ON RECEIVING UNEXPECTED NEWS
You receive some unexpected news. You notice a sinking feeling in your stomach. The mind projects all kinds of pictures about how life could or should have been. It feels like life has gone wrong, like a dream is dying, like something that was yours has been lost. Not fair! You focus on what is missing, what isn't here, what went away, what will never return. You no longer feel at home in the moment. You feel disconnected, like you need some external circumstance to change for you to be at peace again.
But wait. Nothing has died except a dream of how it was 'supposed to be'. But it wasn't going to be that way. Not now. It is THIS way, now. Perhaps nothing has gone wrong in the universe at all, and this moment is not a mistake, not an enemy to be feared or rejected, but a friend, here to be honoured and embraced.
When the focus is on what's missing, what's gone, what's lost, we feel lost, homesick, ungrounded, separated from source, divided against ourselves, and a house divided against itself cannot stand. The never-ending story of lack begins with present-moment resistance.
When the focus is on what's still here, and what never left, and what's always here; when we remember who we really are, presence itself, we know that nothing fundamental has been lost. We feel aligned again, back home, even in the midst of devastating news.
Perhaps the news was not a mistake at all. Perhaps it was yet another invitation to align, to turn towards the moment, to breathe deeply, and to remember who we are, which is never lost, never absent, never truly forgotten, and never far away. It is our peace, our joy and our unshakeable strength, our deeply rooted tree in a raging storm, silent and unchanging. And that's the best news of all.
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