When the miracle doesn’t come…
Rilke said "no feeling is final," and that mantra is usually enough to keep me moving. But today? I want a quick fix. A microwave to blast all our issues done in zero to five seconds, a magic wand to wave them all into peace and equilibrium. I want to go to sleep and wake up in utopia.
Doing the work just takes so much dang work!
The search for that silver bullet, the extra something that would change it all around, the key, the hack, the thing that's missing that if you find it, will change everything and make your life instantly exponentially better, is a multi-trillion dollar industry full of false promises that prey on your fear and desire. It's easy to buy into the narrative that if you just had that missing thing, everything would be made right.
People treated Jesus like that. Church treats Jesus like that. Dogma and doctrine and faith communities can be like that. If you just did this, surrendered that, came here, gave all that you had, really meant it in your heart, everything would be different. People believed that Jesus would change everything in an instant, set the world aright, create for them them freedom. But instead, he was murdered, executed as a terrorist and an enemy of the state. He was not the quick fix they believed he would be. So why do we still expect that of Divinity, of spiritual practices, and ideas of faith?
It's been my experience, and possibly yours too, that while quick fixes may sometimes provide short term relief, they rarely ever offer lasting and wholistic affect.
Jesus said:
"I am the way, the truth, the life."
Not a moment, a miracle, or an instantaneous success. Way, truth, life… things that can only be experienced as you move through them, day by day, moment by moment. That's how you find Divinity, connection, alignment… through the movement and truth of your own life and living.
There is no silver bullet. There are no quick fixes. Magic wands don’t work. But that doesn't mean that there aren't things you can do right now with what you've got in the middle of whatever it is you want to find a fast solution for, that will keep you moving, that will help, that will make it seem lighter.
Perhaps what I want, what you want, is not a quick fix, but the feeling of alignment, that this going somewhere good. And we feel the way we do because somewhere along the way we were taught, or we decided, or we got the idea, that we couldn't experience alignment, peace, flow, all those good and juicy sensations, in a situation like this one.
And maybe the quick fix we need is to hack that belief into pieces and find the wonder of this moment, not in spite of what is happening, but even in the middle of it.
Mindful Prompt: Your quick fix isn't found in instantly changing what is happening, but in learning to show up to it and find the gifts it has for you, even in this.
* John 14:6.
Join me in the App, xo
Liz Milani
Instagram: @thepracticeco
From this week’s series titled "Looking For A Quick Fix," with a subscription in the App. Hope to see you there.
