Nature is a great Guru. If we listen to it, watch its actions in silent surrender, it will teach and guide us to a place of inner fulfillment and unshakable joy.
Its way is kind and yet clear and, strong. It never stops to guide and yet, when we turn away from its teachings, it doesn’t’ try, it doesn’t push. It lets us wonder around until, in our despair we tune back in and listen carefully, bowing at its feet.
I find solace in its messages and am grateful for the simplicity of its teaching. My brother sent me photos of a strawberry in the different stages of its evolution. As I looked, I couldn’t help but notice the same pattern in our human life. I invite you to watch the short video I made of these photos and let nature speak quietly to your heart. Then if you want, carry on reading or go out in the garden and dance!!
From the moment we are born, we are what we are in our individuality; in the same way that a rose is a rose, an oak tree and oak tree and an apple an apple. We too are what we are and our character / personality has its own unique traits. In the same way that a rose or a tree reflect the beauty, strength and gentleness of life, so can we. The danger, we as human beings face is our resistance to the natural flow of evolution.
In its life a strawberry faces many deaths. It has to let go of being a seed to become a flower. It dies again as a flower to become an unripe strawberry and, as the sun shines the young strawberry dies, turning into a strawberry that will bring sweetness to any palette!
There is no other way for the sweet strawberry to come to existence but through many deaths. Now, I ask you, how many times have you held on so tight to a form of yourself unaware of what you are to become? How many times have you felt so fearful of change, so fearful of death that you have closed up from life and, become unyielding and rigid to the point that life could no longer pass through your veins? We fear the loss or mourn our past form, blind to the beauty we are becoming, blind to the beauty that we are. You see that blindness, just like bad soil or tough weather, turns the strawberry sour and stop it from ever reaching what it truly is.
I have faced a few inner deaths and although I initially mourned them, I started seeing that they are part of a marvelous journey that unravels the true tantalizing taste of life.
We start to suffer deeply when we are either still mourning a previous from of ourselves: (child, young, lover, wife/husband, mother/father, daughter/son, friend….) or when we feel we have not reached the full evolution we are meant to have or be. The latter would picture me on many occasions!! ‘C’mon, sweeten up woman, what’s wrong, why don’t you learn, why can’t you be …..?!’ How funny, how disastrously ridiculous!!! It takes time and there is absolutely no way to speed up the evolution process without damaging the outcome.
Nature Knows – Trust The Guru
We have been used to so much speed, wanting it all now. Fast food, fast communication, fast growing vegetables and animals…and now fast evolution, fast maturing, fast wisdom…I hear the guru say: natural, slow and timely evolution gives more favorable and scrumptious results.
We can enjoy all the stages of our evolution and stop being afraid of letting go of our forms, letting go of our old identities. We can start seeing that all these forms belong to the same unique being and watch how nature spreads its magic transformative dust on us as we blossom into our innate self, reflecting the divine in all stages.
When I look at the last picture, I am reminded that the journey of evolution is not really about me after all. It’s about serving, sharing, giving to all what life has made of us. A strawberry brings joy to the one that consumes it, a flower caresses someone’s eyes and an old tree becomes someone’s shelter. Let us allow life change us many many times, let us die in this love many many times.
As Rumi puts it:
Die die inside this love
And rise in Spirit.
Die, die and cut the ego’s rope
That holds you a prisoner.
Take an axe to the wall and
Dig a way out of the prison.
Die, die before the beautiful King
You will become mighty.
Die, die and rise out of this cloud
You will shine like the glorious moon.
Be silent, be silent,
For silence is the sure sign of death,
From your silence
Life will trumpet louder than sound.
With love,
Dorna 🙂