"The next time I go looking for my heart's desire, I won't look any further than my own backyard. If it's not there, then I never really lost it to begin with. " Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939)

The Ruby Slippers metaphor points to a wonderful reality I have come to rely upon.

I hold these truths to be self-evident:

There are an infinite number of directions I can go from right here – right now. Each is a solution laying at my feet. Half match Universal Principles; half do not. Those matches, when followed, result in favorable outcomes every time if I am patient and persistent.

I am becoming less and less attached to specific outcomes.

Rarely do I guess correctly what an outcome will be and never does it match in detail. The less detail a situation contains, the greater my ability to guess correctly. When I bill certain clients, I can often guess, in a general way, the amount of the check and how promptly I may be paid. But there is always some degree of “the unexpected”. In working with man made objects I often come close. Manufacturing production lines are based on this ability to control outcomes in a structured but limited way. When working with the complex interactions of society and nature all bets are off.

When I judge reality on how closely it matches my expectations I am really judging my ability to expect the unexpected. My “expector” is broken not reality.

The revelation is this: I can experience unexpected favorable results every time as long as the solution passes the filter of a set of Universal Principles. Or simply stated: do the next right thing and stay out of the results business. Let go; Let God.

If a proper solution to an issue I want resolved is not laying at my feet, I pick another solution and implement that while I wait for more to be revealed. As a result, I get more accomplished with little stress.

The Chinese Taoist concept of Wu-wei (no action) applies. As Alan Watts defines it, “Wu-wei is thus the life-style of one who follows the Tao, and must be understood primarily as a form of intelligence – that is, of knowing the principles, structures and trends of human and natural affairs so well that one uses the least amount of energy in dealing with them.” (Tao: The Watercourse Way, by Alan Watts (1975)).

The focus here is to deal with situations, conserve energy, gain understanding and apply principles NOW rather than planning, implementing, hitting targets and achieving predetermined results. This is at the heart of the differences between Eastern and Western beliefs and faith.

Reality is the unexpected. Everything about it generates wonder. My sense of Wonder is the barometer of my spiritual state of being. This inanimate matter I am made of, now animated and realizing its existence is not happening anywhere near me in the universe. We send out probes and listen with large radio telescopes and so far – nothing.

There is so much right about this planet – so much to wonder upon that all my problems disappeared in one instant – when I renamed them “situations”. To the rest of the world, if they are aware of them at all, my “problems” are just situations. Indeed, I never solved a problem. I converted them into situations and then addressed them and dealt with them.

Today I look forward to seeing how these Spiritual Tools will handle the unexpected situations.

Today, I no longer care if things do not turn out the way I planned as long as the results are beyond my wildest dreams.