Embrace the Mystery

"Free from desire, you realize the mystery.

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source."

Tao Te Ching

Have you ever noticed that life just happens, without you having to do anything to make it happen? Breath flows in and out of the body, food gets digested, and an old friend that you haven't heard from in ages calls you from out of the blue. It all happen spontaneously, without your consent, and with no effort on your part. Despite this natural unfoldment, we spend a lot of time trying to figure our lives out.

'Why am I here', 'What's the purpose of my life', or 'What happens after we die'?, the mind asks. We desire to know the answers to life's big questions, yet, the more questions we ask, the more elusive the answers become. Just when we think we have it all figured out, something comes along to show us that all of our theories and conjectures are only the projections of our confused mind.

Yet, what if we just admitted that we are never going to figure it all out, and dropped all of our attempts to do so, and instead embraced the fact that it's all a great, big mystery? What if the only thing to 'do' is to enjoy the play as it unfolds, here and now?

What we might find is that, by embracing the truth that we will never figure ourselves or the Universe out, we give ourselves the opportunity to just flow with reality as it appears in the present moment. With no struggle or striving to figure things out, we relax with the way it is, and find ourselves simply present to the mystery as it happens. When we do this, we just might find that we become the elusive contentment that we have always longed for. Being content, we might find that there is nothing else to do.