Spring is bursting out all over. New buds are pushing out
through the bark of last year's branches. Roots bore deeper into the earth
while new leaves, like pendants, wave in the wind. Sun and rain chase each
other like birds across the brightening sky. The whole earth seems to be
awakening from silence and shadow. With the patience of Job, life emerges from
the dormant forms of last year's leavings, rising like the sun and moon -
inexorable, indomitable, selfless, and unafraid.
In our own
lives we too feel the restless stirring of new life emerging. We sat down to
write a quick note to our dads and a nine-page letter poured out. We began
humming a tune under our breath at an important meeting and wrote a song
walking back to the car. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home and
threw ourselves into a favorite recipe, the whole house cast under the spell of
roasting garlic and rosemary. We faced down our old two-headed enemy resistance
and avoidance and finally tackled that ugly pile of papers on our desk,
reveling at last in the clarity afforded by uncluttered space and asking
ourselves, why did I put that off for so
long? Then we pick up the phone and make that difficult call - the one
that's been haunting us for months, even years - and learn the truth that by
simply cultivating willingness we allow the irrepressible healing of love and
forgiveness to well up and wash clean the wounds we have made.
It is the
nature of all life to expand. In Indian philosophy, the word for ultimate reality
is Brahman. The Vedas, the Upanishads,
and the Bhagavad Gita teach that Brahman is not a god; it is the
undifferentiated source of all things. Our idea of God is a stop-gap measure, a
mere personification of this primal energy. Brahman
is the underlying nature of reality itself, beyond all the dualities of being
and non-being, existence and non-existence, God and not-God. Brahman is the ground of being, the
sacred, formless source from which all forms are made. It is within all things.
Everything is a manifestation of Brahman
- every object, every thought, every particle of light. The whirling of
electrons around nuclei, the energy of consciousness, the poppies in the field,
the blue whales in the sea, the spiraling galaxies in the endless night, even the
fabric of space and time itself - these are all Brahman. Therefore, so are we.
The etymology of Brahman
is clear and revealing. The Sanskrit word Brahman
comes from brih, which means "to
expand" or "to grow." It is the nature of God-consciousness to continuously
move outward, to manifest itself as ever-changing forms. We are one of those
forms. When we come to understand this, we can finally be at peace and stop
resisting the never-ending restlessness within us, that unsettling habit of
never being satisfied, of always wanting more, of feeling that no matter how
great this moment is there must be yet another accomplishment to achieve,
another mountain to climb, another song to write.
And in our
calm and clarity we move closer toward understanding another fundamental truth:
growth hurts. There can be no growth without the necessary dissolution of
previous forms - forms that once meant so much to us. Growing means forever
letting go.
Seeds burst
and die as new sprouts emerge. Flowers whither and fade as fruit takes form.
Growth is always a kind of death, and to deny this is to live forever in a
debilitating lie. We must say yes to loss and transformation. We have no
choice.
With every
new achievement comes a host of new problems. You want fame? Now you can't go
anywhere without people bothering you. You want money? Now you long for the
simplicity of the lean years. You want success and mastery? Now the demands
others place on you become staggering. But they can never equal the ridiculous
demands you place on yourself - the nagging, haunting worry that you are never
good enough, no matter what you do.
But all of
this is healed in the light of wisdom - the wisdom each of us holds deep within
the folds of our awareness. We are enough, because we are the presence of
God-consciousness in the world. We are the Presence of eternity in the field of
time. While the forms may come and go, that which we really are was never born
and will never die. Brahman is Life.
"Life is not the opposite of death," writes Eckhart Tolle. "The opposite of
death is birth. Life has no opposite."
Jesus,
Buddha, Krishna, and every other wisdom teacher worth his or her salt spent
their whole lives begging us to acknowledge this truth - we are not who we
think we are. Wisdom means breaking free of our limited and limiting perception
of ourselves and moving into the deeper realization of our identity with the
infinite, eternal ground of being, what Jesus called the Father, what Buddha
called Emptiness, and what Krishna called the Self. When asked how he healed
people Jesus answered, "It is not I who do these things, but the Father in me.
And all of these things you could do, and more."
Creating is
costly. It hurts to be more. Most of us spend our lives cultivating comfort,
asleep to the fact that comfort is the enemy of greatness. To expand and grow
into what and who we really are is to stretch beyond our former bounds.
Sometimes we feel like we're breaking apart - and we are. Learning to love
discomfort is the final hurdle. When we cross that hurdle and transcend our
childish complacency we are born into a realm of limitless possibility. Knowing
this, we can weather change with serenity, equanimity, generosity and
compassion.
The next
time you find yourself surrounded by abundance, yet still yearning for more,
you can smile and know that two contradictory truths are at play: we already
have everything (because we already are everything), yet still feel the
ceaseless expansion of our natures. The temporary forms that make up "the
world," including us, are forever emerging, expanding, colliding, conflicting,
aligning, receding, dissolving, and re-forming. It is our sacred right and duty
to participate in this glorious emergence, this concert of co-operation. We are
not to fear, avoid, or resent this process. We are to practice loving kindness,
even and perhaps most especially toward ourselves. We are to join in and guide
with a light touch this flowering and fading of which we are an inexorable
part. This is our beautiful, glorious, heartbreaking life. These are our tears.
These are the things we make. This is the light we bring with the flame of our
growing awareness. These are our gifts. These are the things we must in the end
let go. These are our growing pains.
Peter Bolland is a
professor at Southwestern College where he teaches eastern and western
philosophy, ethics, world religions, and mythology. After work he is a poet,
singer-songwriter, and author. He has a band called the Coyote Problem. He also
leads an occasional satsang at the Unity
Center and knows his way around a kitchen. You can write to him at
peterbolland@cox.net