Recently, I saw a long line of ants walking along here, each carrying a piece of leaves. Leafcutter ants cut out leaves many times heavier than themselves and bring them to their nest to make a pulp for food. How do they already know how to do that?
When it’s time, a caterpillar spins a single thin thread of silk, attaches it to its body and a twig, and dangles itself there as a whole metamorphosis starts that forms a cocoon. Later, a butterfly emerges, still hanging on that single thread, and then can fly away. How did the caterpillar know how to make that single thread, where to put it, and when?
A seed falls into the ground, and then moisture envelops it with soil, and then something happens: its shell cracks and green plant life comes out. It grows into a stem and leaves that all have the same form, and later it grows out flowers or fruits. How does it know? I mean, you don’t have to marinate or dowse seed with chemicals or agents, with lectures or trainings, for it to naturally bring forth from within the form of a plant.
One day I walked into a church, and someone was preaching the Gospel from the scripture. My insides jumped up with the loud thought: I want to do that! Where did that come from? No one had explained or taught it to me. I didn’t take a course in it, didn’t take any nutrition supplements or mind altering therapies.
It’s all because everything is already made with the instructions inside.
There’s a great myth around: you have to put more inside of you to grow. More education, classes, degrees. More qualifications. More talks or lectures, more work or service to others. More food and drink or medication. More likes, more financial security. More theology or cool God/church stuff. And what we really are doing with it all is covering ourselves up with it. It all keeps us from experiencing shame and confusion – two things that our wounded-since-childhood egos war against.
I show a certain video to people in meditative times called the Man Who Was Afraid of Falling. He’s afraid first of falling out of the high-rise he lives in, so he moves to a two-story. That’s not enough, so he moves to a single-floor house. But even that’s not enough until he accidentally falls onto the grass outside of his house., into a bed of flowers. When he rises up, he feels at home. He didn’t have to cover up and protect himself. What he already was, what he already had, was everything he needed.
Why take time and energy putting more into yourself, covering up what’s already there? Why try to get a good position or be more secure or help others, always on the go, when your own healing is still waiting?
Don’t be afraid to come down and let go of the protections of a secure and successful place in life.
You already have what you need.
“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” (Jn 12:24-25)
ALM 