Figuring It Out
Whenever we feel unhappy it seems that the first thing we try to do is figure it out. Why are we so unhappy? Or why are we bored or restless? Seeking this answer, we only add to our suffering. In fact, this seeking is what creates our suffering. We may search and search for a reason we feel like this, as if everything is simple and if we could only figure out what is making us unhappy we could remove the problem and rectify the situation and feel better. But some things are too complicated. Some things cannot be reasoned out. When it comes to how we feel, who can say there is a reason at all?
We meet this same sense of figuring it out when we are faced with a decision. Some decisions are easy, and we make those almost without thinking. But when a decision is more complex, or there is a lot at stake, we can become paralyzed by those decisions. We think and think and think, trying to reason out a solution, trying to find out what would be best, or what decision is the right one. Again, it may be that it is too complicated, there may be good points and bad points and a system of pro’s and con’s simply doesn’t resolve it with any satisfaction. We must go beyond logic then, we must going beyond reason.
These difficulties do not mean that we cannot find solutions to our problems, or gain insight into how who we are and how we function. It does mean that certain parts of us are ill-equipped to perform certain functions, just as our eyes could not be expected to hear things for us. The important thing is to know what to use for each situation. Whenever we are suffering because we are trying to ‘figure it all out’, the key is to accept it, not flog ourselves into coming up with an answer. Let it go, don’t spin it around and around and around, because it is at exactly this time that the answer comes. The second we let go and stop chasing an answer, accepting our situation for what it is instead of what we want it to be, insight slaps us in the face with a truth as immediate (and maybe as painful) as the sharp sting of hand against cheek.