If the many thoughts that run through our mind can’t be trusted, what can? When we stop listening to the egoic mind, it becomes clearer that something else is moving life forward, something other than our thoughts, desires, and feelings—life is happening! The ego does its part in shaping life by producing thoughts, desires, and feelings, but much more is going on in life than that. While we’ve been listening to the egoic mind, life has been happening: suddenly the phone rings, suddenly we speak, suddenly we jump up to do something, suddenly someone speaks to us, suddenly information comes to us, suddenly an opportunity shows up, suddenly a person shows up, suddenly love shows up, suddenly motivation to do something shows up, suddenly an “Aha” happens, suddenly we do something for someone.

When we aren’t involved in our egoic mind, it’s much easier to notice and appreciate how life is already happening. When we are involved in our thoughts, many of them are about what we think we need to do or should do and when. Our mind creates and implements strategies for how to make things happen in life the way we want them to happen. The ego sees itself as the main force in life, as if nothing will happen if the ego itself doesn’t make it happen. Meanwhile, life is happening and bringing us the experiences, lessons, resources, information, opportunities, insights, and wisdom we need to unfold our plan.

Noticing what life is already bringing us is important because that indicates where the flow of life is going and where it wants us to go. If our ego is taking us somewhere else, we’ll end up out of the flow, and we’ll think that life isn’t good and feel like we have to work even harder to make things turn out right. Really, we just have to join the flow wherever it is and go with it.

Something beyond us, which also is us, is co-creating our life with us, and it has intentions for our life—it’s going somewhere. Can you think of instances when that was really obvious, when you felt carried along and everything just felt right? Life can feel this way much of the time; it doesn’t have to be a struggle. Life is happening. It happens to us, and it also happens with our help. We tune into where the flow is going, and then we contribute our part to the flow. We co-create with what is already happening.

In order to do this, we have to be aware of what is happening and not be distracted by what isn’t happening, which is primarily what the egoic mind is involved with: thoughts about the past and future, judgments, opinions, desires, fears, and other feelings. The ego lives in a parallel reality, a reality it creates mentally that has some relationship with reality but is primarily made up. There is reality, and then there is the egoic mind’s ideas about reality and the feelings that are born from these ideas. These are two different realities. If we’re involved in the mind’s ideas about reality instead of reality, we won’t be available for reality, and we may not notice how life is happening and what it wants from us.

Life is happening, but it’s not happening apart from us—we are part of life happening, and we are meant to be part of it. Life needs us to participate, and we can’t do that as effectively if we are lost in the clouds of our mental world. The reason that being present in the moment is so important is not just for our own peace and happiness, but because the moment needs us—Life needs us. Each of us plays a particular role in time and space.

From Trusting Life: Overcoming the Fear and Beliefs That Block Peace and Happpiness by Gina Lake