Vachon Imagined

Your attempts to change yourself fail because the mind, the self, is active.

Take anything.

Your desire to be nice.

Eventually, you’re an asshole.

These are the two sides of one coin. The mystery coming forward into life.

You want to become more independent of what people think of you, more detached, less affected.

And yet words get to you.

Actions get to you even more.

Something inside you becomes aggravated and says:

This shouldn’t be happening.

Someone must pay.

This is natural.

It is a natural part of human nature.

But please, do not mistake it for Nature itself.

Do not mistake it for God, the presence we all move through, inhabit, and cannot escape, even through death.

You cannot change yourself or another person through force and effort alone.

So, we return to the peace of God that is already present within our circumstances.

There we begin to see ourselves clearly.

We see how quickly we criticize others for not being what we need.

How we complain when we don’t get our way.

How we punish others, mentally, emotionally, and sometimes physically, for not being enough.

Not positive enough.

Not healthy enough.

Not successful enough.

Not even, sometimes, sinister enough to satisfy the darkness we carry.

This is the way of people.

But do not mistake it for the ways of God.

The ways of God are pure.

Effortless.

Well-timed.

Extraordinarily mysterious.

They move beyond anything we can accomplish alone.

Beyond anything we can accomplish together as human beings.

The deepest freedom is not becoming a better version of the self.

It is recognizing the self clearly enough to stop mistaking its struggle for God.

The mind wants to change everything.

God does not need to force anything.

God moves.

And life moves with Him.