Preparing the Way, Episode 203
One of the characteristics of being human is our capacity to transcend ourselves - to grow beyond narrow conceptions of ourselves, to imagine and live into new possibilities, to unfold creatively into ways of living and knowing that give us a chance to bring our own gifts to others. It can be painful when we try to resist this happening, or when we try to walk the path of our own development alone.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might see and support one another in the process of dropping our leaves so that new ones can grow, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here's our source for this week:
Preparing the Way
So long as you haven’t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth. —GOETHE
To die is not a bad thing. Cells die every day. Paradoxically, it is how the body lives. Casings shed. Coverings fall away. New growth appears. It is how we stay vital. Likewise, ways of thinking die like cells, and we suffer greatly when we refuse to let what’s growing underneath make its way as the new skin of our lives. It is the stubbornness with which we refuse to let what’s growing underneath come through that pains us. It is the fear that nothing is growing underneath that feeds our despair. It is the moment that we cease growing in any direction that is truly deadly. When resisting this process, we become a troubled guest, moaning like a human crow. We double the pain of living when we try to stop the emergence that all life goes through. Imagine if trees never shed their leaves, or if waves never turned over, or if clouds never dumped their rain and disappeared. I say this as much to remind myself as you: Little deaths prevent big deaths. What matters most is waiting its turn underneath all that is expending itself to prepare the way.
Mark Nepo, from 'The Book of Awakening'
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash