By Gwen Juvenal

Happily ever after.

Or perhaps:

And I lived happily ever after.

That was my hope.

I don’t know that I ever said it that way. I was an adult. I knew life was complicated. I knew marriage required work. I knew people suffered and plans changed.

But I still carried a story about how my life would unfold.

If I was faithful enough, if I loved enough, if I did what I was supposed to do, then my life would continue along a path where I would receive my just rewards.

Marriage meant something.

Family meant something.

The future had a definitive shape.

And I knew who I was inside that shape.

Then, at about thirty years old, that story shattered.

What Is Your Happily Ever After?

Before I tell you what that was like for me, I’d like to invite you to bring your attention to your own life.

What is your happily ever after?

Not necessarily the fairy tale version.

Maybe it is not even something you have consciously named.

But what is the story you carry about how your life should unfold?

If you do the right things, if you love enough, if you work hard enough, if you remain faithful enough—what are the just rewards you expect to receive?

Maybe it is a relationship that will finally feel secure.

Maybe it is having enough money that you no longer have to worry.

Maybe it is your children being okay, or your body becoming healthy again.

What does that story give you now?

Does it give you direction?

Does it help you take the next step?

Does it give you somewhere to place your hope?

Just allow yourself to recognize the story.

You do not have to make it wrong or let it go.

Simply notice the shape it gives to your future—and perhaps the shape it gives to who you believe you are right now.

Falling Without an Impact

For me, when that shape shattered, the break in my reality was so strong that I felt as if I had entered a void and was falling.

Constantly falling.

But there was nowhere I was going to hit.

There was no impact waiting at the end of the fall.

And when I recognized that, much of the fear dissipated.

I was falling, but I had not been abandoned by life. I had been stripped of the ideas that had held me fast to an understanding of who I was and where my life was going.

Those coordinates had fallen away.

But life had not.

My children still needed me, and I could feel my love for them. I made food. I held them. I brushed their hair. I responded naturally to what was in front of me.

I was in an enormous space of not knowing, and I was responsive to life exactly as it was.

I was falling.

And I was making lunch.

People understandably wanted to help me decide what came next.

I was getting divorced. I had young children. I would need to work—or perhaps I would get remarried.

But when another structure was offered to me, my response was:
Why?

Why would I immediately recreate the very thing that had just fallen apart?

Reaching for another story did not make sense and felt untrue.

Returning to the World

Of course, I eventually had to enter more fully into the world again.

I had to earn money.

I had to make choices without the old story telling me who I was supposed to be.

That was where many old patterns and fears became active again.

How am I going to do this?

Will I be supported?

What am I capable of?

I don’t know how to do this.

Maybe I am not capable of that.

The opening had not erased those patterns.

Life touched them, and they became active.

I began grasping again, trying to figure out how I was supposed to do this and who I needed to become in order to do it.

I had experienced this vast presence, but I had not received a new story that explained everything.
I couldn’t say:

“Oh. Now I understand why I keep experiencing this.”

There was still an enormous space of not knowing.

And life kept asking me to enter it.

The Truth of Life Is Becoming

Reverend Gyomay Kubose writes in Everyday Suchness:
“The truth of life is becoming; in fact, everything is becoming.”

And a little later:
“Growth is change; it is the unfolding of internal life.”

The truth of life is becoming.

Not arrival.

Becoming.

That feels very different from happily ever after.

Happily ever after has a kind of period at the end of it.

We got there.

The story has been resolved.

Now please don’t touch anything.

But life keeps touching things.

We change.

When I hear Kubose say that the truth of life is becoming, I think about how much energy I have spent trying to make life stop becoming.

Trying to make something certain.

Trying to know what something means before it has finished revealing itself.

Over the years, I began to see my old patterns almost as if they were hidden in the dark.

They were already present within the sphere of my life—familiar ways of understanding myself and responding to uncertainty.

I could reach out and grab one:
I don’t know how to do this.

I am not capable of this.

I am not safe.

I need someone or something outside me to tell me what comes next.

When I fully identify with one of those patterns, it becomes the interpreter.

It tells me what this moment means.

It tells me who I am.

It tells me what is possible.

Buddhism calls this avidyā, often translated as ignorance. I experience it more as misperception.
I am seeing something, but I am not seeing the whole of it.

I may mistake an old pattern for reality itself.

Our practice gives us an opportunity to recognize that movement.

We may still reach into the dark.

The pattern may still arise.

But perhaps we can see what we are reaching for before we make it the whole story of who we are.

And perhaps our dreams can also be held this way—not as the whole truth of our lives, but as something that helps us take the next step.

Dreams That Help Us Take the Next Step
My guides have recently spoken to me about happily ever after.

The message was not that happily ever after is necessarily true.

