Most of us spend our lives worrying, complaining that things are not the way we think they should be. Striving for things we think we should have is the perfect way to neglect the fact that you are a being with superpowers, living among other beings with superpowers.
This is the basic dilemma for everybody. Everybody! All of us are walking around with this conscious or unconscious idea that there is something wrong with us. That we are not enough as we are. That we are not okay as we are. In its worst form, this comes as: We are somehow doomed. We are somehow fatally flawed. And in its less severe form, it comes as, “I should improve myself.”
But this is a negation of your being.
This is saying to God, “You messed up. And I am the proof!”
This is saying to yourself, to God, and to everyone, “There is no miracle here. There is just a mess.”
And this is very hard to climb out of. It is very hard to adopt a stance that is not based on the idea something is essentially wrong. Something essentially doesn’t work.
But it has to start somewhere to be seen that: This is our interpretation.
Most of us are taught this very strongly. Most of us believe this one hundred percent, consciously and unconsciously. Then we live it out, complain, and wonder why life is not better. Why things don’t seem brighter. Why we feel unhappy so much.
What do you expect if you start from the premise that something is wrong and has to be fixed? And once it’s fixed, then you’ll be okay.
How can there be a basic happiness and a basic sense that life is not a mistake? How can there be any position where you love yourself or see yourself as a being of miraculous powers, if you see yourself as ‘needing to be fixed?’
None of that changes the fact that we’re all essentially nuts. Full of all kinds of eccentricities and flaws and ways of not working. Ways of not finding the right direction so easily. But that doesn’t change the fact that there is nothing wrong.
The interpretation is: “Everything is somehow a sign of what is wrong.”
And what I’m suggesting—what I’m in fact advocating—is that: Nothing is wrong.
Most of us have the idea that, “If things could get perfected for us somehow, if we could fix ourselves enough,” or that “If some ideal that seems impossible were possible, life would be radically different. We would be radically different. Our experience would be radically different.”
Many people have this kind of thought, “If I didn’t have all the things I have to contend with,” “If I didn’t have to make a living, wash the car, feed the dog,” “If I had the time and the wherewithal—I could just do what I want to do.”
And this is the mistake.
We all carry this to some degree: “Life could be heavenly if we could just get what we want!”
And, if we were able to get it, “If all these distractions and obligations and responsibilities and requirements of daily life were not there, we could just do what we like. And life would be unbelievably heaven-like.”
This is the shared human fantasy: that there is a perfect life that looks radically different from the life I am required to live. And somehow I can’t reach it, but it is possible.
This is maybe the most radical thing I could say to you—and it’s absolutely my observation—that if you attained the preponderance of the perfection you think you should, if you garnered the lion’s share of what your mind tells you you would like, your life would be not very different than it is right now.
You would feel not very different than you feel right now.
Except for some obvious outside trappings, your life would look much like it looks now.
You would get along with people pretty much how you get along with people now.
You would have your share of pleasure and pain and sadness and happiness—much the same as you do now.
Because nothing has gone wrong.
The only problem is the interpretation that something has gone wrong. That something is not right. That being does not count for much and everything else does.
The radical truth is: You are not far off from where you are supposed to be.
The radical truth is: You are no accident.
The radical truth is: God doesn’t make mistakes and you are not one of them.
The radical truth is: Only your viewpoint says, “Something is wrong. I am screwed up.”
A point came, a day came, when I saw that nothing exists other than perfection. That this universe deals only in perfection. It doesn’t do anything else. It has no other mode.
When you first see that with your own eyes and know it to be so—you can’t look anywhere and not see perfection! Perfection does not exist in degrees; it is all there is. There is not more perfect over here and less perfect over there—wherever you can point, there is nothing but perfection. It is all in one piece.
The definition of the universe can be given in one word: Perfection.
Pain exists. Problems exist. Horror and terror exist. Perfection does not mean terror and horror no longer exist. It doesn’t mean pain no longer happens. It doesn’t mean anguish and anxiety disappear.
It means: Now you’re a being who understands, not because it has been explained to you, but because you have seen it for yourself, that all those bad sounding things are parts of the perfection.
Not to explain them away. Not to, with one whisk of the hand, push them aside and say, “Oh, those don’t matter.” Because of course they matter.
But to see the bigger truth that dwarfs all of those.
Nothing has ever happened or existed that is not pure perfection.
Including you.
Including this moment.
Including the worst moment in your life.
Including everything bad that ever happened on this planet or in this universe.
Including the worst anguish, the worst pain, the worst horror, and the worst terror.
I can say to you categorically, unequivocally, and without the slightest hesitation that nothing exists other than perfection.
Don’t walk away from this discussion with any idea that you have to perfect yourself to find the perfection. Just walk away with the understanding that something may be going on that you have not fully seen yet. And be kind enough to yourself to recognize that it is not something you do, it is something you are willing for.
🌿 Excerpt from a Satsang with Swami Premodaya, JewelTree Center