‘What is meant to be, will be.’ That is the quote, if it really is a quote because I have no idea where it comes from other than from my grandmother and mother, that I live by. It has served me well when I have remembered it, and when I haven’t and I have tried to control the outcome, it is invariably the thought I always bring myself back to.
The saying ‘what is meant to be, will be’ to me is about surrendering and giving over to God/Source/Divine/Universe however you want to call the creator of all things. I for one don’t have a set name, I don’t especially think it matters, but I know it exists. It have felt it, I have felt the love from it and I have felt its presence and the strongest time I felt that was when I decided to just surrender. It is about trust and faith that everything in life really is happening for you rather than to you, that the best outcome is guaranteed if you just give in. Stop fighting against the tide, and allow it to carry you to the shore. Even in the worst of times, life is happening for you. Very often, those worst of times have come about not because God/Source/Divine/Universe somehow has it ‘in’ for you, but because you have it in for you. We are all the creators of our own lives, of our own destiny but it’s in the not understanding this that we create our own problems.
Am I guilty of trying to control the outcome of a situation? I cannot begin to tell you how much that is true of me at times. When I am faced with great uncertainty, I will immediately try to create certainty by either getting myself busy ‘doing’ or by asking spirit for the answer. Repeatedly. And while the answer never fails to come, I don’t always hear the message within it until there is radio silence. So, then I go back to being busy ‘doing’. What my conscious mind is trying to do is create the certainty that the brain craves when, actually, the answer is to trust and to lean into my Higher Self. To listen to my soul. To believe. To know that ‘what is meant to be, will be’ and no matter how hard I try to make the outcome happen, it will only happen in its own way and at its own time. Usually because there is a serious lesson to learn in the situation. For me, ironically, I think one of the lessons I have had to learn is to let go of control in uncertain times.
Whenever I do try to control the outcome, the more I try to control the more out of control I become. So, the situation goes around and around in a circle, maybe getting slightly better for a moment but then sinking back into the despair again. This happened to me, naturally, when I was first diagnosed with cancer. Of course I tried to control the outcome, and I did what I was distinctly told by medical professionals not to do – I Googled it. What I found sent me in a spiral (of course), not because the prognosis was bad but because the chances of it returning were well over 50%. I hadn’t even dealt with that occurrence before I started panicking myself over a future one. The other thing I did was use psychics to give me the answer, the phoneline ones. They all reassured me that I would be fine, and of course I was, but after a couple of hours the need for a really clear vision of the outcome would become overwhelming again. I would spiral. And then, I would think about ‘what’s meant to be, will be’ and start to feel calm again, in a really strange way. Why would that help me to feel calm when on the face of it, it is taking the outcome out of my hands. That the ‘fight’ we are told to put in is removed, ostensibly, by that quote.
The funny thing is with this, the absolute opposite is true. In surrendering, in giving all your cares and worries over to God/Source/Divine/Universe you are working towards the solution. You are calming down your parasympathetic nervous system out of fight, flight or freeze and into rest and digest to begin with. You are reducing the stress by saying ‘there is an answer, I just don’t know what it is yet’ and there is a comfort in telling yourself that there is an answer. There is always a solution to every problem, without fail. But sometimes, when we are in fight, flight or freeze, we don’t see it. All we see is more of the problem until our Reticular Activating System only filters in more examples of the problem. Until it shows you only that you are stuck in a loop of the problem. And we don’t hear our Higher Self giving us the advice, the inspired actions, the encouragement we need that can help us find the answer. The little whispers, the synchronicities that abound around us all the time if we would just listen and notice them for what they are – nudges in the right direction.
When we relax into surrender we are not, as I say, being passive. There is nothing passive ultimately about surrendering to God/Source/Divine/Universe, because you will always be provided with inspiration to do things. So, for example, one time I had a real tax problem. The company I worked for outsourced all the tax work to do with salaries, and they had apparently completely mucked everything up for me. When I found out, it was with a letter from this outsourced company telling me that they would be taking the back tax out of my salary until the deficit was cleared, which meant a very minimal income for me for some months. Something I simply couldn’t afford. I panicked, I had no idea what to do. I remember driving home from work, my mind racing with all the worst case scenarios playing out. How I would lose my home, my car, my entire lifestyle. And I felt as though I was in an utterly hopeless position. I was completely in flight, fight or freeze, and as a result I did not know which way to turn. When I got home, I had to take the dogs out for their evening walk. I remember that the first part of the walk I was still caught up in this panic as I ran through the scenarios in my head. But then, with their antics and other things to distract me, I stopped going through that awful spell. By the time I got home, I felt a little bit calmer and I remember thinking as I walked down the road ‘what’s meant to be, will be’. After dinner, I was sitting on my sofa – I can still picture it now, years later – when the answer hit me from nowhere. A friend of mine was an employment tax specialist. After speaking to her, explaining the situation, she told me what the company were seeking to do was illegal and to contact HMRC. I did, and the whole matter was resolved at no expense to me. I hadn’t been paying the incorrect tax, they had been sending HMRC the incorrect amount, so the debt was theirs and not mine. Which they knew.
There have been many times when I have thought ‘what’s meant to be, will be’ and the outcome of the situation has always ended up favourable. Times when I have either had inspired actions whispered to me, or times when things have transpired in my life that have resolved the issue. In that surrender, I have allowed the different ways in which a solution can reach me. When I have tried to control the situation, though, I have ended up stuck in a repetitive cycle until I have surrendered. Then, things have shifted and changed and worked out in my favour.
Something I would always do a lot better to always remember, rather than have to be pushed to remember!
Louisa Simpson 