Be as the Clay on the Wheel
Dear Blessed One,
What if you were to completely surrender to life? Take a big breath, exhale, and then say, ‘okay, life, you’re in charge! I no longer want the driver’s seat’. It’s possible to live like that. As a matter of fact, not only is it possible, it’s so much easier! It’s what is meant by the over-used analogy of floating like a leaf on the river of life. Nothing to do, only to follow where life is leading you, even when it feels rough and out of control. Sometimes the form needs reshaping for a beautiful new something to be born.
I heard a story once of an Eastern village that was well known for its delicate and striking pottery. The huge urns were the most admired pieces and famous all over the world. As the story goes, once the urn was finished, the final step was to break it. The artist would then put it back together with gold filigree, turning what looked like a disaster into something exquisite and priceless.
You are an amazing work of art. Just as the potter’s hands hold, shape, and fold the clay, your life situations are molding you to the next highest version of yourself. Allowing Life to do what life does removes the idea of victimhood and dissolves suffering. Difficulties are truly evolutionary drivers; they only become problems when we resist. Each experience is an opportunity to discover more about what lurks in the bowels of our beings.
Resistance is the mind telling us ‘it shouldn’t be this way’. When we can, as Bentinho Massaro says, ‘have the guts to let go of our arrogance that we think we know what’s better for life than life itself’, the pressure that is caused by thinking it needs to be different softens.
Relaxing into life’s undulations, opening up to not knowing what the outcome of each experience might be, or what it ultimately means, creates a gap for curiosity to come in. With curiosity, perhaps even an experience of excitement, or at least intrigue, may arise. Life is the ultimate cliffhanger. We never know what this moment is shaping just out of our view.
As you begin to trust more and more in the wisdom of life Herself, remember that energy follows attention. Notice. Where is your focus? See if you can bring more attention to feeling and less to thinking. You can’t think and laugh at the same time, nor can you think and feel at the same time. Noticing when a story is running, then dropping out of the story and into the body as much as you can, allows awareness to meet Itself. This can happen in an instant, or there may be some more shaping, trimming, and firing necessary. Creating space between you and thought will illuminate the drama, the identification with story. Eventually, (or quickly) the witness and the One then merge.
Be as the clay on the wheel and allow the process of creation to happen. It’s happening anyway, why not let it? Once the cooking is done, you will become aware of what an amazing vessel you are for whatever the Potter is serving at the table of life.
Much Love and Blessings to you,
shellee
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
~ Kahlil Gibran