That's the Way the Ball Bounces
That's the way the ball bounces - meaning, there is nothing we can do about the way things have unfolded, especially bad things, so there is no reason to get upset about it.
Reread those last two lines, slowly, so that they impress upon you.
Now, if you read those two lines and then consider what your typical day is filled with, can you see that there is constant resistance to the way the ball bounces? Can you see that there are always a myriad of reasons why we should get upset about the way the ball bounces?
What if the only problem that exists is the fact that we constantly resist the way the ball bounces - the way life unfolds in any given moment? It's shocking to see that for as long as human beings have existed, that something hasn't "clicked" in the fact that we have never tried to simply allow life to unfold as it will.
Perhaps something above this level of consciousness has everything under control, but the problem is that we don't want to relinquish that control - plain and simple. We want to keep the charade going believing ourselves to be the "know-it-all." But the joke is on us because we truly know nothing, and that's why we see the mess of the world that we see.
The ball bounces the way it does in our lives because the ball keeps getting kicked away in the moment instead of it being allowed to bounce on by. The ball being kicked away guarantees that it will be kicked back into our lives with yet greater suffering.
The ball metaphor I am using represents the unwanted moments in our lives.
Each and every one of us learned through our parents, our environment and culture that the only way through an unwanted moment that arises is to resist or push it away. The one thing that has never been considered since time millennia is to actually allow the moment to unfold as it will.
But in order to allow the moment to unfold as it will, there's a part of us that needs to be sacrificed. That part is the part of us that always wants to kick the ball away and will fight in that moment for its right to continue to do so.
If kicking the ball away, resisting the unwanted moment worked, then why do we find ourselves constantly having to kick balls away? If a weed killer works, weeds don't continue to grow back.
It's quite extraordinary really that for all the so-called "intelligent" people that walk this earth, questioning our negative reactions to unwanted moments have only been considered by a few.
Psychologists and scholars have had many ideas on how to change people and the world, but what have those ideas proved to date? They have proved that we keep rearranging the furniture claiming it to be true and lasting change when no such thing is true..
What can be proven however, is that there is an intelligent life above ours that is always trying to communicate with each and every one of us. In order to have a relationship with that intelligent life, our own life has to be sacrificed for it. Meaning, when our own creation from resisting unwanted moments arises in the form of yet another unwanted moment, we can agree to sacrifice the part of us that wants to resist what is taking place in favor of what a higher part of ourselves wants to show and give us in that moment.
In agreeing to enter into that relationship, a true giving of ourselves to it, we will be given something back tenfold in return. We will be truly be changed from the inside out.
So, the bottom line question is - Can not wanting something change what is not wanted? Simple question and simple answer. No.
If resisting the unwanted moment can't change the moment, then what are we left with?
Agreeing to be changed. That IS the only way.
Imagine what it might be like for our children if we were to be the living example of a completely different way to meet unwanted moments. There would be a break in past patterns. There would be something new in this world for everyone because we are all connected.
Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@frostroomhead?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Rodion Kutsaev</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/beach-ball?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a>
