Sometimes we try so hard to get it right, make it better, clear it up— we try and try and try and sometimes it seems that the harder we try, the less effective we are. Is there another way? Is it possible that we can have our breakthrough by releasing the need to make things happen our way and at our time? Sometimes happy accidents occur— things just happen gratuitously without our having arranged them— and we realize that the universe has its own way of working and that good can come to us without the tremendous effort we feel that we have to exert. Maybe we can relax a bit from our struggle to bring the good into being— long enough to let the good come forth in its own way. Perhaps we can get out of the way and let things happen in their own time and manner. It's really surprising how much good can flow into our life when we are not looking. Let go to your good now. 

Sometimes we think that pushing and shoving is the way of victory in this life. I remember the first time I got on a crowded subway in New York City. Everyone was elbowing his way on as if there were not enough room or seats— as though if we didn't force our way on, we would be left behind. Yet everyone did make it onto the subway—even those who chose not to push and shove. We become very competitive and aggressive when we are afraid that there is not going to be enough good to go around; we think that we need to get ours before anyone gets it ahead of us. What stress and strain all this worrying and struggle can cause us! Yet there is another way; we can choose to trust that life hasn't brought us this far to let us down or disappoint us. We can choose to surrender to life itself, relax, release our fearful hold on people and things, let go and let life guide and direct us to our good. If what we want also wants us, all we need to do is relax into our meeting and connecting. 

Ours is a society based on winning. From sports competition to political elections, from checkers to chess, as football coach Bear Bryant put it, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." With such a strong cultural bias on achievement, how can we understand the Chinese saying that "less is more"? Yet if we think about our life, we may see that being assertive, aggressive or competitive does not always give us a sense of fulfillment or peace. We often feel the deepest and most profound fulfillment precisely when we surrender and let go of our need to control and shape things to our own ends. While, at times, we do feel the need to be in charge of our life, there are other times when a much greater freedom comes from simply letting. Some of our greatest breakthroughs in life come when we simply surrender. 

Anthony de Mello tells a story about a man who is lost and wandering in a desert. After many hours of frantically searching for water, the man all but gives up. Out of sheer exhaustion he stops and lies down on the ground and becomes absolutely quiet. All of a sudden, he becomes aware of the deep, awesome silence of the desert and in that profound stillness, he hears the gentle, murmuring sound of running water nearby. The man gets up and goes in the direction from which he has heard the water until he comes to a stream from which he drinks, and his life is saved. Sometimes, we too are frantically, almost desperately, searching for something to fulfill us or save us—until finally we become very still and quiet inside, and, in that stillness, we find our answer. 

Sometimes when things aren't working out in our jobs or families or relationships, it may be because subconsciously we have developed an attitude of resistance. When we seem to be stuck and struggling, sometimes we think the solution is to try harder to make things come into agreement with us. But the real solution may be for us to try easier— quit trying to force a breakthrough. We may need to relax, let go of trying to make it all work-out and be very simple, very gentle with ourselves and the people and situations in our life. We can ease up for a while and see if it doesn't get better for us and for the people in our life. When we have too many expectations about how everything and everyone should be, we create a tension, and everyone feels pressured, including ourselves. Let's release ourselves and others and relax into this fall season, letting go and letting all be well. 

There are always two ways of looking at any situation— we can always take either the positive or negative point of view. A pessimist is someone who is constantly seeing what isn't working. A pessimist once consulted an advisor who said, "Make three new friends and see what happened." He followed the advice, and nothing happened. Now he complains that he's stuck with three new friends. Things in life don't always work out the way we hope or the way we expect them to. We all have the tendency to become disappointed or frustrated when our dreams or plans don't seem to work out. Yet there is always the possibility that something even greater than anything we have envisioned will come forth out of our thwarted plans. We can always look to the good and claim it even in the midst of apparent disappointment. Never give up on the unexpected breakthrough coming right on the heels of what isn't working. We can turn failure into success in this life by keeping our vision focused on the good we seek, regardless of appearances. Be open for your breakthrough now. 

It's interesting that when we don't feel hope in our hearts, we usually feel its opposite, which is despair. Sometimes we've experienced so many disappointments in our life that it's hard for us to have hope that something better will still come our way. Yet, if we adopt the attitude of despair, we close ourselves off from all possibility that something new and different and better can happen in our lives. The sign over the entrance in Dante's Inferno was, "Abandon hope, all you who enter here." Abandoning hope and opting for despair is coming to a premature conclusion about life. It's like deciding who committed the crime when we are only half-way through a mystery novel. We may be tempted to quit reading because we feel that we already know 'who done it.' Yet the precise point of the mystery novel is the unexpected twist that leads to a surprise ending we could never have guessed. Our life is like a surprise birthday cake with candles we can't blow out. Anything can happen— even the very best thing— so why not hope for the best? 

