This is a tricky life. It’s complex and often disheartening to live in this world.
Particularly for those who have come to establish a new way of being. For how can one instigate change without discomfort?
My favorite story of growth and change is about The Seed.
The seed grows in a bloom,
it is mostly comfortable as it holds on and is nourished.
Seemingly for existing… Then it is cast to the ground.
By wind or by rain or by animal, where it is buried alive. Its own substance pulling it deeper into the dark. Here it sits. Waiting. Listening. Contemplating in its way. Feeling for the right moment. The right combination of water and warmth until finally, it literally cracks open….
Its form torn apart from what it has ever known,
reaching through the dark blindly,
hopefully
toward some kind of resolution,
some reprieve,
where it can start to find equilibrium.
And finally,
when it is possible to decide that it will be in darkness forever…
It finds the sun.
It sheds its husk as it pushes up into the oxygen.
It turns its little face to the sun.
And now it is something it has never experienced before.
New and tender.
Completely vulnerable to its environment.
Indeed, at its mercy….
And if it has found a safe place to root,
it does.
It grows stronger and stronger
with each transformation,
with each paring,
it gains more tools.
It can be said that one major difference between the plant and the human is that the plant continues invariably (if it is alive) to accept. It is in a constant state of surrender, of grace, of humility.
One other difference between the two is that the Human, can continue to change environment- to make decisions in continuity with its newer understanding of what it needs to thrive, to feel whole and in the sun. With this power, the human has limitless potential. As it consciously pares away the shed skins, and the hostile environments, it holds more capacity for a deeper strength and therefore acceptance and surrender… Therefore- humility and grace and a sense of peace, whatever may come.
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