Just Perfect?

by Nicholas de Castella

When I worked as an architect in Canberra, my office was on the second floor. Immediately outside the window was a poor excuse for a gum tree. I used to look at the scraggy branches that seemed to jut out irregularly and I used to wonder why they didn’t cut the tree down and start again.

One particular bright sunny day I looked out the window and happened to notice the shadow the tree was casting. The shadow was as close to a perfect circle as I could imagine. I sat there in awe. I realised that every branch and leaf was perfectly placed to catch the maximum sun. I wondered how many other things in my life that look like mistakes and things that just shouldn’t be, could be perfect, when seen in another light.

We live in a culture that focuses on the decay part of the cycle of life and makes it wrong. The media focuses on death and destruction. The wheel of life involves four stages: Conception, Birth, Maturity and Death. All things are subject to this cycle: Your body, your house, your job, your partner, your kids... Something I like about the Hindu tradition is that they acknowledge decay as part of life. One of their Gods is Shiva - the god of destruction. They acknowledge that for the new to occur the old must die.

When we acknowledge the wheel of life we get to see a bigger picture and we get to understand things in a more wholesome and positive way.

The secret to happiness and contentment lies not in getting everything to be just how we want them to be and then keeping them that way. That’s probably just not achievable in this lifetime: Get one problem sorted and then what do you know - another pops up! Familiar?

The REALLY EXCITING secret to happiness and contentment lies in cultivating an attitude that acknowledges the perfection in everything - as it is! This is really exciting because it is achievable. Even if we take only small steps in changing our attitude, we experience immediate corresponding benefits in how we feel.


I recently read this quote by Janet Atwood, author of The Passion Test:
As I sat with many Masters revered for their wisdom and asked this question, they told me the same thing in many different words: Enlightenment is that state of complete contentment, a state where the mind and heart are fully at peace.

It is a state in which one is fully present in this moment, a state in which one sees the divine in everyone, in every thing, in every experience. There is no good or bad, because it is all the divine, moving in the flow of life to lead every part of life to the experience of the divine, to the experience of its own essential nature.


It’s all in our attitude
What is required to feel constantly in a blessed state is to cultivate an ATTITUDE TO LIFE that acknowledges the perfection in everything. Even if we are hurting and can not see the perfection at that time - it is still there somewhere / somehow.

Perception determines experience
It is essential to realise that it is not what happens that determines our experience, but our attitude to what happens.

We know that something exists or that something happens in the earth plane. But in fact we can never know the exact nature of what exists or of what happens. This is because we are always filtering and distorting what ‘is’.

The old Cartesian and Newtonian Scientific paradigm was based on the assumption that an objective reality exists. And that we can measure, quantify, study and know and even predict. Quantum Physics has given us a radically different model of how we relate to our world.

The New Science tells us that all experiences (and experiments) are subjective. That we have an effect on what we are studying. That we can only approximate what exists. Einstein's theory of relativity suggests that time, space and matter are not fixed but vary according to the relative state of the observer and the object. That the scientist affects the results of his study by the way he sets up his experiment. That we can not exactly measure anything. That light takes time to travel and therefore we are always seeing the past...

Feelings determine perception
It is important to acknowledge that how we are feeling at anytime, radically affects our perception of what exists. How we are feeling gives rise to our attitude which gives rise to the thoughts we are thinking. Can you remember being in love? How did the world look? Do you remember a time when you felt down - how did the world look then? Do you remember a time when you felt angry - how did the world look then?

One day I was feeling a bit down, I was driving my car, noticing how old it was, how it was rusting and dinted . “What a heap of junk”, I thought. The very next day I was feeling happy. As I drove along I was marvelling at how great this car was. How its styling was ahead of its time, how it handled so well around the corners and how it would probably run for ever. Suddenly I remembered what I had been thinking about the very same car the previous day!

Our experiences are not determined so much by what happens, but by our attitude to what happens.

This is good news for us seekers of happiness because it means that we can have create happiness by changing our attitude to what is.

What’s the good purpose?
How could starving people, sickness, marriage breakdowns, wars, violence, suicide, abuse, pain and misery be perfect?

I believe that everything that happens is presenting as an opportunity for us to heal, release fear based beliefs, grow and ultimately come home to the truth of who we are: Eternal, loving, peaceful and contented beings that are one with everything in the universe.

The pain and suffering we experience is calling us to wake up to something that we are in error about. Pain is a messenger. Wake up is the message. The pain will continue to increase as long as we run away and put our head in the sand and stay in denial.

Sometimes it seems that life wants to break us open. To crack our hardness and rigidity so that we surrender and discover the divine magnificence that is at our core.

A friend of mine was suffering from depression because she was working in a job she did not like. She went to the doctor and he offered to prescribe anti-depression medication. This would have enabled her to stay in a job - and live a life - that was not her passion. Her unhappiness was a sign that she was not living the life she is meant to live. Killing the symptoms means we do not have to address the cause.

Fortunately for her, she chose to change her life.

You are not meant to feel happy doing a job that your are not meant to be doing - that is not giving the greatest gift you are here to give.

How could our mistakes be perfect?
Did you know that the discovery of penicillin - a drug that has saved the lives of millions of people’s lives - was discovered by accident, out of a mistake?

Have you ever thought that something was a mistake only to realise later on that it was a good thing?

Mistakes are simply when we get a result we do not expect. They are learning opportunities. They are an essential part of all learning processes. If you are not willing to make a mistake you will not try anything new. You will stay small and insular and miss out on living the life you are capable of living. Isn’t this the greatest mistake of all? The key is to learn from our mistakes.

If you don’t ask the question, you don’t get the answer.
The Key to seeing the perfection of your life is in being willing to be open to consider it as perfect and in asking the question:

“How is this perfect?”

So often life is like a tapestry - but often we only get to see it from the back.


Let me know of your victories