We all go through times, for whatever reason, of feeling uncertain and insecure about ourselves and our life. A man once went to a therapist for a year. At the end of that time, the therapist commented, "Well, maybe life isn't for everyone." Sometimes this is how we feel deep down inside: maybe life isn't for us. We may be facing a health issue or a financial or job issue, or we may have a crisis in a deep personal relationship. Or sometimes, for no apparent outer reason, we just feel insecure, as if our inner stabilizing mechanism was suddenly not there. During these times, we are tempted to do almost anything to regain some sense of security. But we can experience a profound spiritual breakthrough when we allow ourselves not to resist this feeling of insecurity. When you feel insecure, just be insecure; don't fight the feeling or try to cover it up— the insecurity itself will bring into your awareness a deep and lasting insight and realization. When you feel insecure, trust the way of insecurity to guide you on your path. 

A film director who was down and out once went to U.G. Krishnamurti for advice. The director, filled with self-pity, told U.G. all of his troubles: his movies were all flops, his personal relationships had all collapsed, nothing was working no matter what he did. Instead of offering sympathy and commiseration, U.G. told the man, "I'll never forgive you unless you become a success." This demand jolted the director and galvanized him into action. He left U.G. and immediately began to work on a new film. The film was a great success. This was followed by a series of great film successes. This man is now one of the leading film directors in India. When we are stuck and feeling sorry for ourselves, what we may need is not sympathy or commiseration but a shock that will push us into action. 

The idea of actionless action is a bit foreign in our culture. We have been brought up to think of doing and activity as supremely important. When we were children, if our parents asked us, "What are you doing?" And we said, "Nothing." They always said, "Well, do something!" Yet, when we meditate or practice inner contemplation, we realize that there is a tremendous activity that takes place deep within our being and that the more silent and the stiller we become, the more energy and vitality we feel. And inner stillness and quietude also bring unexpected results from the outer world. Sometimes it seems as if, when we let go of the need to force, control or manipulate outer situations and instead turn within and become still, at peace and at rest, that the outer situations begin to shift and adjust of themselves and to come into alignment and agreement with our deepest needs, wishes and longings. 

Sometimes we say, "The more I try, the worse it gets." When we feel like this, it's as if we are on a treadmill, vainly spinning around in circles, ending up always where we started. To break the continuity of things not working out for us we may need to apply spiritual surgery. The most radical and effective way to break the contact with that which is causing us pain is to forgive it. When we really forgive something in our life for not working out, we immediately begin to take the power out of it to do us any further harm. Like cauterizing a wound, forgiveness of a situation ignites a fire of healing at the core of the problem. As we forgive, our hearts are freed from carrying the burden of fear and distrust. Emotionally we begin to feel lighter and freer. New possibilities begin to reveal themselves, and suddenly our solution and our breakthrough have arrived, and we are free. 

It's almost the time to put away our summer clothes and don our fall and winter outfits. It's almost time to switch over our swamp coolers and turn on our heater pilot lights. There is already a bite of coolness in the air in our mornings and evenings. We can feel a poignant regret at the passing of summer warmth. But cool weather brings a refreshing sharpness and clarity to mind and heart. There is a kind of fall awakening that releases us from that summer languor that semi-hypnotizes us into a mild inertia. We need the summer warmth to mellow out our inner being. We also need the brisk, clear, cold of autumn to focus us and give us the motivating force for action. We while away our days in summer— autumn is a time of fresh resolve, a moving forward with new energy into our life. Let this fall be your time of awakening. 

Theophane, the monk, tells the story of a man who, after great seeking, finds someone who can give him the "pearl of great price"— that which is of infinite value to him. He asks his benefactor, You mean rather than keep it for yourself, you'll just give it to me?" The man answers, "Is it better to keep the pearl of great price or to give it away?" The seeker now has the pearl, but he is haunted by the question: is it better to keep the pearl of great price or to give it away. And he concludes, "How long will I let this question rob me of my joy?" Even when we receive great gifts in life and are a success in the eyes of the world, if we are too indecisive, we reap no joy from our achievements. We all get stuck at times in 'should I or shouldn't I?' When we decide to trust our deepest intuition and act from our hearts from the highest we know and understand, then we begin to trust life to take care of us. And joy is the fruit of our action as we entrust ourselves to our life. 

