A Zen Moment

We are in an early spring, and as I look at the deciduous trees that will soon bloom with new life, I’ve been thinking about destiny.

When you look back at your life, do you ever feel that there were moments when you were lost? Is lost even the right word? Because the seed underground doesn’t know it’s becoming a tree. It experiences only darkness and the pressure of the soil above it. If the seed had a mind, it might think that it is dying. Darkness permeates its world until it cracks the shell. The burial is the beginning of its rising.

As humans, we often think we are supposed to know all the answers. We are supposed to have clarity about our lives. We want clarity at the beginning of a confused state, but clarity actually only comes at the end. This is often difficult for us to accept.

But what if our mind, like the tree, can only exist in darkness? That’s hard to accept since we worship the mind.  The mind that gives us planning and strategy when life gives us darkness. There’s a place for the mind, and planning, I’m not saying throw away all logic, but it can’t do all of our thinking for us, nor does it prevent us from the experiences and the life we are meant to have.  Life is not a mechanism but an organism. You are not separate from it.

We all have had moments when we thought we were dying, when something essential in us experienced an end, the end of who we had outgrown.  The shell, much like the buried seed, cracked, so something else could emerge, as a rebirth.

Have you ever really listened closely to music?  It creates tension and then resolves it. The note wants to go somewhere and pulls toward the next note until there’s a release. And this goes on, we are the same way, always in the middle of a phrase, reaching for the next note.

So the question, am I on the right path, is like a note asking am I in the right melody.  You are the melody.

When I was very young, I used to play a game with myself. I would close my eyes to see if I could walk through the house.  Arms extended, hands out in front of me, shuffling along carefully, trying to see how far I could go without peeking. I held a delicious fear of the unknown, testing myself, could I do it? Determined, not knowing when I would bump into something. Every step was an adventure. With every step, a question arose: how far could I go, what’s here, what’s next, will I make it? I knew the house and had walked it thousands of times with my eyes open.   But with eyes closed, it became new again. I was alive with an exhilarating thrill.  It became more interesting; it was a discovery.  

I didn’t realize it then, but I was teaching myself something. I was teaching myself that you can move through the unknown; blindness doesn’t mean you stop walking, it means you walk differently. You feel more, you pay attention more. You become more sensitive to the subtle signals, much like when your life is not explaining itself to you. I was acutely aware of the texture of the floor, the scent in the room, the air around me, and the sounds that told me where I was.  This is how we develop blind trust. And blind trust is the only kind of trust there is. Trust with full vision isn’t trust; that’s calculation, the kind that tells us I can see that this is safe, therefore, proceed. That requires no courage. That requires no faith. That’s robotic, that’s not real living.  Real trust is stepping forward when you cannot see where you are going. Real trust is saying yes to your life even when your life is not explaining itself to you. So why do we keep demanding that life show us the floor plan?

We fill our minds with useless questions: tell me if I’ll be happy, tell me if I’m wrong, tell me if this will work out, tell me if I’m wasting my time?

Instead, life keeps saying, Walk. I’ll catch you or I’ll teach you. Either way, you’ll arrive somewhere. And that somewhere will be the place you choose. It will be yours, created by your falling. Take that step into darkness, this is destiny, you in motion and arriving anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8StKOyYY3Gs