Spiritual Forum

There is a point and there isn't a point. Let me tell you what I mean.

I'll start with the negative since it's the squeaky wheel that so often garners the most impassioned attention.

There's no point in trying. Whenever I hear that a person will “try” to succeed I get that sinking feeling associated with impending failure. I see in my minds eye the metaphor of a drunk “trying” to walk past the pub but ending up sozzled on a stool braying asinine absurdities till closing time.

There's no point in hoping. Hope rhymes with nope and it won't help you cope. All those who hope for deliverance are more likely to experience hell boiling over before it ever freezes them a bridge over their river of Styx. Either way the temperatures never pleasant for those who's urgency has them hoping for an improvement in their fortune.

There's no point in the grandiose endeavour of making your mark through endless effort. Like Sisyphus who continually toils to carry his burdensome boulder to the summit only to have it repeatedly roll to the bottom down the other side, the effort to escape the momentous present is fraught.

Fortunately there is three points of departure from which you might delight. Each of these three points will stem the existential stench.

One potent point that will work well is the path that walks with love. Love accepts, without dissent, the current conditions and all the learning it contains. Love lets change unfold with ease just as a flower effortlessly opens in the warm sun light.

Another productive point from which you could confidently proceed is the path of action. Here instead of action towards an intended yet distant end your invitation is to do what’s in front of you humbly, deliberately and well.

The final point I'll put to you is the point that marks the path of knowledge. Imagine finding an ecstatic dimension in every tiny and ostensibly meaninglessly activity you engage. This point is the truest and most real!

The point is that it isn't what you do that matters but rather how you do it. The point is to act on the knowing that perfection exists in every moment of grace and to honour all events as though, and indeed, they are divine.

Martin Hunter Jones is an honorary member of the Australian Counselling Association