Seeing the Purpose in Everything That Happens

Filed under Articles on 28. December 2006 »

In this world, some things that happen can appear to have no meaning or purpose. Mostly these are the things we judge to be bad, like being laid off from one’s job or having an accident of some kind. People are at a loss to understand how war, hunger, natural disasters and human suffering can possibly have any meaning, and why these things happen. “Why does God allow this to happen?” is a common question people ask when confronted with the awful things that can occur in people’s lives, and some may even lose their faith in a higher power and adopt a cynical attitude towards life. Experiencing themselves as victims of an unfair and merciless world in which they have to fight for survival, a world that is constantly out to get them.

But the limited perspective of a human being — especially those who believe their perspective to be the absolute truth, which is the overwhelming majority of people on the planet — is not able to fully comprehend the meaning of individual things and events in the context of the whole. What we perceive with our senses is only an aspect of a tiny little part of the whole, and so it would be presumptuous to an absurd degree for us to judge that some things that happen have a purpose and some don’t.

The purpose of everything

Everything that happens, good or bad, has only one real purpose: to provide an opportunity for you to be of service to God; an opportunity to do good and to be of humble service to life itself.

That is all.

Human existence is an exercise in the evolution of consciousness, and so the purpose of everything that happens in the life of a human being is an opportunity for that individual expression of consciousness to grow. Which is in turn the purpose shared by each and everyone of us; to be of service to consciousness.

When you understand your purpose to be that of allowing good to come into the world, of being of service to consciousness, everything that happens in your life is seen as a potential means to that end. And in fact being itself is seen as a means to that end, because nothing really needs to happen as such for you to be able to fulfill your purpose in the evolution of consciousness. When things do happen, when new situations are brought about or if something goes ‘wrong,’ you can employ yourself as an opening for a higher consciousness to flow into and influence that situation.

And we’re not just talking about overt activities such as volunteering in refugee camps or donating to charity, although that is certainly part of it. What it means to be of service to consciousness and to bring good into the world is not necessarily to take action. More important than any action is the state out of which that action, or non-action, arises. Awakened non-doing is more helpful than seemingly good action that has its roots primarily in unconsciousness and ego.

Even just sitting on a park bench in a state of peace and presence for a single day, doing nothing, accomplishes more in the service of consciousness than years of action and effort that have been declared in the service of good but do not arise from that higher level of consciousness.

To see the purpose in everything that happens and thus fulfill your purpose as a human being, nothing spectacular needs to be done. When we say that everything that happens is an opportunity to be of service to God, it does not mean that you need to somehow turn every situation into a newsworthy event of do-gooding and miracle making. Spectacular things may indeed happen as a result, but the only thing you need to be concerned with is to meet every situation and every moment in a state of alert presence. You don’t need to do anything in particular, and you don’t even need to figure anything out. The key to this is absolute surrender.

Turn the other cheek

The simple truth in Jesus’ statement, “if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,” is echoed by Mother Teresa, who says in her prayer: “People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; forgive them anyway.” And the wisdom at the core of what they are saying is, that every situation is an opportunity to be of service to God. However difficult it is for the ego to accept, and however out of alignment with the common views of society, you need to respond to everything with unconditional love. Even when it does not seem to make any sense to do so.

If somebody treats you with hate or disrespect, it is first and foremost an opportunity for you to extend kindness in return. And this is an opportunity offered to most people several times during the course of a day, in various forms.
For example, if some of your coworkers treated you with disparagement, gossiped about you behind your back and even tried to sabotage you in some way — would you feel justified to get back at them or treat them with contempt in return? The ego would encourage you to defend yourself, fight back and respond with negativity. But these situations have a purpose, and the purpose in this particular one is for you to extend forgiveness in the face of contempt. As St. Francis said, “where there is hatred, let us sow love.” And that is what you must do, no matter what.

In the case of spiritual teacher Wayne W. Dyer, his opportunity for spiritual transformation was offered to him through his father, a violent drunkard that abandoned his family when Dr. Dyer was still just a kid. For years and years he harbored hatred and resentment towards his father for all the bad things he did, and was not able to forgive him. And then one day, after recognizing that he didn’t want to carry the burden of hatred anymore, he went to search for his father and found that he had been dead for several years. Standing at his father’s grave, he poured out all the anger and resentment he had been holding onto for so long, cursing that man he hardly knew for having caused him so much damage as a young boy. After three hours, when there was no more anger left in him to express, he was finally able to forgive his father. And as he forgave him all the terrible things he had done, an infinite peace washed over him and from that point on his life was transformed forever.

So what must have been perceived as meaningless cruelty and evil, at the time, turned out to be the motivation for this man to go on and transform the lives of countless others through his work as a spiritual teacher.

Yes, even *insert-terrible-thing* has a purpose

But what about all the awful things that happen every single day in this world, like warfare, hunger, natural disasters, and all the extreme forms of human suffering that we’ve seen throughout the history of mankind. Again, “how could God allow this?” is the question people commonly ask when confronted with the seeming harshness of human existence.

I’m reminded of a quotation that goes something like; “hunger and starvation are part of God’s perfection, and so is your desire to end it.” I can’t remember who said this, but the teaching I see in it is that the purpose of what we perceive as bad, or evil, is to provide an opportunity for the extension of love and kindness. If there were nothing but love in the world, the concept of it would be meaningless.

We cannot prove this to be true in an objective sense, and no scientific journal would ever publish an article with such an answer. The mind will tell you that it is ridiculous that there is a purpose for all the terrible things that happen, and that this is much too simple to be true. And even the slightest challenges that arise, such as losing out on a promotion at work or whatever, can be enough for the ego to judge God to be wrong or unfair. Usually the ego’s imagined version of God has a human face, and is seen as a ‘somebody’ or ‘something.’ But what the ego cannot see is that God is nothing but life itself, and how could life itself be reduced to the mind made conceptual polarity of right or wrong?

To see the purpose behind everything that happens, it is required to go beyond the limits of the mind. To know the truth of this is in the realm of a deeper knowing, a recognition that is stronger than any words can contain, and on a level that is impossible for the limited perspective of the mind to grasp. A skeptic may be able to write entire books on why this way of seeing is flawed, how stupid and wrong it is, but would you rather be ‘right’ than at peace? The fleeting satisfaction of the ego that comes with defiance and skepticism, is a poor substitute for the infinite peace available to those who allow the words to point the way to that which is beyond form.

For the purpose of everything to be fulfilled, the only thing required is for you to surrender and allow life to flow through you to accomplish what it will.