One of the things I’m really interested in, and always have been, is simplicity.
Dictionary definitions include "the quality of being easy to understand or do," "a natural state," "unadorned" and "clearness."
In the theological world, simplicity, specifically as applied to the nature of God in the teachings of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, means oneness or wholeness; a lack of separation. (You will find much discussion on this topic. Here’s a starting place.)
Simplicity is Oneness.
I am always looking at what simplicity is in our lives, and what gets in the way of it. (Even for this post, I’m asking myself, "How simple can I make this?")
Because as soon as I start to try to explain, I can make it really complicated, and I don’t want to. There’s beauty in simplicity.
We human beings can access our true nature, oneness, through the practice of simplicity. If we look for simplicity in our lives, in any situation, we'll find wisdom.
The thing that takes us out of simplicity is our intellect. We complicate things. We know that feeling, when our thinking has become complicated. It feels like popcorn popping or a pinball machine in our heads. There’s an oppositional energy. It's the indicator light of complexity.
And then when we experience simplicity, there’s a quiet. A feeling of landing. Connection. The tumblers of the lock find each other and there’s a gentle “snick” as they drop into place.
It just IS.
So, what would it be like to find simplicity in all areas of your life, including health, home, work, relationships, finances?
Last month, my daughter got very sick. One night, when we were in the hospital again and I was walking the hallway, having been there so many times already, I had a realization: This is just part of life. People get sick.
It's just the simple truth.
As the doctors were telling us they didn’t know what was causing the horrible bruising rash over her body, and they were prescribing steroid cream over and over, I found a simple, persistent truth in my own heart. It seemed simple to me that there was something that was causing the reaction, something in her system, and that the rash was fighting it. The steroid cream was treating the symptom, but not the cause.
Because that felt true to me, I just kept asking the doctors, "What’s causing this?" So then we –they – could keep looking. That seemed simple to me. Something was causing the rash, because the body doesn’t behave like that normally.
And because I persisted, the doctors finally did discover the cause and prescribed an antibiotic treatment that worked.
Simple is a feeling; a knowing that has a felt-sense to it.
The trick is to notice when we are in our "complicated" thinking.
Can we feel it and notice it, and once we notice it, can we fall into the quiet and then wait for the (simple) solution to emerge? Because it always does. A solution always arises when we connect with simplicity.
Life is like a geyser, forever giving options and solutions when we are open to receiving them. But we have to know where to look. We're not going to find solutions in our intellect. Our thinking will take us further away from the simple solution.
If you're looking for guidance on finding simple solutions, I would love to talk with you.