A Midsummer Night's Dream

It’s hard to believe that the summer solstice has come and gone and we are already hurtling headlong into the latter part of the year. Bit of a wake-up call, isn’t it? It seems so undignified, the way the months roll by with such alarming ease, which is why I feel it’s my duty to drag your attention away from the Pimms for a moment to remind you that you already have half of this fabulous year under your belt. What, pray tell, have you to show for that - a midsummer night’s dream or nightmare?

If you’re living the dream, that’s fabulous. If not, do not despair, for help is at hand. I’m not going to go all American robo-positive über-coach on you and demand instant action, but rather introduce you to an insight that will definitely make your life more peaceful and joyful. It’s a thought that operates at a gentle summer’s pace, yet could change your life forever.

This little secret has its origins in a talk by the spiritual leader and philosopher Krishnamurti, in an oak grove in Ojai, California, way back in the 70s. Being something of a guru – whilst entirely rejecting the notion of gurudom, which is no mean feat – several thousand followers had gathered to hear the master speak. As a man of extraordinary awareness and presence, the audience hung on his every word. The writer Aldous Huxley described Krishnamurti’s oratory skills as "Like listening to a discourse of the Buddha — such authority, such intrinsic power." In mid-flow, he suddenly paused and quietly asked the group “Do you want to know what my secret is?” As Krishnamurti rarely spoke of his own personal process, the audience was agog with excitement at becoming privy to what would surely be a great spiritual truth. Their anticipation was rewarded with the simple statement of “I don’t mind what happens”.

Not quite what they were expecting, I imagine. While it may not seem much on face value, that attitude could just be the saving grace when your life is in turmoil or things aren’t turning out quite how you’d planned. As Krishnamurti went on to explain, “When you live with this awareness, this sensitivity, life has an astonishing way of taking care of you. Then there is no problem of security, of what people say or do not say, and that is the beauty of life.”

If that sounds too simple to be true, let me assure you that complexity is the enemy of inner peace. Spiritual truth is in essence simple, but never simplistic. What lies at the heart of Krishnamurti’s secret is the knowledge that when you are operating from a level of authenticity within your own life, you enter a state of flow, where you willingly release the need for control.
As we are all budding control freaks – and I defy you to show me someone who’s not – being OK with whatever happens seems tantamount to torture. That, of course, would be the simplistic view. So let’s try the simple way of looking at this …

Imagine what life would be like if you had a deep sense of connection to your spirit and a knowledge that your purpose in life was to express all your talents, unfettered by self-consciousness or self-imposed limitations. What if you knew that by doing this, life would conspire to bring you opportunities and challenges that would draw the best from you and that each person and event in your life was brimming with meaning? If you had that level of trust in yourself and in life, wouldn’t you welcome all that occurred with an open heart and mind?
We feel the need to control our circumstances and the people in our lives because we fear that life is not safe. Yet, if we are willing to make a leap of faith and trust that life will unfold as it needs to, we can be peaceful and happy regardless of our circumstances. Aldous Huxley – who clearly had a lot of interesting conversations – once asked Albert Einstein what was the most important question in the world. Einstein, whose sagacity on spiritual matters is terribly underrated, replied “Is the Universe friendly?”.

While I’m quoting the big guns, let me refresh your mind on the Buddha’s noble truths. In essence, he declared that to live means to suffer, that the cause of suffering came from attachment and that release from attachment would remove suffering, ie give up control freakery and start accepting things the way they are. I am paraphrasing more than slightly there, so apologies to any Buddhist scholars who may be reading this, but you get my drift.
So how do we make this philosophy work in the mad frenzy of the modern over-achieving world? Rule One: pick your battles. Don’t try for total surrender straight up – start with some baby steps and accept the small stuff first. Does it really matter if everything isn’t exactly how you planned it? Learn to enjoy life’s imperfections. Instead of running your life like a military campaign, let serendipity give you a surprise or two. If you're in a power struggle with someone over an unimportant issue, why not let it go? Would you rather be right or be happy?

Rule Two: surrender does not mean giving up passion. Again it’s a question of picking your battles. Are you putting your energy into the things that are really representative of who you are or are you flogging a dead horse? There is a persistent mythology that a spiritual or purposeful life is a passionless one – far from it. If you want to read some of the most passionate literature on earth and encounter some of the most powerful souls that ever graced it, read the lives of the mystics and the saints. They have fire, grit and gumption and yet were capable of the deepest acts of surrender. They were ordinary people who created extraordinary lives through their sense of connection with life and their own purpose. Oh, and quite a few of them were party animals in their day. Spirituality and a love of life are not mutually incompatible.
Rule Three: not minding what happens is an act of trust, not an excuse to avoid taking action. If things aren’t the way you want them to be, first accept what is. There’s no point in fighting it, as you can’t change the past. There’s also no point in beating yourself up either – that’s deeply unhelpful and totally anti-fab. From a place of acceptance and peace you can re-examine if what you’ve been chasing is what you really want and then move on.

So, however your personal midsummer night's dream is unfolding, this week's challenge is twofold - to make the assumption that the universe is a friendly place and to gently relinquish control over those things that don't really matter. Hopefully you can work your way up to letting go of the big stuff too, by repeating your fabulous new mantra of "I don't mind what happens".

Coach Fabulous is updated every Thursday at http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. You can also use the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right. For alert emails on new postings, send a blank email to IAmFabulousCo@aol.com with 'Subscribe' in the title field. All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 3 July 06)