Sometimes I think life is one big cosmic joke. Unfortunately I only think this when I am flowing with life and am able to notice and chuckle at the all the ways I devise resistance. In the throes of resisting I am afraid I do not have such a benevolent sense of humor.

In the flow, moving with life’s “isness” I marvel at how addicted I can be to making life difficult. Locked in a tug of war with “what is” I want, I need, I demand, I stomp my feet, I cry, I isolate myself, I feel sadness, and this list goes on and on, ad infinitum.

When I finally tire of my exhausting resistance, I can only laugh at my childish self. I don’t even bother feeling foolish. I go straight to comic relief, amused by the way my ego refuses to surrender while cleverly disguising its need for control in such creative ways.

I wonder what I might do if I could harness all that ego-based creativity and channel it into making a more meaningful contribution to life.  While it is a little delayed, I think this shall be my New Year’s resolution.

The Divine flows in every aspect of life. We feel it when we are joyous, for no particular reason. We feel it when we are in love, even if we are only experiencing the “ego’s needs met” version of human love.

This presence is everywhere in everything and it always invites us to join in, to participate, to be fully alive.

The beauty is we can connect to this Life Force just by saying “Yes” to what is; simply by not insisting that things be other than they are.

George MacDonald, 19^th Century Celtic author and theologian understood this. Consider this short piece:

All about us, in earth and air,
wherever the eye or ear can reach,
there is a power ever breathing itself forth in signs,
now in daisy, now in a wind-waft, a cloud, a sunset;
a power that holds constant and sweetest relation
with the dark and silent world within us.
The same God who is in us,
and upon whose tree we are the buds,
if not yet the flowers,
also is all about us –
inside, the Spirit;
outside, the Word.
And the two are ever trying to meet in us;
and when they meet, then the sign without,
and the longing within, become one in light,
and the man no more walketh in darkness,
but knoweth whither he goeth.

When I am aligned in the flow of life, that is to say when I am saying “yes” to “what is,” the Truth of who and what I am connects with Life. Joy is the natural result of this communion.

Resisting, fighting, or demanding my way, rebelling against what is, blocks my inner being from experiencing this union. This always results in my suffering; leaves me longing and feeling disconnected.

Connected I cannot imagine why I work so hard at experiencing disconnection.

When experiencing disconnection my mind never considers that I am creating the separateness.

Therein I see the cosmic joke. Life, perpetually, teaches us that we must “do” something to be at peace, to dwell in the Kingdom; when in fact it is the doing which always creates the illusion of separation. The idea that there is something to do, to overcome the illusion, can only exist in the illusion itself.

Personally, I find that kind of funny.