The Inexplicable Intelligence of the Present Moment

On one level of experience, you think you’re in charge of the timing of your life’s events.  Your belief is confirmed when your desires align with the ease of the present moment.  You wanted it and it happened.  You call this “being happy.”

But then other times — no matter how much you want something — it just never seems to happen.  You feel frustrated in those moments.  And even devastated in others.  You call this “being unhappy.”

When my father died suddenly and unexpectedly, everyone commented at his funeral:  “He had so many plans!  This wasn’t supposed to happen!”

Life happens while we’re making other plans.  And our plans are always the expression of our deepest desire to control time.

If you notice from the moment you were conceived, you’ve been totally under the control of time.

Your cells divided according to a rhythm.  Your mother’s contractions came in rhythmical intervals.  Your first breath started a sequence of timed inhalations and exhalations.  Your heart beats – an endless instinctual drum.  You awaken, remain conscious, and go to sleep only to repeat the same pattern every day of your life.

And all this happens at the same moment that day turns to night, as the Moon moves through its phases, as the stars predictably rise and set, and as the planets never deviate from their orbit of the Sun.

Every moment in this grand succession of time has intelligence – an intelligence that creates, preserves, and destroys — which has absolutely nothing to do with how you think about it, what you want to gain from it, and how you experience it emotionally.  And you can only perceive the intelligent design inherent in time when you surrender to the present moment with an openness to learn from it.

Surrender opens the gateway to the higher intelligence in time, which is akin to knowing the mind of God. When you surrender to the present moment without preconceptions, you allow the profound wisdom that’s at the basis of time to culture your awareness, to raise you out of limitations, and to cause you to ponder the miraculous.

This usually happens by no effort on your part at all.  The decision to surrender is made for you.  You have no other choice but to let go when bankruptcy, death, terminal illness, painful breakups, car accidents, and invasions of foreign armies are upon you.

You realize you’re under the grip of something far more powerful than your little mind and its limited ability to fulfill your desires.

Yet, though painful and unwanted, these moments are amazing portals to profound realizations that transform you forever.  You’re forced to accept something beyond your rationalizations and desires.  You’re brought to your knees.  You let go.  And you see something you couldn’t ever conceive of before.  It fills you with awe and wonder.

In Chinese the word for disaster is also opportunity. In this moment, which is it?