Tag: lesson

Letting the Lesson Unfold.

I watched a young man once by the water’s edge; his heart seemed weighted by the troubles of ‘world’ as he slunk further still into unrest.

Looking up, he sighed and said, “It’s the only place I can feel at home.” As if I’d dare to judge another wooded path soul.

He went on to explain his most recent trouble — the loss of job, the wounded heart and a spouse who ‘just didn’t understand.’ All leading him to this moment, right here.

I could see it in his eyes; a forever sort of searching – desperate to know the sanctity of inner peace.

“It’s not out there,” I smiled. Even though he was looking outward, I knew – his focus was locked within.

So often we view our lives in terms of an unwavering absolute –“If not this, then I could never be happy.” We lock in, unwilling to allow the heart’s expanse. We forget the greater aspect of being human.

Alexander Graham Bell once wrote that when one door closes, another opens. But that we often spend so much time looking regrettably upon the closed, that we fail to see the blessing of a new path, eager to unfold.

In these moments, we are pulled from the luxury of gratitude into a space where we are unwilling to forgive even ourselves. We harden our hearts just as its true growth begins.

“‘If we want there to be peace in the world,” shares Pema Chodron. “we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That’s the true practice of peace.”

We talked, he and I, for just over an hour. By the end, I could feel his energy softening – malleable to the lesson as it needed to be shared.

In peace…

Namaste ❤️

This Moment of Awakening.

I remember once hearing the story of a wooden block which sat above the entrance to a great meditation hall. Upon which was written the following Tassajara Zen verse:

“Wake Up!
Life is transient
Swiftly passing
Be aware
The Great Matter
Don’t waste time!”

Each day, the block bore the strike of a large wooden mallet — an honored tradition to call the students ‘home.’

As the years passed, the block was worn thin through each of its ‘sufferings’ — becoming frail and weakened, until the once powerful words faded gently into memory.

Eventually, only the block, now transformed, remained; its scars now testimony to the depth of the teaching.

Nothing in this world is permanent, my loves. And as I travel this morning along the same wooded path, I see – that even the great oak must make way for new seedlings.

In this way, life and all its lessons become a gentle unfolding. And our time here – a fragment of the greater lesson to be shared.

Life is transient, my loves, and swiftly passing…Do not squander these precious moments into worry.

In peace…

Namaste ❤️

The Lesson in this Forest Path.

My darlings, one of my favorite passages from author, Hermann Hesse – a reminder of our path towards ‘home.’

Every morning, whether rain or shine, I take to the paths nearest my home. I touch the trees and wander until my heart feels ‘righted’ once again.

I find my refuge here – beneath the canopies of trees and mottled bits of fractured light. A promenade of lambent luminescence, unconditional in its capacity to give — to lend its teachings to this forest path.

“A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end”

And I am wiser for it.

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Hermann Hesse