Why Things Are The Way They Are

Driving down the road, nothing particular about the day. Life had been rough. Within the last couple of years deaths of two people. Too young to die, in her view. Then there had been many years of mother care. Of mother with Alzheimer’s care.

Suddenly, she said, while driving down the road I knew exactly why everything is the way it is. Everything! And then just as quickly the knowing passed. Just like that. She wanted to keep on knowing what she had known however the moment passed and was gone.

I doubt if anything will ever be quite the same again though.

There is no knowing why these moments come to people, and not necessarily to those who follow some kind of conscious spiritual path. It’s not really necessary to know why of course. And what would one do with that knowledge anyway?

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2 thoughts on “Why Things Are The Way They Are”

  1. I read your post this morning as I usually do when I get to work and get sorted out for the day as to what is going on. Reading the headline it jumped out at me and the saying on my cubicle wall “Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.” – Bertold Brecht. It is to me a comment on the inevitability of change as well as the need for change in some circumstances. Not that it ties in closely with what your other reader had gone through just sharing a common starting point.

  2. Dear Rev. Mugo,

    I have had this kind of experience, in varying degrees of intensity, and learned to mistrust it. It is too easy to fall into the trap of searching for this kind of experience and then being tempted to believe you have discovered the answer to everything. As you rightly say “What could you do with the knowledge anyway?”

    Years ago a monk at Throssel read me a quotation from the Lankavatara Sutra which has stayed with me ever since:

    “Things are not what they seem. Nor are they otherwise.”

    Tony

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