Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Elizabeth Lesser: Opening To the Meaning and Mystery of Our Joys and Sorrows


How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.

It's not always about survival, this life we are given; it's usually so much easier than that. It's about trusting the eternal life force that is flowing within us letting that force lead the way through all of the inevitable changes we will face across the span of our time here on Earth.

Every day we're given a choice: We can relax and float in the direction that the water flows, or we can swim hard against it. If we go with the river, the energy of a thousand mountain streams will be with us . . . if we resist the river, we will feel rankled and tired as we tread water, stuck in the same place.

When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead.

Adversity is a natural part of being human. It is the height of arrogance to prescribe a moral code or health regime or spiritual practice as an amulet to keep things from falling apart. Things do fall apart. It is in their nature to do so. When we try to protect ourselves from the inevitability of change, we are not listening to the soul. We are listening to our fear of life and death, our lack of faith, our smaller ego's will to prevail. To listen to your soul is to stop fighting with life to stop fighting when things fall apart; when they don't go our away, when we get sick, when we are betrayed or mistreated or misunderstood. To listen to the soul is to slow down, to feel deeply, to see ourselves clearly, to surrender to discomfort and uncertainty and to wait.  

Grief is an expression that you loved well.  

The great loneliness... like the loneliness a caterpillar endures when she wraps herself in a silky shroud and begins the long transformation from chrysalis to butterfly. It seems we too must go through such a time, when life as we have known it is over when being a caterpillar feels somehow false and yet we don’t know who we are supposed to become. All we know is that something bigger is calling us to change. And though we must make the journey alone, and even if suffering is our only companion, soon enough we will become a butterfly, soon enough we will taste the rapture of being alive.

What will matter is the good we did, not the good we expected others to do. 

Your path is your own, but you must walk side by side with others, with compassion and generosity as your beacons. If anything is required it is this: fearlessness in your examination of life and death; willingness to continually grow; and openness to the possibility that the ordinary is extraordinary, and that your joys and your sorrows have meaning and mystery. 

If you're interested in the door to the heavens opening, start with the door to your own secret self. 

― Elizabeth Lesser 
 From Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow 

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