These truths are immutable. They might not appear to be true at times, but that is an illusion. When the sky is covered over with clouds, it seems to have disappeared, but the sky is always there and always blue behind the clouds. The sky’s nature and appearance never change; only the clouds prevent you from seeing it.

When the blue sky is not visible, you still trust that it exists, because you know the truth about the sky and the truth about the clouds. The same is true regarding the truth about life: Once you realize the Truth, you can draw upon that realization when the Truth is obscured by fear or a mistaken idea. You can remind yourself of the Truth, and that is often enough to regain perspective.

You can always be fooled again by the illusion cast by your thoughts, feelings, and desires, because you are human. There will always be ideas and feelings that seem very real, which can entangle you in their illusory reality. But once you know the Truth, you cannot be fooled in the same way or lost in the illusion for long, because you know that blue sky is behind those clouds and that, at some point, the clouds will part and the Truth will be clearly seen again.

The truth can actually be summed up in one sentence: Everything is unfolding perfectly. So, let us explore this great truth a little more fully.

First of all, notice what happens in your body when you take in this truth. The body melts into relaxation and gives a great sigh of relief, because if it is true that everything is unfolding perfectly, then all the striving to fix yourself and the struggling against life can stop. Finally, you can just be.

What it is that you get to be is your true self, which is in love with life—which is love and is life. When you stop trying to fix and change the way things are, you discover who you really are, and who you are is everything you have ever wanted to be.

The real truth, that everything is unfolding perfectly, is the exact opposite of the ego’s truth! A definition of the ego might be the programming that causes you to see lack and imperfection everywhere and that compels you to try to fix, change, and improve things, including your experience. This programming also compels you to seek solace in pleasure and seek happiness in desire-fulfillment to cope with the stress and suffering caused by this endless improvement project.

This project to improve yourself and to fix and change things is an effort on the part of the ego to keep you safe. The ego is dedicated to being vigilant about all the ways you might improve yourself or your situation. That is its constant focus. Even in the absence of any real problems, the egoic mind can easily enumerate many things that, according to it, need fixing or improving: “Lose five pounds. Be nicer. Take longer walks. Read more books. Eat more fiber. Get enlightened. Fix your relationship with your mother. Get a relationship.”

What is not always obvious about the ego’s suggestions, however, is that many are things you have little control over, although the implication is that you do. For example, is it really in your power to get enlightened or to get a relationship or to fix your relationship with your mother? These are tall orders for the little ego to fill! It’s best to leave such things up to something wiser and more powerful.

The implication that you can and should be able to make life be the way you would like it to be through your own efforts is a false assumption on the part of the ego, which is in denial about its own lack of control. The ego takes the fact that you do have some control in life to mean that you can and should have complete control, which of course is wishful thinking on the part of the ego.

As well-meaning as the ego’s lists may seem, they make you feel inadequate, burdened, overwhelmed, and like a failure when you don’t achieve everything on them. Such lists are a source of suffering more than they are helpful. But they do help the ego sustain the illusion that you are a self that is forever lacking, which gives the ego a reason for existing.

Most moments are filled with thoughts about what is missing or wrong and what you might do about it. The mind is in the habit of thinking such thoughts, and people are in the habit of taking the bait and agreeing with the mind that there are all these problems that need fixing. It’s not that there are not real problems that need to be solved and things that need to be fixed, but the mind creates problems where there were none.

The mind comes up with problems and solutions, because the mind was designed to do this. In so doing, the ego is trying to be helpful and is helpful sometimes. However, the ego often tries to manage people’s lives in ways that are not helpful and also not appropriate. It’s not that there isn’t some value in this aspect of the software, but for the mind’s suggestions to become a way of life gives the software too much power—power that it was not designed to have.

When you are no longer in the ego’s grip, all there is, is peace and the realization that everything is unfolding perfectly. But how will you discover this if you have been trained that not doing or not striving is equal to laziness, that such relaxed being and flowing with life is, in a sense, immoral, according to the ego’s values? When the ego is god, then doing is god and not doing or just being is the opposite of god, the opposite of good. Just being becomes bad or is at least seen to have no value.

The illusion is set up very cleverly to maintain itself, and it is maintained by beliefs such as these: Doing is good and just being is bad. Because beliefs are what maintain the illusion, it makes sense that beliefs are what must be examined—and changed—to become free of the illusion.

Let’s examine this idea of doing. Does “Everything is unfolding perfectly” mean that you don’t have to do anything or that you won’t do anything if you believe this? On some level, this is what the mind would argue, although if you examine this argument, it falls apart.

Of course you would still do things even if you believed that everything was unfolding perfectly. How could you not do things? It is impossible to do nothing. You would naturally do what you needed to do to survive, whether your mind told you what to do or not.

You do not need your egoic mind to tell you how to survive. The belief that you need it to survive is part of the illusion. The software working in the background takes care of basic survival without the egoic mind needing to manage your every move, and your own wise being does the rest. The egoic mind is the aspect of the computer-mind that pretends to be useful but isn’t.

If you believed that everything was unfolding perfectly, you would discover that you are naturally motivated by something other than the push and sense of lack of the ego. Without the ego’s motivation, the greater will—the flow—would move you, and always has to some extent.

When you are in the flow, just being moves naturally into doing when necessary and then back into just being when doing is no longer necessary. By just being, you are renewed, readied for, and informed of whatever arises next to be done. What that is, comes out of the flow, and just being makes it possible to be aware of that. When you are in the flow, you experience a natural cycling of being and doing that serves the flow.

Everything is unfolding perfectly means that whatever you do, even if it is motivated by the small will, is part of the perfect unfolding of the moment. Some would argue that some actions could not belong to the perfect unfolding. For example, could a crime be part of the perfect unfolding? The answer is yes, because the Perfection includes free will and allows for any possible choice you could make. That’s why it’s called free will. You are free to do anything.

Choosing whatever you choose is not a problem for the unfolding of life, because Life adjusts to and includes whatever you choose in the unfolding. By “adjusts,” I mean that Life, the flow, responds accordingly, so Life’s intent will continue to be fulfilled no matter what you choose. In this way, life is like a river: If a tree falls into the river, the river continues to flow in the same direction, but it adjusts its course slightly.

You see, you cannot change the flow of life dramatically. You can only cause it to make adjustments. You affect the flow, but you do not change the flow. You are not powerful enough to change it. The flow is proceeding in a particular direction, and it adjusts to your choices, but it is not changed by those choices.

All of the doing the ego engages in is like ripples in the river of Life, in this ever-unfolding Perfection. Like a child playing in the river, the child splashes, but the river is still the river, and it still moves in the direction it is moving in.

Your free will is not a match for the greater will. When the small will is not aligned with the greater will, the greater will always wins. Nevertheless, the greater will often allows the small will to get what it wants even when that desire is not aligned with the greater will, because the greater will intends for you to learn from your choices so that you will choose more wisely in the future.

For this reason, there are no wrong choices. All choices lead to greater wisdom, and what could be wrong with that? So, poor choices—ones that cause suffering—are part of the perfect unfolding of life. Such choices are an expected part of life and not a problem for the Perfection and do not mar it. When growth and evolution are part of the Perfection, then choices that lead to growth can only be perfect as well. The Perfection is such that it was designed to bring people Home to the realization of their true nature. Since all choices lead Home, no course that anyone might take can be off-course or wrong.