Our life seems to place before us an endless series of decisions.  Some of them look to be trivial–will it really matter if I cross the street here or a hundred meters further on? And some appear to have the potential to shape our entire life–questions about partners, families, professions, health, or places to live, for example.  Such choices open doors to the unknown, because they set in motion changes whose consequences we cannot predict and which often we are powerless to undo.  We weigh our options according to various measures, but mostly they boil down to a question of happiness–will this bring happiness to me or to those I love?  And sometimes, if we have begun to awaken to the spiritual side of life, we may ask, in this circumstance what does God want me to do?

There is a beautiful saying in Gayan, Boulas: Do not fear God, but regard carefully His pleasure and displeasure. The wise, including King Solomon in Ecclesiastes, have indeed talked about fearing God, but it is surely meant in the sense of having the utmost awe and respect for the Divine.  As one Sufi poet says, ‘Whoever knows Him does not fear Him,’ for He is love, and as a loving parent has made us from Himself. The only real peril, then, is that in knowing the Divine we will lose our ‘self,’ but one who observes himself carefully will think that is no great loss.

So, if we are faced with a large decision in our life it is certainly a good principle to ask, what would please God?  But in order to properly answer the question, we have to be able to see Him in our surroundings–not only in the pleasant parts of nature, but in every form and being, including of course in our loved ones, and not forgetting ourselves.   If we think of God as some detached, distant Observer, sadly shaking His long, white locks over our foolish errors, it does not help us out of our confusion.  If we feel the Divine Presence, loving and living, all around us, and we seek to offer happiness to that presence, we are in truth giving expression to our own being.  In the Vadan, Chalas, there is this saying, which could be of great help when we  are faced with uncertainties:
The reason why man seeks for happiness
is not because happiness is his sustenance,
but because happiness is his own being;
therefore, in seeking for happiness,
man is seeking for himself.