The Fool Within

The wisdom of the Divine is foolishness to us,

and our wisdom is foolishness to the Divine…

(a little paraphrase from the Good Book)

It is April Fool’s Day as I write—one of my favorites. It is the day to celebrate that what we often think is the highest and best is not at all what the Divine has in mind. The Divine as Trickster fools us, even when we think we have put aside all of our ego and only want what the Divine wants, watch out! The Beloved likes to pull pranks! These Divine pranks are not, of course, intended to harm, but to point out to us where we have over-estimated our importance, put too much stock in our own plans or ideas, or are convinced that our ways are the best ways (for everyone!) 

The ability to laugh at our own seriousness seems to me the best medicine to heal what ails us. The hyena, the blue jay, the coyote are all animal medicines that embody this laughing fool that winks at us, even where we are the most vulnerable, to see if we still get the joke—that ultimately all is well, ultimately all is Divine, ultimately nothing matters, ultimately nothing can harm us. So what’s with all the kvetching? the handwringing? the angst?

To be sure, the curve balls life can throw at us can seem pretty harsh, the suffering- severe. But if we can step back a bit to the cheap seats in our mind and embrace the bigger picture, these curve balls can then be seen as our greatest teachers. From this stance, curve balls are no longer things to fear, but our best paths to more love, joy, peace, freedom, abundance, compassion—to heaven—right here, right now.

It is always amazing to me that nothing that I planned as an educational path or career path has come to pass. Not one goal, except that I did graduate from college. But the college that I went to (and then the graduate school), what I majored in, what I did as jobs after, have always been totally different than what I intended. I have been steered into so many unexpected twists and turns—but ultimately better, beyond anything I could dream or imagine from my limited self (to paraphrase the Good Book again)—that I have learned to trust the Fool. I have learned to surrender. And surrender. And surrender again. Which simply means letting go and going with the Flow.

This is why I go just a wee bit away (okay a whole lotta away) from the law of attraction, and visualization boards, and the entire manifest your dreams meme in our spiritual culture. These things are all good, and have their place, and make good points, but they are still too limited. You cannot imagine what the Divine has in store for you. Period. We might get glimpses of it; we might catch an inkling of it, but still our minds will diminish even the interpretation of what it could be that the Divine wants to bring about through us, and by holding onto and even demanding the lesser, we can push away and miss the greater.

So allow the Fool who is within and without, to trip you up a bit so you can be freed from your limitedness and open to the better Whatever. Allow yourself to deeply rest and deeply play, as Martha Beck exhorts, because the new world order will come in no other way. Allow yourself to dream, to imagine, to visualize, but then totally let go of all of it, and enjoy the moment that is. For who knows what the Divine Jester will do?

“What you can plan is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make enough plans.” David Whyte