Fall on Your Knees

"Face it. Your life is never going to work out.

Hallelujah!

That is, the story of your life is always going to be imperfect. That’s the nature of story – always incomplete, always searching for a conclusion, always bound to time and change. In the movie of your life, things won’t always go according to plan. People won’t always understand you. They will mishear, misquote, and misrepresent you. They will form their own idea and opinion of you, no matter how clearly you try to represent yourself. Your success can turn to failure. Your wealth can turn to poverty. The ones you love can leave you. Problems that get fixed can lead to new problems. No matter how much you have, you can have more, or lose more. It’s never going to work out in the story of “my life”.

And even if it does work out, whatever that means to you, you will still be here, in this moment, now. This is the only place where things can ‘work out’, if they ever do. And in fact, things have already worked out, beyond the story. For in this moment, there is no goal, no image of perfection, no comparison, no ‘should’ or ‘should not’, and the thoughts, sensations, feelings, sounds and smells appearing right now are entirely appropriate, wonderfully fitting, beautifully timely, and totally welcome, for this moment in the movie. Without a script, how can this moment be wrong? Without a plan, how can life not go according to plan?

Realising that your life is never going to work out, and that it cannot ever work out, and that it isn’t supposed to work out, is the greatest relief, and brings the greatest ease, drawing you deeply into the sacredness of things as they actually are. Your life may be an imperfect mess, but it is an imperfect mess that is perfectly divine – a work of sacred art, even if you forget that sometimes. Humiliation turns to humility in the space of just a heartbeat, and all that’s left is to fall on your knees with gratitude for what is given, and what has not yet been taken away."

~ Jeff Foster

Image ~ "52% of Muslims suffer from knee pain."
~ timez5.com/ramadan/