High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Growth’

The ice encased them, playing silvery bell-like sounds as it froze around their stems.  They watched as it transformed the world, singing and glistening even in the dim predawn light.

They were, they knew, near the end of their earth experience.  They had lived it all: the joyous bursting from their seed pods, the luscious stretching into the sun’s warm light, the flowering, the birth and nurturing of seed children of their own, and watching them go, to find their own places in the earth’s rich soil.

What a beautiful adventure it had been, better than they could possibly have imagined when they volunteered to come here.

They were told that as they neared the end, they would remember the shimmering realm from which they had come, the crystalline structures, the translucent light.  And these memories would comfort them as the pull of earth lessened.

Now as the ice thickened around them, the light of their home realm filled their dreams, merging with their memories of songbirds and butterflies, of warm earth rains and the fragrance of summer fields.  And they felt wholly satisfied and fulfilled, and oh, so very lucky and free.

At first, when I focused closely on the fuzzy little globes that decorated the bushes along the woodland path, I was surprised to see that they were, in fact, a cluster of tiny flowers.  “How pretty!” I thought.  They reminded me of the sequined Christmas bulbs my mother had crafted one year when I was a child.

But I wasn’t the only one who found them attractive.  As I looked more closely, I saw that they had drawn a whole battalion of tiny black bugs who were feasting on their nectar.

“Nothing’s perfect!” I laughed, and took their photo anyway.

The bug-laden flowers reminded me of a story I once heard about a certain band of eastern monks who always left one flaw in their otherwise meticulous works of art to reflect the imperfections that dot everything in the natural world.

“How wise of them!” I thought, “And how accepting!”  Standing as we do, just outside of Eden, one world removed from the gardens where perfection shows its face, we tend to rail against the flaws we perceive in our reality.  Something in us longs for perfection.  Our sense of it is so clear.  We war against ourselves for not meeting its standards. We punish others whose flaws seem even larger and darker than our own.  And so we create a downward spiral of darkness, feeding it with our anguish and blame.

The wise monks, on the other hand, simply look on the imperfections as a natural phenomenon, accepting them as an inevitable part of life’s expression in a material world.

Any true artist will tell you that their works always fall short of expressing their ideals.  What’s flawless in the realm of thought picks up debris in its translation to the physical plane.  The best we can do is to do the best we can, and then to celebrate how much we create that is good.

When we focus on what’s wrong or lacking or incomplete, our vision narrows, and our spirits contract.  We get locked into an imprisoning darkness of criticism, derision, helplessness and pain.  But when we focus on the goodness in things, we’re free to ask how we can make it even better.  Our creativity is unleashed, we reach for higher possibilities.  And thus we grow, and Eden seems not so very far away.

I’ve been watching the ferns grow.  When they first burst up from the earth, they look like tiny fern embryos, or little living springs of some kind, all curled up in tight little spirals atop their fuzzy stems.  But day after day, they relax more and more into the gentle spring air, their stems straightening as they grow, their leaves opening to the light.  Soon they’re great, proud fans of green, marching up the hill.

I marveled today at the sweet easiness of their unfolding, the effortlessness of their growth.  They just surrender to the life force and keep reaching for the light.

You have to look hard to find one that’s bent out of shape.  It’s not that they don’t have their irritations or causes for concern.  Bugs crawl up their spines and munch on their leaves, after all.  Pine cones bomb them from above.  And at any moment, a deer could run from the woods and crush them beneath its mighty hooves.

It’s just that they don’t spend their beautiful moments anticipating what troubles could befall them.  And so they have no defensive anger, no fear.  They have better things to do.  They can dance with the wind, for instance.  (That’s actually one of their favorite pastimes.)  Or listen to the singing of tree leaves and birds, or visit with the happy yellow flowers that pop up in their midst.

Their attention just stays focused on the ever-changing scene before them.  It proves their faith, supplies their needs, and brings them unending delight.  And so with a sweet easiness, they surrender to its fullness.  And the life force, finding no resistance, flows through them and they prosper and grow.

The instant the snow cleared—actually half a day before—there they were, the daffodils, shooting through the soil, stretching toward the light.  They’re such eager flowers, so full of the urge to surge forward.

Everything living thing feels it, of course.  We’re all propelled forward, toward higher, richer, more complex, more fully organized versions of ourselves.  We stretch toward greater wholeness, greater degrees of self-expression.

Some perfect image of ourselves, painted by the life force itself, pulls us irresistibly forward.  We’re endlessly becoming more, endlessly growing, endlessly shedding old versions of ourselves as life unfolds through us the next phase of our ever-expanding potential.

The key to drinking in the joy of it is to let it unfold at its natural pace.  Some of us are like daffodils, eager to flower in the first days of spring.  Some of us are asters or mums, slowing building toward a late season bloom.  The life force within you knows who you are.  Allow its surging spirit to move you at the perfect pace.  When it sings you lullabies, rest and build.  When it fills you with the urge to expand, reach, grow and flower.