As we begin, please memorize this phrase: “I know nothing and nothing is as it seems.” This will serve to counteract the moralistic mind you live when it begins YELLING at you about how WRONG all of this is. Please repeat this phrase several times until it sinks in – it will help you maintain focus on what I am offering so you don’t miss the opportunity here.

IS LIFE FAIR?
I deal with this question often in my spiritual coaching with people. They find it very difficult to realize that what they “believe” they have done in their lives has nothing to do with what they get from this world.

Most people only do “kind acts” in order to have “good” things happen to them. It is not a matter of Seva (selfless service to humankind), but rather an effort to rack up “points” with God so that He will be “good” to them. Most people are religious and simply do not know it. To these people GOOD means that they GET EVERYTHING THEY WANT, which gratifies their senses and appeases their fear of a lack of security. They create elaborate fantasies about themselves and the life they live, and they keep it all going with their ideals of pleasing God like a child pleases its parents and hoping for a reward.

Again, please remember: “I know nothing and nothing IS as it seems.”

Life is not fair nor is it what we think it should be. Life is just what IS and if we do not “get it” we will suffer deeply from the hand of our own ignorance. Jesus understood this and offered a wonderful parable in Matthew 20:1-16. Read on and tell me how any of us could expect life to give us what we believe we “deserve.” Remember my dear one: “I know nothing and nothing IS as it seems.”

The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

About the 3rd hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, “You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went.

He went out again about the 6th hour and the 9th hour and did the same thing. About the 11th hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, “Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?”

“Because no one has hired us,’” they answered.

He said to them, “You also go and work in my vineyard.”

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, “Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.”

The workers who were hired about the 11th hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. “These men who were hired last worked only one hour,” they said, “and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.”

He answered them saying, “Friends, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous? So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

This parable shows us that we can work all day in the fields of our lives and get paid the same amount as someone who worked only a few hours! How fair is that? What kind of universe are we running here?

Perhaps the Buddha can shed some light on this as he taught the very same thing that Jesus presented, just in another way. Read this with the attitude of: “I know nothing and nothing IS as it seems.”

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakable.

“Look how he abused me and beat me.
How he threw me down and robbed me.”
Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.

“Look how he abused me and beat me,
How he threw me down and robbed me.”
Abandon such thoughts, and live in Love.

In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only Love dispels hate.
This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.

You too shall pass away.
Knowing this, how can you quarrel?

Both Jesus and the Buddha are saying exactly the same thing in two different ways. Love is the depth of us as spiritual beings and not what we think is just or fair. You see, what we have “agreed to” is something that lives within us all in an unconscious way that most people simply do not realize. Life is about Love – “we are what we think” means the mind EXPOSES our meager understanding due to the limitations of our human mental and emotional prowess. Authentic AWARENESS toward LOVE comes through meditation as deep insight.

How we live, move, and have our being in this world is in accordance with our sense of Love. The essence of life is to MAKE ROOM FOR LOVE, to make space for Love to occur and then move from this LOVE no matter what our circumstance may be.

So my question to you is: IS LIFE MORAL?
Is life moralistically fair or are there some secret “rules” that we are simply not privy to? I have never found life to be moral or fair by the standards that most people believe constitutes fair play and equal treatment. There is a vast difference between MORAL and PRINCIPLED. I discuss my Aspire TV series, A LIFE WORTH LIVING, how everything that SEEMS to occur within the course of our lifetime is happening due to our karma, fate and destiny.

In the moral ideal of life there are certain “ rules” that govern “acceptable” and “proper conduct,” which keep the wheels turning in this society and keep us from killing each other and stealing what is not ours. It seems that humankind needs this form of governing to survive. Moses knew this well as he came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments that were basically 10 rules for survival in a society loyal to its own dysfunctional ways – a society with no awareness of compassion and Love that are present in consciousness, not in morality.

We live instinctually through our DNA by the willful choice to survive which reduces us to living from our primal urges and instincts – innate fixed patterns of behavior that are instinctual to our prehistoric DNA to survive at all costs. When we form societies for the sake of evolutionary survival instead of solitary existence, the survival instincts inherent in our DNA must be suppressed and morality becomes the only way in which people can live together as a civilization for the sake of a communal survival.

Is “good” a matter of morality? The word moral is defined as: “Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.” Of course the mind reels at this definition because who is to say what is “good and bad” and what even constitutes a “principle” as the definition states? If you ask most people they will tell you that they know the difference between “good and bad” and “right and wrong.” But when pressed as to whether they apply their morals to themselves they say: “It depends” or “most of the time” and then give some “reason” why their morality does not apply to every given situation at all times the same way. It is simply a matter of pride, fear of loss and latent anger, which equates to HATE.

We are not being punished…we are being offered a penetrating revelation about the human mind that we live with. Life is not punitive at all. Life occurs according to how we have agreed to live from within. When we live as though life were a burden, we live in a form of hate and fear that only serves to propagate more hate and fear.

We all have our karma to live with that we have “agreed” to…whether we are consciously aware of it or not. Ours is not to fight all of this, but to blend into and harmonize with the All. The body is karma and we are to honor it with a deep sense of compassion and loving kindness, which leads to mercy.

Everything is occurring just as it needs to based on a Life that is deeply principled in mercy through karma, fate and destiny. If we are willing to no longer hold our opinions as sacred, if we are kind enough to bow to the Love that is the very presence of this Life…then we become humble enough to realize consciousness.

Please remember that everything is NOT as it seems. What you call “good” might not be as “good” as you may think. Listen to what you do not want to hear and realize the truth in: “I know nothing and nothing IS as it seems.” Become the Love you seek.