Accommodating the Full Range of Mysteries

Vinegar Battery, Caleb Charland, 2011

“Events happen to reveal the truth of what our life is about, a truth we try so hard to evade, cancel, or reverse. Yet, is also a given that we will never understand why certain things happen. In fact, the comfort we derive from explanations makes us wonder about the authenticity of our explanations.

Perhaps the need to know is part of the ego’s demand that it be in control. That way of living does not accommodate the full range of mysteries we meet up with in life.

A psychology or religion that explains everything cuts us off from a sense of wonder about the world and from growth in humility about ourselves.

Saint John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic, happily declared his spiritual predicament in this way: ‘I entered I knew not where, and there I stood not knowing: nothing left to know.’ ...meaningful growth comes at the price of pain. Why? That is a mystery, and the fact that there is no satisfying answer is related to the first noble truth of the pervasive unsatisfactoriness of human life. It can only be greeted with a yes, not deconstructed with a reply.”  

~ David Richo, from The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them