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Recently
while in meditation and intending for some inspiration, I was
given this metaphor for looking at life as a jigsaw puzzle and
I thought I would share it with you.
Since I was a
small child I have loved to do jigsaw puzzles. Some of my
fondest childhood memories are sitting at a card table in our
"Reception Room" and spending hour upon hour working on a
puzzle. I loved the
challenge and loved the
feeling I felt upon completion, or just finding that "one"
piece I had been searching for.
For the sake of this article I would
like to take you on a journey into the jigsaw puzzle of your life. Let's
say someone (God) has just given you a beautifully wrapped
present. You untie the
ribbon and rip off the
paper and there before
you is a box that says "Jigsaw Puzzle of Your Life". You see a
picture on the cover of
this box that can only be described as "your life, you, moment
by moment". As you look at the cover of the
box you see all the choices you have made up until
this point. You see yourself as a small child that has grown
into adulthood. As you you look at this picture
you may feel too scared to go any further. You do not want to uncover and piece
together your life up
to this point and into the future and so you politely thank the person who gave it to you and then put it in the closet never to be looked at
again. Many people do this. They live their life in a form of rote mechanical
function. Day in and day out they walk through life without looking at how
the pieces fit
together. They don't
look to see the magic and miracles of the pieces. They are not
awake to the beauty of the puzzle.
To more fully
create your life through Surrender:
1) Take your puzzle
pieces out of the box.
Sometimes you just need to take your life "out of
the box" and look at it
with new eyes. If you never take the pieces of your puzzle out of
the box then you are walking blindly
through life. You will go through life as though things
are" happening to you" instead of understanding that you are
the creator of your own puzzle. You create the picture and
outcome of your life as you accept and Surrender to the
goodness of God. So take your life out of the box and
Surrender to a new picture if you don't like the picture you
see.
2) Next place your puzzle pieces upward in a
positive direction (positive thought). Picture facing up! If
you place your puzzle pieces face-down in a negative
direction (negative thought), you will be working harder and
harder to find the
pieces that fit together. It helps when you can look at the "picture" on the face of the puzzle piece and match it to a picture
that is similar in nature.
3) Next you might want to
put all the pieces that
are similar into groupings. As a metaphor, these groupings
might be relationships, health, finances, career,
and spirituality. I put all the perimeter pieces (the ones with straight edges) around
the outside so I can
begin to create a frame for the puzzle. In this metaphor these perimeter pieces are your
hopes and dreams and the goals you have for your life. This is
the frame for your
life. Make sure there
are no holes.
4) Over the course of putting the puzzle together, there are inevitably one or two pieces that you will have
trouble finding. In my own life of puzzle piecing, I find that
I may be looking for the wrong shape. It might have fallen to the floor and be lost within the carpet. I search and search,
spending way too much time looking for that one piece.
Eventually I might just give up and walk away and do something
else or I might start looking for another piece to the puzzle. What happens more times than not,
is that when I finally stop looking, the piece magically shows up right in front
of my eyes. I may have looked a hundred times at the same spot on the table, my eyes scanning and
scanning for that one piece, but only when my eyes were ready
did they see
the piece. All of a
sudden I look down and there it is right in front of me. Or I look to the floor and there it is gently hidden in the patterns of the carpet. I am again reminded
that I was trying too hard. I needed to Surrender and put my
intention into finding the piece and then, let
the piece "find me".
When we let go of the
attachment to the
pieces of the puzzle of
our life, we are allowing God to find us and meet our
needs.
5) As you work the puzzle
you will begin to see different patterns to the
picture. You might have to concentrate on a certain
portion of the puzzle in order to get to the next
part. Your relationships, your health, your finances, or
your spirituality. Try not to let the puzzle get too
unbalanced. Work from all directions at once being ever open
to new opportunities in all areas. In the same breath, the
puzzle will be harder to complete if you jump around from one
place to the next. Spend time on a section and put the pieces
in place but remain open and give time to all areas. Sometimes
when I am working on a puzzle I find that "lost" piece when I
begin to work on a different area.
6) Finally you will
begin to see a pattern to your life. What is your pattern? You
may see that your life's pattern is all of your making,
controlled by you. You may see a mixture, times you had faith
and allowed God to create the patterns and times when you did
the controlling. In
the world of spiritual
Surrender it is best to be a co-creator with God and the Universe. Actions are your creation.
Outcome is Gods. Open your eyes to finding the pieces to the puzzle, completely trusting that
they will be
there as you look
for them. Walk through
life knowing and believing that you are truly held in
the palm of God's hand
and your puzzle is falling into place as you co-create
with the Divine Puzzle Creator. |
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