“Everything Happens For a Reason?”
by Kelvin Chin
Life After Life Expert & Meditation Teacher
Tell Neil and Jan Armstrong that when they ask you why their beautiful 2-year-old daughter Karen died of a malignant brain tumor.
Tell Marcus and Faustina Aurelius that about the 9 of their 15 children who died before age 10.
Or any of the other millions of parents who have lost their children at any age.
There is not a reason for everything. Not literally.
Sometimes stuff just happens. Accidents or mistakes or “just stuff” that may cause an unforeseen physical abnormality in the fold of existence do occur.
It’s called life.
And not everything in life needs an explanation or a “reason.” Sometimes — I would argue all the time — life is simply happening.
Within us and around us. All the time.
And sometimes we can make sense of it. And other times we can’t.
And that’s ok.
We can be happy just living life. We should be able to be happy — contented — living our lives.
But most of us are not.
So we look outside ourselves for explanations for things that don’t go the way we want them to. For reasons.
And we often make stuff up.
“Their baby died to teach them a lesson. To learn from. It was a good opportunity for them to.... They may not see it now. But they will.”
Really?
How heartless.
How about accepting that nothing goes perfectly the way you want it to all the time? How about being less about trying to control our existence by explaining away experiences that cannot rationally be explained or reasoned away?
And especially if you are a spiritual teacher, isn’t it a bit self-absorbed to think you can explain away every possible random experience in existence? Doesn’t that imply omniscience?
I get it though.
We try to reason and explain everything — even, or perhaps especially, horrific events that are out of our control — in a vain attempt to maintain a semblance of order.
Because no one likes it when terribly unpleasant things happen, especially to good people.
But sometimes it does happen.
And I have found the most effective way to develop a sense of contentment with the inexplicable and the uncertain in life is to “turn within.” To strengthen my sense of self from the inside out.
To expand my knowledge about myself. Which in turn has expanded my acceptance of the world around me. With all its quirks, irregularities — and yes, its seeming mistakes.
Look around us. If we’re truly candid, we see them all the time. And while we can “learn” from many of life’s experiences, some of them just need to be accepted as part of the mix of life.
Whether they are painful or pleasurable.
From the embracing of that realization…could come inner peace.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death,” “Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations On Living Life” and “After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within and coaching others in their self-growth for 40 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.OvercomingTheFearOfDeath.org or www.TurningWithin.org.