It was more like:

Congratulations for creating something that helped you take the next step.

I found that deeply compassionate.

The ideas we have about what might be possible can help us move toward life when we cannot yet see everything that is waiting for us.

We create a picture of love.

A picture of belonging.

A picture of rest.

A picture of a life in which we will finally know that we have a place.

The dream gives our longing a form.

It gives us somewhere to place our hope.

Perhaps it offers enough stability for us to take the next step.

But as we are walking, and when we arrive, the invitation is to be with exactly what is.

The dream may have brought us here, but what we encounter may be much bigger than the dream that led us to it.

Life as it is can be so much fuller than the image we created when we first needed a reason to move.

Shattered Dreams and the Primal Vow

I was struck by something Taitetsu Unno writes in River of Fire, River of Water:

“All people have their private dreams of success and happiness, making vows to achieve them sooner or later. The goal, however, is elusive, and the vast majority of people rarely attain it. Now the Primal Vow works to salvage humankind’s heartbreaks and shattered dreams, transforming them into sources of a rich and full life. One then necessarily comes to realize that this unrepeatable life contains unexpected treasures and rewards.”

The dream I carried did not come to pass.

But that did not mean it had failed to carry me.

And when it shattered, the life that opened was not smaller than the dream.

It was much larger than anything I had known how to imagine.

Directly after that passage, Unno writes:

“The ceaseless working of the Primal Vow continues as long as there is suffering in the world, for its primary task is performing spiritual alchemy, transforming bits of rubble into gold. This vow is primal—in Sanskrit, pūrva—in the sense that it is prior to the beginningless beginning of time, taking in all beings unconditionally.”

The beginningless beginning.

What moves me is that the Vow did not begin after the dream shattered.

It was not something that arrived because I suddenly needed to be rescued.

It was prior to the dream.

Present within the dream.

Present when the dream shattered.

And present in the life that continued opening beyond it.

As I look back now, I feel enormous gratitude that I opened that deeply.

I had the unnerving and extraordinary experience of having the familiar stories stripped away.

And when all of that was gone, perhaps there was simply me.

But perhaps there was more.

Perhaps this was the Primal Vow—the beginningless beginning—not arriving to rescue me, but already present when everything else had been stripped away.

It was as if I had suddenly leapt into open presence.

But I had not created it.

It was simply here.

Innate.

Primal.

The falling had not opened me into it.

The falling was the sensation of open presence itself.

There was no ground, no edge, and no place I was going to land.

And yet this presence became the ground that allowed me to live without the ground I had known before.

It was here as I cared for my children.

It was here when I made lunch.

It was here when I returned to the world and my old patterns became active again.

It had always been here.

Sitting Within What Has Always Been Here

I would like us to sit within that for a moment.

If it feels comfortable, allow your eyes to close, or simply soften your gaze.

Feel the support beneath your body.

Bring your attention to your breath.

You do not have to change anything.

Perhaps there is something in your life that is not settled.

Something you do not yet understand.

A place where the story you carried has changed, or where you cannot see what comes next.

You do not have to create another story right now.

You do not have to reach into the dark for something familiar.

For this moment, simply be here.

Even if the ground you expected is not here, notice what is here.

Your breath.

Your body.

The people sitting with you.

The presence within which this moment is happening.

Perhaps you can allow these words:

I am being cared for now.

I am being held now.

Not when everything is resolved.

Not when I finally understand.

Now.

And perhaps beneath the dream of happily ever after, there is a longing.

A longing to rest.

A longing to belong.

A longing to know that you have a place within this life.

These longings are not foolish.

They are the calling itself.

If you would like, silently say:

Namu Amida Butsu.

Perhaps you are calling the Name.

Perhaps the Name is calling you.

Perhaps both are happening within the same breath.

Namu Amida Butsu.

This presence is here.

It has always been here.

When you are ready, feel the support beneath you again.

Feel your breath.

Feel the room around you.

And slowly open your eyes or lift your gaze.

The Beginning-less Beginning

We began with happily ever after.

A dream of the future in which everything would finally take the right shape and we could rest.

Perhaps we need those dreams.

Perhaps they help us take the next step.

We can be grateful for the story that carried us without requiring life to remain inside it.

Because the Primal Vow did not begin when we created the dream.

And it does not end when the dream shatters.

Its ceaseless working continues.

Taking in all beings unconditionally.

Transforming the heartbreaks and shattered dreams of our lives into something we could not have imagined from inside the story.

Happily ever after may give us somewhere to place our hope.

But the beginningless beginning is already here.

Within the dream.

Within the shattering.

Within the not knowing.

Within the next step.

The story may change.

Life continues becoming.

And the call remains.

Namu Amida Butsu.