What Is the Will of God?

We often hear phrases like “It’s God’s will,” or “It was the will of God” when things happen—sometimes seemingly bad things, sometimes seemingly good things. “It is the will of God,” an observer might say, to someone experiencing disease or death, a natural disaster, a great achievement, or a stroke of good fortune.

But it can sound presumptuous to cite any of these as God’s will, because how is it possible to know what God’s will is?

What is the will of God?Michael Gottlieb, a master spiritual teacher and founder of Royal Way Spiritual Center, brings wisdom and an ancient perspective to that question.

“So how do we know the will of God?” Michael writes. “How do we know the divine will so that we can subordinate our ego-will to the will of God? Zen says that the true divine will is ‘that which is.’ Accepting that which is, whatever is, is following the divine will. Truer words have yet to be heard.”

The will of God is that which is.

God Is Not a Person

To appreciate the truth of this ancient teaching, it is important to understand that God is not a person. God is not a bearded man in the sky imposing his will on the everyday life of humans on Earth.

“When I use the word ‘God,’ Michael explains, “I do not mean the usual meaning that people ascribe to it. I can tell you only what God is not. God is not a person, not a thing, not a being, not anything we can conceive of. The experience of God is not of the mind. Since it is an experience beyond the mind, there are no words in any language to express it.”

A great freedom flows from this understanding. We do not deny God, but we also do not see him as a being who bestows favors or punishment. Instead, Royal Way views God as a mystery. “We can never explain the mystery,” Michael says.  “We can experience the mystery. Once we experience it, our knowing of God is at such depth and such fulfillment that nothing else equals it. God becomes a knowing beyond all other knowing. We can experience God.”

This is why Royal Way is dedicated to the experience of God.

How to Live the Will of God

To return to our initial question: What is the will of God? The teaching is: “The true divine will is ‘that which is.’” To accept that teaching is to follow the divine will.To illustrate what that looks like in practice, Michael Gottlieb tells the story of a blind Sufi master “who would not pray for his sight to be restored because, he explained, ‘The pain of not having the opportunity to do the will of God is greater than the pain of not being able to see.’”

That, of course, is the practice of a spiritual master deeply devoted to living the will of God.

But any of us can tap into the essence of that teaching and apply it to the vicissitudes of life. If we understand that all that happens to us reflects the will of God, we can accept life exactly as it is. Rather than fighting against reality, rather than bemoaning our circumstances, rather than wasting time and energy wishing things were otherwise, we are free to live life just as it is. We experience joy, beauty, sadness, and bliss because life brings all of that to us. But we don’t suffer from wishing life were different. We don’t fight against the will of God.

To live this way is to live without pain and confusion, which are, Michael teaches, “a direct result of our attempt to force our ideas of what should be on that which is.”

This is how Michael Gottlieb describes such a beautiful way of living:“We enter with eagerness to feel and taste the experience of each moment fully and embrace it lovingly. We discover sweetness where once was sorrow; harmony where once was stress, frustration, anguish, and pain. Most important, we discover our deeper self.”

Compassion and the Will of God

Michael Gottlieb was a deeply compassionate master teacher, extremely kind and loving. He was very clear that accepting the will of God was not to be interpreted with callousness or resignation. He illustrated this with the example of a starving man. Are we to see his plight as that which is? Are we to walk past him without helping him? Is it the will of God that he should starve to death?

Michael emphatically answers:“No. Because it is also the will of God that you feed him, and that may even be why you walked in this direction in the first place—so that you see him and feed him.” Michael taught that one of the key reasons we live in the world is, as best we can, to contribute to making the world a better place. That would of course include feeding the starving man.

Gratitude and the Will of God

There is an additional dimension to living life knowing that everything that happens to us— all that is—is the will of God. That dimension is gratitude. “True gratitude is a natural flowering of the soul when we connect and flow with ‘that which is,’” Michael proclaimed.

Connect and flow—not argue or complain or attempt to impose my own notion of what should be. When we connect and flow, “Then whatever ‘is’ is beautiful. Good is no longer defined in terms of what I want or what I need or what I think ought to be, should be, could be, or might be, but rather in terms of ‘that which is.’”To live this way is to live a truly grateful life.

This Is the Work of a (Happy) Lifetime

Understanding that the will of God is “that which is” is not the kind of teaching that one hears once and says, OK, got it. It is a teaching we can work with every minute, every day, and throughout our lives. Michael leaves us with this:

“This teaching of accepting that which is is the work of a lifetime. Whatever you understand today, if you keep working with it, next year you will have a whole new understanding. And the more you understand it, the more likely you are to lead a happy life.”