Everything Is As It Should Be

I don’t remember exactly when this phrase became a part of my life — I think it was around 2019. I was sitting in meditation with a fairly empty mind and those six words blasted into my head.

You know the THX “deep note” bit that plays at the start of movies? This thing? That’s what it felt like, but with

blaring into the center.

Once I got up from the meditation, I felt a strange sensation that I think of as a knowing (or as some friends have suggested, a re-membering).

Not “knowing” like I know two plus two, or the name of Germany’s capital city. Rather, knowing like I know how to move my fingers, or how to breathe. I just got up and from that moment started walking around life deeply knowing that, well,

Everything Is As It Should Be

Since then, I’ve said the phrase often, and I’ve observed that it lands hard with surprising frequency. I recently got this message from a friend I haven’t seen in years:

Hi Andy, hope you’re doing fantastic. Just wanted to tell you that the mantra you gave me at [redacted, years before] “everything is as it should be” has stuck with me since then and has brought me a lot of clarity and peace. Thank you.

Another friend brings it up almost every time we see each other.

I sometimes express frustration, and whenever I do, I can trust my wonderful wife to look me in the eye and say, correctly and devastatingly, “but Andy, isn’t everything as it should be?”

(She’s right, of course.)

It resonates broadly, somehow, and has been extraordinarily helpful for me in making my default state much happier and lower in suffering.

I’ve wanted to write a post about the phrase since I started blogging again, but frankly haven’t felt like — and still don’t feel like — I can do it justice. But hey: might as well just ship something.

What does it mean?

Sometimes, the phrase can sound like fatalism, or passivity, or spiritual bypassing. If everything is as it should be, why try to do anything?

But no. It is simply a recognition that reality, in the present moment, is the only option you’ve got for this moment. The universe — all the forces of creation, every cause and effect and arising that preceded the moment — led to exactly this one. It could not have been otherwise.

This isn’t fatalism, because it doesn’t imply that the future is fixed. It’s simply an acceptance that the present is what it is — and that being upset about the present reality is a kind of madness, a war you can never win.

It does not preclude having preferences about the future and taking action accordingly.

You might ask: “if every future moment will itself be as it should be, why does it matter what we do now? I could walk in front of a car and everything would still be ‘as it should be’ in that next moment, right?”

The future will indeed be “as it should be” — but that includes your choices as part of the causal chain. You are not separate from the universe, watching it unfold from the outside. You are a part of the universe unfolding.

So, yes, it matters enormously what you do, because that is one of the causes that determines what arises next. The future isn’t fixed independent of your actions; it emerges through them.

You can prefer to live, acting on that preference (and as such, not stepping in front of cars), while also accepting that if you were to die, that too would be “as it should be.” It is not about eliminating preference or action; just about eliminating senseless suffering — eliminating the fruitless fight against the simple reality of the present moment.

You might also ask: “does this mean that horrible events in the world aren’t actually horrible? Because they are ‘as they should be’?”

And again, no. “As they should be” doesn’t mean “as I think are right”; it simply means “as they are, given the causes already in motion.”

In this moment, that reality is already here. Resisting its existence adds suffering; but seeking to change the future does not.

In Theravada Buddhism, there’s a book called the Visuddhimagga, written by Buddhaghosa in the 400s CE, which is basically a manual for their school of practice. On this topic, it says (emphasis mine):

Equanimity … is manifested as the quieting of resentment and approval. Its proximate cause is seeing ownership of deeds thus: “Beings are owners of their deeds.”

…

It succeeds when it makes resentment and approval subside, and it fails when it produces the equanimity of unknowing, which is that indifference of ignorance

“Everything is as it should be” is about, in some sense, equanimity. It is the idea that you need not resent nor crave what is happening. But, even so, you must take ownership of your deeds going forward.

Succeeding in equanimity — believing that everything is as it should be — has the quality of feeling at peace.

But a “near enemy” of this feeling is the Visuddhimagga’s “indifference of ignorance.” Successful equanimity (and the resulting peace) requires agency and accountability, without becoming indifferent to the future.

If you want to read a popular book about this very idea (in different words), try Michael Singer’s The Surrender Experiment. Two salient quotes (emphasis mine):

We are not responsible for even the tiniest fraction of what is manifesting around us. Nonetheless, we walk around constantly trying to control and determine what will happen in our lives. No wonder there’s so much tension, anxiety, and fear. Each of us actually believes that things should be the way we want them, instead of being the natural result of all the forces of creation.

By that stage of my growth, I could see that the practice of surrender was actually done in two, very distinct steps: first, you let go of the personal reactions of like and dislike that form inside your mind and heart; and second, with the resultant sense of clarity, you simply look to see what is being asked of you by the situation unfolding in front of you.

Singer is right: if we stop believing that things should be the way we want them, and instead just accept reality and then move into the future the way we want to, we feel much more at peace.

Try it; sit with it. Attempt to go through your day with this Way of Looking. What would it be like to live life knowing that

Everything Is As It Should Be

and also, at once, that you have a say in your and the world’s future.

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