There's a story of the frog and the kettle. A frog is put into a kettle of water and flame is put on at a very low temperature. Since the water gets hot only very slowly, the frog hardly notices the heat until it is too late. So with our life. When things aren't working in some area of our life, we may become so complacent that we let them continue not to work so long that what began as a minor disturbance becomes, in time, a major problem. It is helpful to catch problems earlier rather than later, be they health, relationship, work or financial issues. We don't have to be afraid to face things squarely as they are. The way of wisdom is to make a decision to act with full consciousness to redirect what isn't working into the way that does work. Don't wait to see if it will get better; make it better now. Change your problem into a solution now. 

Herman Melville once wrote a story called "Bartleby the Scrivener" about a man who reached the extreme of what we now call burn-out. Bartleby worked in an office as a scrivener, or a person who copied manuscripts. But, eventually, Bartleby would just stare at the wall by his desk all day, without doing anything. When asked to do something, Bartleby would answer, "I would prefer not to," and he would continue to just stare at the wall. Sometimes, when we are feeling burned-out in our jobs or our relationships, we may find ourselves, like Bartleby, preferring not to. But we really can't opt out of our life. We have chosen to be responsible and to fulfill our obligations even when, at times, we would prefer not to. We are each in this life to share ourselves with our world. Even in monasteries and ashrams, people live in relationship with each other. While we all do need times of solitude for rest and soul-searching, we also need to be connected with each other, fulfilling our roles and responsibilities in this life. 

Are we ready? Are we willing? Are we able? Our life is filled with choices. Decisions— large and small— are a part of our life experience on this earth. A sage once asked someone, "How long will you stay immobilized in indecision?" Sometimes we are afraid to make a decision because we are afraid of making a mistake, or we want to be sure that all the facts are in or we are waiting for unerring guidance. Sartre says that when we go to someone for advice regarding a decision, we pick someone whose advice agrees with what we want to do anyway. So we already know in many cases what to do. We just want someone to assume some of the responsibility for our decision. Or we may wait, as Alan Watts says, until the absolutely last moment and let circumstances or mental exhaustion force us into a decision. Yet we can also relax and let our decisions come with joy and openness of heart. We can let go of fear and let our decision-making be the joyous adventure into the unknown it really is. 

Norman Vincent Peale tells a story about two frogs who accidentally jumped into a pitcher of cream. Try as they might, neither of the frogs was able to jum p back out; whenever they tried to leap up over the walls of the pitcher, they would simply slide and wallow in the cream. They couldn't get any traction or solid foundation for their leap to freedom. Finally, in utter despair, one frog gave up trying and began to sink into the cream. The other frog, realizing that this was a sink or leap situation, mustered all of his courage and strength and integrity and began whirling his feet in the cream. Soon his feet were like little pistons moving at incredible speed; the momentum began to churn the cream into foam and then into butter. When the slippery cream had hardened into butter, both frogs had the solid traction with which to launch their leap into freedom. You too can churn your slippery situation into solidity for the great leap to freedom. 

The first time I ate tempura was in a small Japanese restaurant in San Francisco. The fried shrimp and vegetables were so delicious, that I asked the waitress for the recipe. She said, "First you must spend five years sweeping the kitchen and washing dishes. Then, if you show promise, you spend more years learning to select and prepare the ingredients. Then, if you show much promise— in another five or ten years, you will be permitted to learn the recipe for the dish. Usually it takes about twenty years." I said, "Thanks, but I'll just come to the restaurant when I want tempura." Often we forget that any kind of excellence in life requires a long apprenticeship. We are here, in this world, to develop our unique gift and to allow all the maturation necessary for that gift to be revealed in the fullness and ripeness of time. Don't get impatient: let your gift, talent or skill develop in its own right way. 

I have a saying that we need to be willing to chop the onions on our way to Nirvana— which means: we must be willing to do whatever is necessary for us to find our freedom and fulfillment in this life. Sometimes we think that if we just sit around and wait, things will automatically happen for us; this may be ultimately so, but natural evolution may take a long time; we may get tired of waiting and decide to help the process along by doing something. There's a story about a man sitting in a cave praying for a suntan. No matter how hard he prays, nothing happens until he decides to step outside and put himself in right relationship with the way in which his prayer can be answered. 

A prominent religious figure was once asked how he handled criticism. He replied, "Badly." Whenever we are doing anything beyond the norm of this life, we are subject to criticism by somebody. Yet all great creators in every field of life have had to overcome the criticism of their peers to create something of lasting value for humanity. Johann Sebastian Bach was considered a second-rate musician and composer by the critics of his day, who considered his sons to be superior to their father. James Joyce's Ulysses, when it was first published, was panned by many critics as an 'incomprehensible' work. There is always the risk that we will be criticized, and perhaps even condemned whenever we try something new and different. Yet human endeavor has always benefited from those great innovators who were willing to give their gift to the world, regardless of criticism. Perhaps we need our critics to spur us forward to ever greater acts of sharing our creative vision. As Rilke said, "Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.