Several days ago, my mother-in-law (Tutu) sent a YouTube video entitled, “God Whispers” for me to watch.  In the video, the following text was set to music and accompanied by beautiful pictures:

Man whispered, “God, speak to me” and a meadowlark sang.  But the man did not hear.

So the man yelled, “God, speak to me” and thunder rolled across the sky.  But the man did not listen.

The man looked around and said, “God, let me see you.” And the sun shined brightly.  But the man did not see.

And the man shouted, “God, show me a miracle.”  And a life was born.  But the man did not notice.

So the man cried out in despair, “Touch me God, and let me know you are here.”  Whereupon God reached down and touched the man.  But the man brushed the butterfly away and walked on.

This is a reminder that God is always around us in the little and simple things that we take for granted.   The video concluded with the message: “Don’t miss out on a blessing because it isn’t packaged the way you expect.”

The Meaning of Life

The video was obviously intended to evoke an emotional response, and I was moved by its message and presentation.  The essential message of the video is consistent with a fundamental tenet in my evolving spiritual understanding – that life has no meaning, but it is loaded with great purpose.  That great purpose is to find and share the love in each moment.

The Cosmic Game of Where’s Waldo

I analogize this great purpose of life (finding and sharing love in the moment) to a cosmic game of “Where’s Waldo?”  In the silly picture books titled “Where’s Waldo?” a black-haired bespectacled Waldo (in his red-and-white-striped shirt and bobble hat) is hidden in a confusing picture that often makes him difficult to recognize.  That’s the analogy to our life situation – our daily exigencies and troubles confuse every situation and often make it difficult (if not impossible) to identify, embrace and share the love in the moment.

Love is always in the picture (hidden in plain sight) but we must train our eyes and mind to seek and find it.  Love may not be packaged the way that we want or expect it to be packaged, but it is always there.  Taking the bag of candy away from the crying baby may not look and feel like love in action to the baby, but every mother knows that she is acting with a heart full of love and the child’s best interest in that moment.

Love is the underlying unity behind the multiplicity of actions and manifestations in every moment.  Our charge is to still our mind and focus our intuition to be able to discern and recognize (train our buddhi to see) the love in the moment.  Once we have trained our mind to find the stillness in the moment, then we are changed and we can easily and readily identify “Waldo” in every picture.  Once Waldo is found in the picture, the page is “ruined” because our eyes immediately trace to his location when we return to that page in the book.  There is no longer a need to search for Waldo as we remember where he is on the page.

This is the same process when we have stilled our senses, and trained our mind to see the unicity of love underlying each moment.  That is the process that the sages identify as being born again – we are “changed” and our eyes immediately find the love in the moment (and they return to that love) without being distracted by all the surrounding confusion in the situation.

May we always see the love and light in all of our situations and interactions!  Namaste