Featured image: Photo by Vincent-Immanuel Herr. Location: Baltic Sea. Rügen Island.
You’re hiking by the sea or in the mountains and suddenly a large boulder falls down and blocks your way. Picture this as a situation where there seems to be no way forward. So what are your choices? Give up, sit down and deciding that there is no forward. Get out your Swiss army knife and try to chisel your way through the rock. Climb up over the rock and continue.
You can picture yourself and replace the boulder and the path behind it with the biggest obstacle standing between you and your life moving forward. As the first option describes a sense of being overwhelmed and eventually giving up, the second option is naive, the equivalent of an air castle, and is a typical option which involves some kind of mindless repetition without getting anywhere. Magical thinking or insisting that this should not have happened are no strategies.
Climbing over the rock is the way to go. But how? What is the difference between the three options to continue your path? It is the only option that is realistic and it is the only option that involves creativity. It is a useful metaphor how to move past hopelessness and carry on.
When it comes to life’s challenges, individually or collectively, we have a creative approach at hand. We always have options. Where does this conviction, that there are always options, come from? It comes from admitting that there are God-given solutions at hand. It comes from the conviction that God, Life, maintains His creation. This means that there is much more, so much more, than the eye can see.
“Whatever influence you cast on the side of matter, you take away from Mind, which would otherwise outweigh all else.” (Mary Baker Eddy)
Interesting to know that we have influence which we can cast on the side of Mind. Where is this authority? Where is this power? We might say that casting your influence on the side of Mind, the supreme consciousness of the universe, is a power. It enables us to work with real facts, understand realistic options, and work with a reservoir of ideas that will never be depleted. The God-given solutions at hand don’t live on the same plane on which the challenges we are facing were created.
God-given solutions are creative and have much leg room and breathing space around them.
God-given solutions are to be found on the second-floor of the house of our being, as I recently heard myself say in Sunday school, talking to a group of teenagers. These solutions are available, and in order to make them practical we have to shift our perspective. In order to see more we have to move up some more. We will be less impressed by the volume of the noise insisting on a lack of options, and we will be more impressed by reality.
Climbing mentally one level up we see a different picture: We see hidden strength. We see hidden resources. We see the power of a David as opposed to being afraid of a Goliath. We see the potential of compassion as opposed to fearing the revenge of the cruel. We see the vision of living and working together as opposed to fighting it out on your own.
So whenever I don’t see a way forward and sit in front of a rock blocking my way of life, I get creative. I pray. I put my petty fears aside and listen like never before. I see the connectedness of Life. Whenever I need something, I pray for this something to be available for everyone. Whenever I am praying for healing, I acknowledge that health is a quality of Life and available to everyone. Whenever I am praying for peace, I start with admitting that peace is the finest quality of God, permeating God’s world and being available to everyone.
When we acknowledge God, the solution at hand appears, and surprisingly it always involves others and satisfies everyone involved. The God-given solution is the creative solution. Creativity must not necessarily be on the level of an Einstein or Bach or Monet – creativity is the use of original ideas and the willingness to follow them. Creativity and childlike curiosity are in the same camp, and this camp is shielded from anxiety and hopelessness for good. Prayer activates creativity and helps us ditch doing nothing with admitting that there are God-given solutions at hand. Life, ”The sustaining infinite” (Mary Baker Eddy), is always active, creative, continuing. Life is dynamic, never static, always developing life. It is calling us forth to stand up and climb over the rock in the metaphor at the beginning of this text.
Michael Singer famously writes: “Everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything. And that’s the only time everything will be okay.” The rock will not be a blockage anymore. From a certain perspective the rock will disappear, and therefore you will see a creative way forward. The rock will turn into a vital part of your path forward, unimpeded, unrestricted. Your path in life is unopposed and free, and this path is always a path involving others, without exception.
When we helped a friend find a home, there seemed to be only two equally unappealing options. I felt at a certain point that a limited, material view had squeezed this friend into the believing into either “A” or “B”, the hopelessness resulting from the stare into the abyss of these two not every good options. You might say staring at the rock blocking his path. The moment we left this scenery altogether, was the moment we prayed and listened more. The quiet of spiritual intuition expanded and spread itself out. Our friend could climb on the rock and encounter a third, unexpected option that presented itself out of the blue. We all had insisted on a God-given solution, not settled for a compromise, and this God-given solution is better and involves more goodness for more people than imagined before.
Our path in life is guided by a higher power, if we let it. It is joyful, active, super good, creative, continuing, it is dynamic, never static, developing being, navigating progress and sustaining existence. It is open and easy when it involves discipline and unselfishness. God-given solutions are at hand, and they involve all of us, everywhere, in the here and now. How beautiful and in hindsight how natural and easy they come along.
