Can We Really Know Divine Will?

“My God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so…

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
- Thomas Merton.

“The fact that I think I am following your will doesn’t mean that I am actually doing so.” This phrase pops into my head often. What am I not perceiving, unwilling to see, or flat out ignoring that would lead me down a different path?

This prayer has sat on my desk for the last 22 years, seeping into my being, giving me comfort when I have felt incredibly lost which has been quite often over the years. Reading Merton’s words reminds me that being lost is so common in spiritual life, and yet modern spirituality has fed us the belief that a clear path is the highest attainment. Know your purpose, follow your path, find your passion are common refrains. These sayings miss the point — our purpose is to BE, everything else is just part of the journey. We are human and we may intuit what the universe wants from us, but as Merton says, that intuition doesn’t actually mean that we know and are doing divine will.

There is much pressure in our culture to be right, to know everything, and to figure it all, and yet this addiction to knowing and being right is often the very thing that stands in the way of our gaining wisdom and insight. Not to mention it often reinforces binary thinking, the opposite of a beautifully complex spiritual life. Lately, when I find myself embracing the unknown or just the first step of a journey (without knowing the outcome), I find moments of grace, beauty, and ease, the very qualities I was struggling to find in my certainty-knowing.

This big myth in spiritual life that clarity is easy and comes continuously with the whole journey mapped out with great detail is harmful and isn’t often what happens. What is often clear is only the very next step among our dreams and insights. The next step when taken with faith and action moves us further down the path of our lives. We can move towards grace or we can fall away from it, but all roads can lead to learning and deepening into our being.

I used to long for my purpose and path in life. But the less I have sought out the specifics and embraced my purpose as simply to be here at this moment, the less the specifics matter to me. I’m here to be a part of this world. Sometimes I make it better, and other times I think I am doing God’s will, but as my teacher Sobonfu wrote, I maybe falling out of grace. Only time, radical self-honesty, and the counsel of trusted wise advisors can actually show me which way I am facing.

How does one know they are following Divine will? That’s the thing — as Merton so eloquently wrote — we don’t. But the simple act of being willing to ask the question “Am I really following Divine will” is a big part of the discovery. To listen with radical honesty and self compassion is the beginning of walking this road of life with some understanding of our tenuous nature.

At the end of the prayer, Merton puts his trust in the Divine and in his faith of never being abandoned even in his moment of falling out of grace if it should come. And it will come, in small ways and potentially life changing ways. I find comfort in knowing this cycle is part of our being-ness. If we are lucky we have people among us that can guide our fall a bit more gently, or course correct before we hit bottom. We would have this built into our cultural fabric if we understood this falling from grace to be a natural (though difficult) event. Sobonfu wrote about this natural safety net when she shared about her village community, “If you have done great things and you start to fall out of grace, people are not going to be shocked or lose faith. They’re going to say to you, ‘Hey, watch out. Something is going on.”

So, my questions are, who says to you “Hey, watch out. Something is going on?” Whose wise counsel rings in your ear like the bell that cuts through the fog? What voice inside you is buried so deep that it’s wisdom barely reaches the surface? And finally, how much self-compassion has gathered within to be the bed you softly land on with your radical honesty and clarity for not-knowing? These questions can guide us in our path of life — falling in and out of grace — while we embrace the unknowingness of life’s mystery.