"The universe is made up of experiences
that are designed to burn out our reactivity, which is our attachment, our
clinging, to pain, to pleasure, to fear, to all of it. And as long as there are
places where we’re vulnerable, the universe will find ways to confront us with
them. That’s the way the dance is designed. In truth, there are millions and
millions of stimuli that we are not even noticing, that go by, in every plane
of existence, all the time. The reason we don’t notice or react to them is
because we have no attachment to them. They don’t stir our desire system. Our
desires affect our perception. Each of us is living in our own universe,
created out of our projected attachments. That’s what we mean when we say, 'You
create your own universe.' We are creating that universe because of our
attachments, which can also be avoidances and fears."
Ram Dass
Leave it to the luminary Ram Dass to argue for solipsism as the benevolent work of omniscient universal forces. Here the spiritual teacher (also a Jew, btw) offers a complex, but ultimately comforting and also kind of trippy, philosophy: we all render the world into our own, personalized, micro universes in accordance with our particular fears and attachments. So the hardships we face are not random, nor are they unfair: they're simply the external reflections of our inner demons. We latch onto certain things that result in hardship because they resonate with some part of our souls that requires work. And if we can learn to face these difficulties as personalized lessons from the universal tutor, maybe it's possible for us mere mortals to reach Gandhi-like levels of magnanimous love - for ourselves, for each other, and for our flawed, shared world.
Read the rest of Ram Dass's quote here.
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