"I have searched frantically for contentment for so many years in so many ways, and all these acquisitions and accomplishments - they run you down in the end. Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death...
Letting go, of course is a scary enterprise for those of us who believe that the world revolves only because it has a handle on the top of it which we personally turn, and that if we were to drop this handle for even a moment, well - that would be the end of the universe. But try dropping it...Sit quietly for now and cease your relentless participation. Watch what happens. The birds do not crash dead out of the sky in mid-flight, after all. The trees do not wither and die, the rivers do not turn red with blood. Life continues to go on...why are you so sure that your micromanagement of every moment in this whole world is so essential?
I hear this argument and it appeals to me. I believe in it, intellectually. I really do. But then I wonder - with all my restless yearning, with all my hyped-up fervor and with this stupidly hungry nature of mine - what should I do with my energy, instead?
That answer arrives, too:
Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water."
---
"My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well - the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth...guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born...
"I think about the woman I have become lately, about the life that I am now living...liberated from the farce of pretending to be anyone other than myself. I think of everything I endured before getting here and wonder if it was me...who pulled the other, younger, more confused and more struggling me forward during all those hard years...And maybe it was this present and fully actualized me who was hovering [two] years ago over that young married sobbing girl on the bathroom floor...Knowing already that everything would be OK, that everything would eventually bring us together here. Where I was always waiting...for her to arrive and join me...
"I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen."
~from Eat. Pray. Love.
I wonder where else I'm being drawn to. I almost can't wait to find out.
Letting go, of course is a scary enterprise for those of us who believe that the world revolves only because it has a handle on the top of it which we personally turn, and that if we were to drop this handle for even a moment, well - that would be the end of the universe. But try dropping it...Sit quietly for now and cease your relentless participation. Watch what happens. The birds do not crash dead out of the sky in mid-flight, after all. The trees do not wither and die, the rivers do not turn red with blood. Life continues to go on...why are you so sure that your micromanagement of every moment in this whole world is so essential?
I hear this argument and it appeals to me. I believe in it, intellectually. I really do. But then I wonder - with all my restless yearning, with all my hyped-up fervor and with this stupidly hungry nature of mine - what should I do with my energy, instead?
That answer arrives, too:
Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water."
---
"My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well - the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth...guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born...
"I think about the woman I have become lately, about the life that I am now living...liberated from the farce of pretending to be anyone other than myself. I think of everything I endured before getting here and wonder if it was me...who pulled the other, younger, more confused and more struggling me forward during all those hard years...And maybe it was this present and fully actualized me who was hovering [two] years ago over that young married sobbing girl on the bathroom floor...Knowing already that everything would be OK, that everything would eventually bring us together here. Where I was always waiting...for her to arrive and join me...
"I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen."
~from Eat. Pray. Love.
I wonder where else I'm being drawn to. I almost can't wait to find out.
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