Desire, Serendipity, and Learning
Some of our greatest lessons are unintentional, and they must be to expand our imagination, deepen our experience, and bring us closer to our spirit's purpose
Riddle: What effort cannot be wasted? What event is always worthwhile?
Answer: Learning
Some of the most profound spiritual and practical lessons in my life have been of the unintentional variety. Why is this a blessing, even when they are unpleasant and even traumatic? Because they have broken me open beyond myself. They have schooled me as to the hopelessness of continued error. They have unceremoniously, but very effectively, shown how stubbornness beyond a certain threshold is not only foolishness, but arrogance.
Every event teaches us something. It is only the quality of the learning, and the blossoming of the results, that differ. When one person loses a leg in an accident and becomes a champion para-Olympic skier, and another loses the same leg and becomes depressed and suicidal, we see this principle of “learning as serendipitous response” operating. Clearly neither person above intended to lose the leg. One can scarcely imagine such a desire. They simply responded profoundly differently to the challenge of an unintended and unforeseen event.
In short, a learning response to an unexpected event opens the avenue for a new desire and a new experience, and such experience creates wisdom. “Well,” Zeus, you might say, “the suicidal amputee in the example above certainly got an “undesirable” or non-worthwhile sort of learning!” Oh really? What if that person reached such a dark night of the soul that he or she began to see deeply into the inherent frailty of life, and felt drawn to into compassion with others who experience traumatic injury. What if that same person now made it his or her mission to be with and for those who were similarly injured?
Something very much like this happened in an example offered by the Vietnamese Buddhist and anti-war activist, Thich Nhat Hanh (nicknamed “Thay” or Teacher). Thay listened deeply to the expressed feelings of an Vietnam War veteran, who was tortured by the images of children being killed by his unit. For many years this veteran descended into depression and self-harm over feelings of guilt. When Thay helped him be compassionate with his own suffering, to LEARN in a deep, present, emotional and spiritual way, the veteran was awakened to not only his own redemption, but his dharma or life’s purpose. He was to dedicate his life to the care of children injured in war.
You get the picture.
Desire does not create everything, but it must be awakened to learn or move anything
My wife, Regina, and I had a bit of an argument around desire. She maintained that “all things are created through desire.” I said that some things were created by serendipity or accident. “So you think the world is basically random?,” she enjoined. “No,” I said. SOME things, maybe even the vast majority of things are created through (intentional) desire, but some things are created from response to the unexpected, which may open us beyond our present knowledge, experience, and intentions.” Regina still differed. Maybe these “accidents” were collective soul agreements, or spiritual/soul orchestrations or desires for our own learning of which we are simply not aware. Perhaps… or perhaps not.
Regina went out to the deck to water the plants. She came inside not too much later grumbling with her hair soaked. “What happened?,” I said surprised. “Well, I was watering the plants, and I accidentally dropped the hose and the spray head was pointing up and got my hair all wet.” I marveled at the timing. “There, right there you have an example of an accident, not desire, creating knowledge.”
Now SERENDIPITY, what WE do with the accident, is different from the accident itself, what happened TO us. Do we have the presence of mind, and the openness of heart to see the humor in this incident? This has important consequences for what may often be our deepest learning: When things DON’T go as we expect them to go, are we are going to be broken down or broken OPEN?
If we simply see success, learning, and growth as the intentional development of skills we already feel drawn to, we would miss any opportunity outside our field of present vision or scope of mind. If we simply saw failure as anything that did not meet our expectations or present desire, the same logic would apply. It is our intelligent, enterprising learning RESPONSE that alchemically transmutes an “accident”—that which done to us—to “serendipity”— a calling toward us for our engagement, enhancement, and advancement.
Spiritual judo
There is a certain spiritual judo in all this.
Where my wife may have grumbled for a few seconds in the above example, I have grumbled for years as to the lack of fit between me and the surrounding cultural environment. (Apparently, I am a bit of a slow learner— physician heal thyself!) I have complained about all kinds of absurd coincidences and absences. I have pointed to all kinds of evidence that this place simply doesn’t seem to like me:
I was hired by a local university and went through its training to teach some courses, and then all these courses were dropped at the last minute. I have literally volunteered at the local high school twice to tutor and help teach non-conventional learners, meeting with the principal, etc.— and never received follow-up. I applied to another job, I was eminently qualified for and relatively few applicants, and did not even make the final interview round. Every ostensible friendship or neighborly connection I sought to fostered, appears to have withered before it had a chance to grow, like a transplanted seedling that just wouldn’t take to the new soil. “Jeeeezzzz…”, I thought, what does a man have to do. I have desire to create meaningful work, friendship, contribution, and pastimes, but no takers or real opportunity.
Many would say, “This is simply higher forces or your own spirit telling you to move on!” Perhaps this may be true, but if even if all this “failure” is an earnest invitation to explore other opportunities and locales that may provide a better fit (never a bad idea), what can I do RIGHT NOW, besides gripe?
Well, for one, I was inspired to turn a required trip to Hawaii (to drop off my son for his trip to see his mom over the summer in Guam) to a three and a half-week spontaneous adventure, re-connecting with a longtime friend and simply exploring a new land. I created a new desire out of an open engagement with necessity. I allowed myself to allow serendipity to inform me and create another desire.
I was inspired by my frustration to outline the beginnings a parody on self-help books lampooning the notions that “laws of attraction” and “intention” alone are sufficient to generate lasting bliss. Maybe my book will provide a good laugh or comfort to those who follow follow their sincere inspirations to a dead-end. Turning a frustration into art or humor certainly seems more constructive than bitching.
My wife likes me to cook, and I balk, always asking her to come up with a recipe (that is, express her “desire” in clear, concrete terms), and just the other day I happened to find a recipe in a book I was reading on “wyrding” witchcraft, and I decided to cook THAT! Instead of insisting that other’s initiate a desire for my participation, I looked for other “invitations” in supposedly “random” sources.
What are examples or your profound, recent and non-recent, examples of spiritual judo, where you took an unpleasant event, accident, or unexpected challenge and transmuted it into a learning opportunity, humor, or some other form of gold for the soul?
Funny stories Zeus. I think some come in with set, predetermined paths, and some come in without.I clearly chose without! Those without, I believe, can experience the serendipity and use those clues as the divining rod. Living in community, with large families, or even on a farm or ranch with lots of animals like I did for 18 years, I’ll tell you stuff can get real weird real fast. Animals can get themselves into quite the predicaments. They certainly don't plan it, so obviously I didn’t either.
Love this piece. Also, it is so nice to hear the little vignettes about your life as, I bet, Many people here will agree that you are our favourite couple and we love your energy when you are together on the screen. I agree with both of you. We do create through desire - the question is whether we create through conscious or unconscious desire? At the same time, I do believe that the Universe/Highest Consciousness is very playfully engaged with us as well. For example, a couple of decades ago when I lived in Toronto, I was obsessed with wanting to be a writer and living in Mexico (warm weather/colours/adventure). So I was ambivalent when I got a teaching job in Malaysia - but this turned out to be an absolutely wonderful experience on every possible level and it was more than what I was hoping going to Mexico would be. So... perhaps it is a play between our desire and the Universe's playful engagement with us?