How Everything That Happens in Your Life Is Good

Even though seemingly bad things happen

Most humans want good experiences. And they don’t want bad experiences.

Some spiritual teachings point out that attachment to good and bad results in pain. And then they suggest that the remedy may be to drop the attachment.

That’s good advice…if you can drop the attachment. But if you cannot manage to drop the attachment, it’s not helpful.

So I’d like to offer you an alternative that I believe is much more workable for most people.

To start, recognize that good and bad are not qualities inherent in the events, people, or experiences. Rather, they are qualities that you overlay by selectively narrowing the context.

This point about how good and bad are overlays and not inherent in the events themeselves is illustrated well by the story of the “Chinese Farmer”. If you don’t know it, do an internet search for “Alan Watts Chinese Farmer” and you’ll find it.

Again, obviously, one possible remedy is to drop the attachment and simply see that you don’t know whether anything is good or bad and you never well. That is great if you can manage it successfully. But again, I think it is challenging for most.

So now the alternative solution is to simply choose to see every happening in your life as good. That is actually in your power to do. It might be challenging. It might not come really easily at first. But with practice it will get easier and you’ll see the benefits of it.

Now, I know that some people will find this to be particularly challenging and may even have knee-jerk reactions to it. I am familiar with some objections people commonly have. And I am sure that there are other objections people might have that I have not considered.

I don’t want to try to head off all the possible objections with this post. I want to purposefully keep each post fairly short so that it gives you something to reflect upon and work with in your life which can be valuable to you.

So for now, I just want to propose to you that this choice of seeing and accepting all happenings in your life as good is well worth exploring sincerely. Try it honestly for a few weeks and see what the results are.

Importantly, I am NOT saying that all things that people do are good. I’m not claiming that genocide is good, for example. What I am proposing is that in your actual life, moment to moment, things are happening. And each moment you have a choice. If you label something in your life which has already happened as bad, you lock that into place and position yourself such that you cannot experience the true power and freedom which is your actual nature. Whereas, when you choose to accept it as good, you get to inhabit a true position of power and freedom.

It is not that all things are good according to your ideas of what good is. But the point is that if you choose to accept your life as inherently completely good, you start to discover yourself as already free from the ideas that you had mistakenly believed you were bound by.

If you have objections to this that you cannot see your way clear of, please post them in a comment. I will respond to objections to help clarify how to understand the suggested practice so that you can make it work for you and get the benefits.