s as if I’m being written rather than me doing the writing.
I become more conscious only as a direct consequence of recognising my unconsciousness. Therefore, how can I judge what’s unconscious and not in control? How can I judge the human condition? How can I judge and condemn others for doing the very thing I’m guilty of?
Most importantly, how can I judge, from my plankton perspective, the divine ocean I’m floating in?
The phrase, for some divine reason and timing, has been another stitch removed in the fabric of temporal reality, showing how big, mysterious and divine everything is. Only, however, from the perspective of how small my comprehension is.
Love opens the heart
This stuff isn’t easy.
Breaking the pattern of automatic projection onto others is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I find it very difficult to catch myself reacting emotionally to something or someone and then proceeding through gritted teeth to accept ownership of the melodrama within me. It’d be much easier to get carried away in the mental storyline of personal righteousness.
It’s easier, but it’s not right.
It’s not right because that mental storyline is coming into my head from extrinsic sources (explanation in another post). My mental telenovela has nothing to do with the other person, but everything to do with my own demons. The other person is living their own private hell. If I stop being self-absorbed with my internal monologue and I actually look at them, I’ll see how much they’re suffering. I can see they’re a clueless, frightened soul acting through a pile of hidden wounds covered with impulse bandaids—just like me!
I need to wake up. I want to keep waking up.
But, waking up from one level of slumber is like taking a step in a 1000-mile walk with a compass but no map. I know the direction I need to go, but I have no idea what’s ahead or when I’ve arrived. Nevertheless, I must stick to the true North. I hope that my choices become a little more self-aware, a little more compassionate—a true North.
From an eternal spiritual perspective, anything that happens here, no matter how perceptually good or evil, is happening as it should. The point of “waking up” is to stop re-acting to and inevitably re-creating more evil; instead, to act from understanding. “Love” in this context isn’t emotionally generated love but more akin to compassionate duty and camaraderie.
This isn’t denying my internal thought stream and emotional cascades from happening. However, it’s a call to awareness. To stop, feel, watch, bite my tongue and wait for the onslaught to pass before responding.
I recognise that no matter how predictable our life may seem, we’re one bad day away from catastrophe. Everyone is struggling through what they’ve been given, both in personality and circumstance. They’re a soul having a tough earthly experience, just like me. If they’re not suffering now, it’s just a matter of time. Earthly existence brings everyone to their knees. Life is going to humble us all sooner or later; if not through pain and suffering, then definitely through death. Despite appearances to the contrary, we’re all in this together.
But if, according to the atheist, agnostic and religious NDEs from every culture, incarnation on Earth is a temporary experience that I discarnate from at death, with my compassionate choices being the only acts of significance, then sleepwalking through my life reacting to every perceived injustice is a complete waste of my time here.
I have to keep perspective.
A perspective inching towards acceptance of a grander divine design unfolding beyond my comprehension. I realise with sincere humility that everything in life happens as it should and couldn’t happen any other way.
The next time something unexpected happens, think about this phrase. It may or may not take the sting out of the experience, but at least it may humble and awaken you to larger forces at play.
If you’ve got something out of this experience, leave a comment and share it with someone you think may benefit.
Also published on Medium.