When the Universe Has Your Back… Literally

The real test isn’t holding the vibe, it’s laughing when you lose it.

Dear One (letter to the God in you)

Did you even notice?

No Friday post last week. Nine months of clockwork consistency, and then, poof. Gone. Did you hear the silence? Did anyone? Or was the absence of my voice just another tree falling in the cosmic forest with no one around? I did not expect the cosmos to budge, and indeed, no one did. Absence is invisible.

We humans are great at noticing ‘too much’ or ‘too little,’
and terrible at noticing ‘nothing’.

The glamorous truth is not that I went to Greece to eat feta with cats. I was nailed to my bed with an inflamed intervertebral disk that had me flat on my back, immobile, alone. 80 days or practice, and all it took was gravity and a rebellious vertebrae to shift the whole “universe is perfect” mantra sounding like a bad echo of the Cosmic Joke.

The holy trinity of “this sucks”: pain, loneliness and immobility.
Perfect test conditions. Campbell would be proud, a great example for stage 6 of the Hero’s journey. Ice pack for allies and gravity for nemesis. Ibuprofen quickly defected to the enemy camp, the first day it fought pain, the rest of the week it torched my gut. A classic trickster move.

The test? Well, can I keep the morale, the high vibe, the hard earned fruits of 80 straight days of meditation or am I going to spin out of control into the depression I came from (and worship Netflix like it was the holy grail of salvation)?

Spoiler alert: the answer is no. From that place Vipassana sounded like a bad marketing slogan: "Sit still and observe the pain”. F*, really? That's all you had? Thank you, I’ll pass.

I grabbed a book from Napoleon Hill “Outwitting the Devil’. Since God was of little comfort, I checked the competition. Perfect timing, right? Except the Devil in that book is suspiciously polite — not the pitchfork colorful version but a smooth operator in grey suit, whispering doubt. And doubt was exactly where I was living.

When Instagram said “the Universe has your back”,
I thought it meant something different than orthopedic surgery.

So here is my letter, God, and don’t give me your usual “everything happens for a reason” brochure. Please. That’s hopium. That’s sugar-coating. And if you tell me “the darkest hour is before dawn”, I might just throw my ice pack at the ceiling. But a little humor would be nice. If you can create galaxies, surely you can throw a joke my way when I can’t even crawl to the bathroom.

Once more, you floored me!
Gabriel

Art ©Joseph Feely

Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

---

---

Dear Gabriel,

Did I notice? Of course. The angels panicked. Emergency meetings were called. “Where’s the Friday post?!” Gabriel’s silence nearly triggered Armageddon. Luckily, most humans didn’t notice. They were too busy scrolling cat videos.

That’s the thing about absence, nobody applauds it.

You could miss a week, a month, a year. Silence is invisible. But you noticed. And you turned it into this. Which is what you do: fall down, curse, complain loudly, write about it.

As for your disk: consider it a spiritual prank. You wanted a meditation retreat? I gave you bed rest. Vipassana deluxe. All-inclusive. No walking meditation, no sitting posture — just lying down until you see the stars (or the ceiling fan). You did well, even Buddha would’ve filed for a refund.

You want humor? Here it is: humans are the only creatures who can lie flat, groaning, and still wonder whether the universe is perfect. Cats don’t. They just sleep.
A spiritual lesson? Here’s one: there isn’t one. Gravity wins, always.
You want empathy? Fine: I laughed with you, not at you. (Okay, also at you, only because laughter is the fastest way out of pain.)

Tests, allies, enemies, indeed, you’re in that stage. But the real test is not whether you can hold the vibe. The test is whether you can laugh when you lose it. That’s how the structure cracks, that’s how the light gets in. (Thanks, Leonard.)

And about Napoleon Hill’s Devil: cute book. But between us, I never outsourced doubt. You do that just fine on your own. Don’t scapegoat the Devil, own your stuff..

I won’t play the broken record. I won’t tell you “everything happens for a reason.” Nor will I tell you “the darkest hour is before dawn”. Sometimes it’s just a slipped disk. Sometimes the only reason is: bodies are fragile, gravity is rude. But you don’t need a reason to turn misery into comedy. That’s your magic, not mine.

So stop whining and write. Tell your readers you missed a post. Ask them if they noticed. Spoiler: most didn’t. Invite them to laugh with you, not at the pain, but at the absurdity of still asking cosmic questions while stuck in bed.

That’s your genius: to take the test, fail it gloriously, and still turn it into a story worth telling. That’s what I like about you: you are funnier than the saints.

Still upright (except when rolling on the floor laughing)
God

---

If you want to support my work:

• Subscribe — or even better, become a paid subscriber. Once I reach 100 paid subscribers (I’m already halfway there!), Substack will add a tag that could help me gain more visibility.

• Engage (free and powerful!) — Visit the website, find the post you enjoyed most, and leave a comment at the end. Extra karma point if your comment is impertinent, sassy or even contains a question!

---

PS: “Change Your Story, Change The World” is a storytelling endeavor that looks deeply into the psyche that creates the stories we live by—with the intention to help us shape better stories, both personally and collectively.

Because the stories we tell are the reality we live.