THE WAY IT IS
Why read a book entitled ‘The Way It Is’ you might ask, when how it is must already be known by sheer virtue of living life in this world with family, neighbours, colleagues, alongside millions and millions of strangers and embedded in systems and governance of one kind or another? Would it not be more expedient (and relaxing) to turn a blind eye to what is really going on? Or better still, would it be instead far more rewarding and personally more satisfying to immerse oneself into bettering and finding solutions for what is not working? Perhaps we should stop and consider how we have been so blindly comforted by the notion of solutions and that we can have them/come-up with them whenever a crisis appears. A closer look at life reveals that at best, solutions perform as ‘band aids’ rather than truly bring solution to the thwarting issue or ill at hand. Could there be more we don’t know or, do know but, either don’t want to know or have not had the support to know?
Our personal daily life and the lives of parents, children, other family members, friends, acquaintances, work colleagues, clerics, politicians and celebrities are proof enough of how it is and the fact is – not all is good; unless of course, we change the meaning of ‘good’ to such an extent that it means = marginally better than absolutely awful. Or if life itself is indeed good or seems to be good, it is never good for long – let alone ongoing or for evermore! Is it possible that all our solutions and the might of our technology and scientific advances have not truly worked because we have been too busy fixing the most obvious leaks and aberrations here and there while our true inner feelings get locked away sometime in childhood and remain there lest they might get in the way of our dogged attempts to keep things going – somehow, with grim determination and no matter at what expense?
The fact is that we do not ever stop to truly feel and take stock because this kind of honesty might just prove too alarming, even frightening and exposing of the fact that there are no true answers out there, only quick fixes, shrugging of shoulders, endless distractions, countless solutions and the general feeling that this kind of life is not truly worth living.
Enter ‘The Way It Is’. Some way into this book, you will come to realise that everything we have created is strangely and defiantly back to front and upside down, supported and cushioned by our addiction to a numbing kind of comfort and our need for convenience and off the cuff superficial explanations … solutions, but no real answers. Comfort is the willingness and ability to keep on going, no matter what, to avoid facing the fact that our existence on earth and our individual lives are not really working nor feeling all that great. The Emperor has no clothes, but who is willing to say so and admit that we have let ourselves go to such an extent that what was unacceptable or horrible in the recent past is now accepted as normal or at least as the unchangeable status quo one better put up with.
As you read this book you will discover a familiarity and knowingness about what is here presented, and a little later you will realise that the way things are need not be and that every single human being has a choice we have become oblivious to and that has been mothballed and not exercised for a very long time. You will also find that you have actually started returning yourself to you, or at least the gentler and more honest you. It is here where the book becomes alive and very personally re-awakening. As the author states --
“The entire presentation of ‘The Way It Is’, is aimed at just that: to tap into the doors where the light is waiting to shine out and to remind the forgotten Son who he truly is and thus open the door that leads to this truth. This is the door that leads to the house that opens its windows to let the light out and not in. For it is greater within it than outside of it! This latter realisation is the goal of every man who is ready to serve. To serve begins with serving self. Then and only then does the light begin to shine out. For what good is it to serve another from the darkness that is within?” ~ SB
