Do you know people who, when things are going well for them, but things are going bad for you, will tell you: "Let go and let God"? Doesn't it drive you crazy? They got a check that day or they lost a few pounds, or it's a good hair day, or whatever it is, and they say, "Let go and let God." And of course, if they could see, you want to throttle them at that moment for their insensitivity.
But how about switching it now... how about you and me? Where is the one who knows what it means to Let go and let God when something that you don't want -- when something that life gives you -- isn't what you want to be given? Where is the old Let go and let God "advanced" soul then? And you know where it is: nowhere to be found. And even if at a certain point in your development you actually can remember that idea in the face of something you're given that you don't want, you are still in a terrific battle, aren't you? Because on one hand, you've got the image of Let go and let God that you're holding onto, but on the other hand, everything within you is clinging to not wanting what's happening.
So what then? How do I begin this process of letting what happens happen, and accepting it when I can see something isn't right? The problem is not with life, although that's how I view it. I see what happens as a problem, which is why I don't want it. But the problem is not in life. The problem is I in life. The problem is in my idea of freedom. And this is why most people stop their spiritual search, because "I don't want anything other than my idea of freedom"... never knowing that it is my idea of freedom that I'm a captive of when life produces contrary results. Life doesn't take prisoners, so the issue is a fundamental misunderstanding of what I am. But I never get to the fundamental misunderstanding of what I am because I am constantly made a captive of my idea of freedom that will produce and prove to me that I am what I am!
Our true nature is an instrument in the great orchestra of change. We are not the conductor of the orchestra. Human beings believe they are the orchestrator, the conductor. Which is why, when one has conducted their life by certain ideas and principles through which they're going to find freedom, and freedom is illusive or turns into captivity, they become so desperately unpleasant. The real source of impatience, frustration, resentment, anxiety, anger is the moment in which the orchestra that you're conducting, which is going to end on a beautiful note, suddenly turns sour. And there you are, having conducted this whole thing, and what else can happen? It couldn't be you as the conductor that was the problem. No. You've got a bad string section! The fellow playing the French horn never really learned how to blow the thing properly, or you wouldn't hear what you hear... meaning you wouldn't be feeling what you feel. And then you hate the various parts of the orchestra, and everything in you is filled with negativity that, by its presence in you, proves to you that somehow or other the problem you're facing has nothing to do with you, because negativity always finds something that lies outside of you to blame for that pain.
So, if we are not the conductor, then we are an instrument in this orchestra of change. And that means we have a mistaken role. We have what we call a "personal life." All we suffer over is stuff that we take personally. "Personal" means being identified with who I have been and what I need to be -- all the extraordinarily unique things about my life. And given the right circumstances, the proof of how unique I am is how badly I hurt. Now, can I ask you a question? Do you want to be defined by that kind of dark emotional mental state? Yet that is what happens to us every single day, when what we call our life runs into something in life that smashes into our ideas about how things are supposed to be.
Does life itself ever smash into itself? No. Life, like a river, is always emptying and filling itself simultaneously. It's the opposites manifested, revealed through movement of something that really isn't moving at all. Because even though it's in constant flow, it's always being filled right where it is. That's real life. But for us, life is seen as a series of snapshots of the river by which we examine the glitter of a certain light on the water, or we say that rock ought not be there. That's not life; that's preference. That's personal.
You are not a person. Yes, there is a personal life. It's part of the way we communicate to each other, but it has nothing to do with the communion with that real life that is in constant movement. So there is an order to these things. And as you start to see this, it's because life kept bringing it and bringing it, and one day you couldn't push it away anymore. And you finally had to let go of the person who is convinced they had to hold that in place, and you let it go. And suddenly it's not just the thing that's changed, but you are changed now.
I let it go. "Wait a minute, that's a lot better!" So there's one fractional instant in my spiritual life where I'm shown that I've been trying -- as Vernon Howard used to say -- "to sweep back the ocean with a broom." "Okay, I accept it." Why do I accept it? Because now I understand. I'm not the conductor of the orchestra; I am an instrument in the orchestra of change. My True Self is not a person. It is a Great Spirit, and it is part of a ceaseless flow in which the idea of good and bad only exists because in that flow has been born a certain creature given an imagination that has created itself in the name of itself... and there you have all the problem.
So I can accept what I'm given to be, because if I see it and accept it, it's changed and so am I. The river removes it. Remember this when you get bugged, when you get frightened, when you get worried. Do you know why you stay that way? Because you freeze the river. That's what thought does. And it's a lot of hard work to accept everything that I'm given to be, because the last thing I want to do is what I'm given to be -- unless someone's flattering me.
But look how beautiful it is if you can see it. When a person understands the true meaning of letting go and letting God, they start to realize, "Well of course, it isn't me that's going to change this." If you go around and you're changing things, you're wrecking them, because you'll make it all in your own image. That's what Frankenstein represented -- these sewn-together misshapen pieces, things that are put together to provide life that isn't life at all. So it has been with us. We've been living from the wrong person.
There's a Person with a capitol "P" -- that Great Intelligence that has a great story that is never not telling itself. And we can accept the whole of the story, because in accepting the whole of the story, guess what happens? We're not apart from it anymore. We're a completely different order of freedom -- one that the mind cannot begin to imagine because to imagine things, the mind freezes things, stops things. We live from a completely different order of ourselves in which the principal concern is not with proving ourselves or changing things according to our ideas anymore, but instead we live wide-awake, letting life give us what we are -- what we need to be and what we need to see. And in that light, in that awareness, we take natural part in all the necessary change that the rest of the physical world is intended to reflect through that perfection.
That is the way to a great life and a great world. But again, do the inner work. Make an aim: I'm going to accept what I'm given to be. And if you do that, then you'll see that what you're given to do through that will never betray you or anyone else.