As evening came and the kids settled down, an unexpected thought arose in me.
“I used to think a lot about enlightenment and how much I wanted it. I don’t think about it so much anymore. Have I given up or lost some of that spark?”
Then immediately I remembered a dream I had many years ago, maybe a decade ago or so. In the dream I am standing at a high place, maybe a mountain. A woman, who has a kind of an angelic/spirit-guide kind of vibe, asks me,
“Can you see the river?” To which I reply,
“I can see the ocean”. And indeed, I can see the ocean far out towards the horizon.
“But can you see the river?”
“I can see the ocean”. The space between where I stand and the ocean is somewhat obscured. Cloudy perhaps. The ocean is the only thing I am able to make out.
“But you can you see the river?”
I’m very glad to remember this dream tonight. To me this dream has a deep meaning. I consider the ocean to symbolise God, Oneness, full realisation. Whereas the river is the path to the Ocean. The river is windy, somewhat unpredictable, and takes many expressions. And in the dream, the river was hard to make out; in fact I couldn’t even recognise it.
Then I realised that I don’t think about enlightenment much because I’m on the river path. Perhaps back then, when I was standing at an “objective view” from a higher place, I was still safe from the intricacy and complexity of the river. Certainly, there is much less bird’s eye “larger seeing” on the river path. In the river, one cannot see much other than what lies right ahead.
I think when we understand this, there is more of a willingness to be earnest in our learning; in our meeting the challenges and hidden blessings of our life as they are now. This is the river path: the path where we meet the twists and turns, the high rapids, the boulders, the unfamiliars and the unknowns. Here we learn how to swim and develop all kinds of skills we never had. We become more adoptable and make friends with our fears.
My younger self wanted to “be there”, to arrive at the goal asap. But what else can I do but be where I am? Can I rush the path any more than I can jump from the mountain to the Ocean? I don’t think so.
I think there’s a bit of a loss of innocence in accepting this. We can’t skip steps and so there’s not much else to do other than to give ourselves completely to the path.
It’s somewhat of a sobering acceptance. It means we are a bit more willing to trust however long it takes. Perhaps we stop even thinking about how long it takes because we realize how necessary it is to be where we are now. Perhaps along the way we learn skills and develop qualities of character we never thought were important or necessary.
Evolutionary Necessity
Jeffrey Wolf Green often spoke of this idea called “Evolutionary Necessity”. In short it’s a way of saying that there are some experiences that are necessary for our own soul evolution. Even challenging ones. And this is not necessarily because we have done something wrong, or as the result of past actions per se, but rather, it’s because our own growth has reached a limit relative to who and how we have known ourselves to be. And thus we need new experience in order to continue our evolution.
Relative to evolutionary necessity, we might judge our current conditions and how the river is moving right now because it’s not what we wanted or we didn’t have to deal with the things we are dealing with. And therein lies the point: what we never wanted is quite often where the waters of truth will wash the arbitrary line of identity we once drew in the sand.
For people like myself, perhaps those who have had more of an orientation towards transcending the complexity of human experience, getting involved in the world can feel like getting lost in the illusion. And yet, for so many of us, more worldly involvement is exactly what has to happen.
Sometimes the purpose is to learn how to move from a deeper place of soul-agency and spiritual clarity. What is a higher expression of divinity: a soul who needs to abstain from the world in order to maintain the purity of its connection to love, or a soul who demonstrates its pure connection by way of how it navigates the 10,000 experiences of this world? The latter is for certain more difficult, probably a lot more messy and offers many opportunities for getting lost, but is exactly how we strengthen our spiritual immune system; it’s how we truly learn to live as the love that we are. This is the gift of the river path; the path that we cannot control or understand but will give us exactly what we need to wake up.
A Place for Personal Striving
Any one spiritual ideology cannot be applied indiscriminately in all moments. Sometimes “letting go to the flow” is not the appropriate response. Sometimes, we find ourselves in thick murky water and it seems like the river path has run dry. Just surrendering and letting things be as they are will not help us. This is an example of where our spiritual idealisation can be misapplied. Sometimes we have to surrender to the necessity of our own personal involvement: to give more of ourselves to move the process along.
In that personal involvement we learn a valuable lesson. We learn that there is a place for muscle, for personal striving, for personal will. We learn that the gift of this path is in our becoming co-creators. Neither forcing our way through nor passively expecting it all to work out for us.
This adaptability and openness to where the path takes us, no matter what that may look like, is truly an expression of spiritual maturity even though it may at first feel like we have departed from an idyllic innocence.
This adaptability truly just chips away at the ego, making us more of an instrument for God’s will.
I don’t know where I am on this river path. I cannot see the high place I used to stand on and I cannot see the ocean. I am here now, humbled by the ways life has and continues to wake me up. I trust in the path and I am ready to be what Love would have me be. Your will is mine.
Here’s a snipped from a song of mine
Creator and creation are as one
Trust in myself, thy will be done
The guidance I seek it lives in me
For every drop of water belongs to the sea
The holiness of you is all that I be |