Looking deeply

The Good In All

Sometimes we find it difficult to see the good in people,
places, or situations that aren’t to our liking. We focus
on the things we don’t like in our lives as a way of
fueling our efforts to create change. There is nothing
inherently wrong with this, and it is one way we make
progress. However, if we get too caught up in this way of
looking at the world, we lose touch with our ability to sit
back and simply say yes to everything on our plates, which
is the true starting point for all successful activity.
Sometimes what we really need is to encourage ourselves to
look deeply into all things in our lives to see the inherent
goodness at the heart of everything.

At the core of this inquiry is the practice of unconditional
acceptance, which can be scary because we feel as if we are
being asked not to change the things we don’t like.
But when we think this way, we are still operating on the
surface of our lives. In order to feel the beauty and warmth
of full acceptance, we have to be willing to sink deeper into
the stratum underlying the external manifestation of our
lives. This deeper place of being is the origin of all lasting
change, yet its paradox is that when we are in it, we often
don’t feel the need to change anything.
From this place, we experience the pure beauty of the process
of being alive, and we see that all things change in their own
time. We don’t need to force anything. If there are things that
we do need to change, from this place of serenity we create
the shift easily, our hands guided by an energy that resides
at the very center of our hearts.

In our active, goal-oriented culture, we learn to distrust
stillness and to engage in busywork on the surface of life.
This tendency can blind us to the good that lies
at the heart of all things. But all we have to do to see
again is stop for a moment,let go of our preconceptions and
our agendas, and settle into the very center of our hearts,
remembering that it is only from here that we can truly see.