Sometimes I hear some spiritual teachings that all is well, that truly enlightened people aren’t concerned about things, that there is nothing wrong, that they are at perfect peace, tranquility, bliss, and that any emotion or feeling that things aren’t as they should be is unenlightened and ignorant. A truly enlightened individual has perfect equanimity in life.

I don’t think that’s the whole story.

Yes, ultimately I think things are ok, that the present moment is well, that Love wins, and God will be just fine in the end. But in the present there may be also much to DO to realize “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible,” and to work toward that better world we envision, “on Earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). We are the very means through which Love wins. There is simply none else to do it. God lives in us, and works through us, and Loves through us. We are God’s Life.

Some of the greatest spiritual figures in history, such as Jesus, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., were very aware and conscious of problems in the world, and often took dramatic steps to try and correct them, to set things right, to make God’s paths straight. They knew God’s will, and they busied themselves “repenting” the world, changing people’s minds, so that the Kingdom would draw that much nearer (Matthew 3:2; 4:17). They had personally seen the glory of God’s coming within them, and they knew it could be realized even more in the outside world. They weren’t sitting back in passive peace saying “all is well, just stay positive.”

No! They were deeply passionate about changing the status quo! It simply wasn’t good enough. Their meat and drink was to cure injustice, to heal pain, to alleviate suffering, to stop exploitation, to give sight to the “blind,” to liberate the captives and set the oppressed free, to Love radically and unconditionally, to lift all humanity higher, to help all people realize who they really are. There was a blazing FIRE in their bones that the state of the world could be much better than it is at present if we would but wake up our consciousness to our deepest Being (Jeremiah 20:9).

And so it seems the Divine is drawing us forward into action, into doing, into correcting, into repairing, into building, into solving, into gathering, into realizing that vision of a better world, a better humanity, a better Being.

Realizing is both a passive thing, and an active thing. It is a fully conscious realization of an ever-present reality, and yet it is also an action to bring things to pass or cause things to happen. It sounds paradoxical, and it is. The Christ/Kingdom has paradoxically already come, and simultaneously is always still coming (John 4:23; 5:25; 16:32).

All is well, but all is not well, but all manner of things shall be well, IF we work to make them more well. They won’t happen on their own. God/Reality/Life/Love is calling us forward into making that wellness a living and breathing reality in our world.