Flow With Life

One of the great lessons we can learn from ancient spiritual seekers is their observance of natural laws and rhythms. A seasoned mystic flows effortlessly with life while observing and obeying its laws and rhythms. Honoring the changing seasons, experiencing and listening to bodily rhythms of digestion and elimination, all while understanding and welcoming the aging process. Flowing with these and other changes instead of resisting them are the hallmarks of people who have a deep sense of the spiritual, the numinous, the unseen.

Resisting Life Causes Unhappiness

In contradiction, general unhappiness and grief often relate to how much people resist life and struggle with life’s laws and rhythms. Still, we do it anyway. In fact, we do not need researchers to tell us that human beings are continually resisting and struggling against the laws of life; we only need to look around and observe our own lives and the lives of people we know.

The Clues are Everywhere

Watching the nature of their surroundings, the weather, the animals, the water, the earth, and the people, ancient mystics of all traditions came to understand themselves more clearly. You can make these same discoveries if you start observing and flowing.

• The body follows natural laws that are continuously being broken in our society; we need exercise, sleep and adequate nutrition to stay reasonably healthy.
• Seasonal crops give guidance on what to eat and when.
• The mind needs to be engaged.
• Emotions need to be experienced or transcended rather than repressed or denied.
• Struggle and reconciliation present a natural cycle in relationships.
• Change between light and darkness in the environment affects our sleep cycle, which is often disregarded, and the list can go on and on.

Listen With an Intent to Understand

If you have made a serious effort to listen to the body, you may already have uncovered many of the natural laws that govern its existence. The same methods can be used to listen to the mind and environment. The question is: Are you following the laws and rhythms you have uncovered?

Be a Life Scientist

Try this: Instead of blindly accepting or rejecting ideas about natural laws and rhythms, become a scientist of life. Be open and intrigued, conduct experiments with your own life, record your conclusions and slowly uncover the natural laws and rhythms through experience. Once you have uncovered a law or a rhythm, flow with it and accept it.

Welcome Change

When people start to flow with life, they begin to welcome change instead of resisting it or trying to hide from it. The natural flow of things goes through a continuous cycle of creation, sustenance and disintegration/transformation. Once something has run its course, it transforms into something else.

Trust Infinite Intelligence

Flowing with life also has a lot to do with trust. Do you trust the infinite intelligence that administers the ebb and flow of the tides, arranges galaxies, makes sure that you don’t disintegrate into a quantum soup of energies and is the collected consciousness of all living things?

If you do, shouldn’t this moment be exactly as it is? Should you struggle against it or accept it? Can you flow with whatever comes your way, or do you think you know better and should be the one controlling the universe?

Simple Exercise

Let me leave you with this simple and profound practice. Accept this moment. Accept yourself in this moment. Do not struggle against it or try to change it. Repeat to yourself: “I accept this moment – I flow with life” and feel the onset of peace and calmness.

Gudjon Bergmann
Author and Mindfulness Teacher
Amazon Author Profile

Recommended books:

• Monk of All Faiths: Inspired by The Prophet (fiction)
• Spiritual in My Own Way (memoir)
• Co-Human Harmony: Using Our Shared Humanity to Bridge Divides (nonfiction)
• Experifaith: At the Heart of Every Religion (nonfiction)
• Premature Holiness: Five Weeks at the Ashram (novel)
• The Meditating Psychiatrist Who Tried to Kill Himself (novel)

Picture: CC0 License