Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.
– Anthony de Mello
Reality (God, Spirit, love) already allows and shows up as whatever is here.
So when reality awakens to itself, it awakens to itself as what is.
Life sometimes shows up as illness, poverty, loss of loved ones, war, torture, hunger, thirst, pain, death. How is it to align with what’s here? How is it to find willingness for this to happen? How is it to look forward to this to happen? Asking myself these questions, I may identify resistant beliefs which I then can take to inquiry.
As Byron Katie says, it may happen, so I may as well find that willingness. I may as well find where I look forward to it.
For me, it’s been quite sobering to realize that this is where the process goes. This is the invitation. This is where life invites me to go. And it can also be quite scary. I scare myself since I have beliefs – often at an emotional level – about good and bad, right and wrong, life and death, and who and what I am. And these ideas inevitably are at odds with life as it shows up. They are smaller and more exclusive than life itself, so they will sometimes be in opposition to reality.
One help here is to identify and inquire into (a) my stressful beliefs apparently in opposition to reality, and also (b) my beliefs about what’s real.
Here are some beliefs that appear in opposition to reality, and then a corresponding belief about this reality:
(a) I am this body. (b) There is a body.
(a) It’s terrible to die. (b) It’s possible to die. There is life and death.
(a) War is wrong. (b) There is right and wrong.
(a) I made a mistake. (b) It’s possible to make a mistake.