"The tiny seed knew in order to grow..
It needed to be dropped in dirt..
Covered in darkness..
And struggle to reach the light."
I came across this saying and was absolutely amazed with the significance it has to humankind in a world of suffering. The need for maturity is much beyond saying what will help us be successful in business or with family. For the most part, we have to acknowledge that it is by failure that we learn the way to success. Otherwise I contend that it is not success that led someone to where they wanted, it was simply a hand-out.
Now I don't mean to come down on anyone who has inherited anything or to say that if you don't bleed and sweat for your success that it doesn't mean anything.. In fact, I believe those things to be a blessing that we should be very careful to be good stewards over. However, I am suggesting that we change our mindset on what suffering is all about.
In my own experiences, I have gone through a lot of suffering emotionally. I have had to endure the painful childhood of confusion of a mixed ethnicity, divorcing parents, being bullied, failing to be understood by teachers, religious/spiritual scrutiny, workforce discrimination, failed relationships, financial hardship, moral upheaval, and near-death events.
I do not consider myself to have had a hard life, because I was born to a nurturing family in an era of relative peace and in a country that isn't plagued with a health crisis out of the hands of the individual. Furthermore, I have confidence in my abilities and I am far from feeling like I can't make a difference in my own life. Having been in the presence of poverty of 3rd world countries, I know that the poorest I've been is nothing in comparison to the average of most people in the world around me. Having seen debilitating diseases affect people who didn't ask for the affliction, I know nothing I've gone through is nearly as crippling emotionally (especially since it didn't cripple me physically). Having seen the effect of abusive parents on many of my friends and strangers, I know I am very fortunate to have been born to the people I was.
In short.. I know my suffering is legitimate, but it isn't extreme.
Through a short time of three years, I've come to some radical conclusions of life that I couldn't force myself to realize in the twenty years prior. Sometimes I forget to recognize that many people are in a tough place in life that prevents them from reaching the light that will transform their lives. As much as it may seem I am trying to suggest what the light is, I'm not. There are many things in which we can say the light is.. I don't know what all the light really is. However, I absolutely know the things in which it is not.
One thing that I love about Metaphors and Allegories is how well it works with my intuition. I have a terribly hard time making sense of things in a linear fashion only because I don't think in such a way. I have an easy time making them up and I am easily hindered by people who explain things only as they are seen or heard because I am a kinesthetic thinker with a strong empathic sense.
I'm sure some people might call me an Indigo Child just because I fit every description, but I prefer to stay away from all that since I don't want to separate myself from the world as if I'm on a superior track of evolution. Though it might be fundamentally true, I don't know if it is or isn't a matter of fact. The point is that regardless of what I am or where I'm at, I understand the value of something...
That something is the struggle of life.
What is the nature of compassion? The nature of mercy? The nature of forgiveness?
How do all of those three things coincide in the same 'frequency' of the mind, ultimately affected by the heart and equally affecting the emotions of our future? Is it some kind of coincidence that when a person understands the struggle of that little seed, even if it does turn into a hideous weed, that the person still seeks to help that little seed become a useful part of the 'ecosystem'?
Those are a lot of questions, but they are all going somewhere because they all mean the same thing.
I don't want to stress the point that we, as a race, should be striving to obtain some higher understanding of ourselves through some misguided attempt to love everything around us (though it really doesn't hurt to make that a goal). What I am stressing at is the nearly obscene nature of maturity.
I wish I could find an example of a great leader or prophet who didn't struggle to the light. I wish I could find an example of pure innocence in this world, just as much as I wish it could correlate to perfection or an absence of chaos anywhere in it's timeline. As offensive as it may be perceived, I don't see anything in this world as innocent, fully mature, or perfect.
One notion that I stick to is that no matter how old we are when we die, even if we see triple digits to our age, we are never done growing. An old man can be taught, the enlightened can continue to see more light, and no one ever reaches a state of Omniscience.
It seems like a tragedy to the human race that the next generation is no better off than the last despite the growing amount of sophistication in this world. I suppose there are facets that they are, but it doesn't equate to a fulfilling life where they only have to maintain what they are given instead of desperately trying to grow out of darkness and see the light in the same manner of their predecessors. Such a thing seems to be a cruel joke to life itself.
I have resolved myself not to be content with mediocrity and I have also resolved myself not to worry about the struggle of everyone else being vanity. I know there are countless amounts of people who live in vain, never finding the light even to their last moments in this physical existence. I know there is much suffering globally that no amount of money, hedonism, or enlightenment can change permanently. I know that half of the struggle in life is to help ourselves first before we can ever hope to help anyone else. And I know that being resolved about certain things has consequences that brings more suffering.
Yet I'm becoming less interested in a fight that is against nature because I am finding value in understanding that there is an ego that ensnares the true self with the lie that we can bring an external change without first addressing what is inevitable and necessary.
If it must be said, my point is that we organisms are going to grow or die. It is one or the other, it can't be both. There is an exception to this rule.. We can see it in biology in the form of the physiological response to danger. Though most people wouldn't know the difference, because we are conditioned to live this way, we have two main modes our physical bodies operate. It is either in "Protection" mode or it is in "Growth" mode. The easiest way to understand this is how the body shuts off a lot of functions that facilitate growth when their is a perception of danger. On top of that, the body begins a process that enables 'super' human feats when in "Protection" mode. The most obvious is the Maternal response to protect offspring; an obvious trump of the Fight response over Flight even if it means self destruction. Furthermore, it is in these moments we hear about fragile little creatures overpowering their normally dominating environments or predators and we even see a change of behavior that we would never conceive to be normal without the danger.
Then, like some waving of a magical wand, when the danger has subsided the body shuts off the "Protection" mode and things return to normal: feed, grow, reproduce.
There is a lot of Hard Science behind this.. I don't think it would do any justice to the facts to try to explain it here. I just figured it needed to be summarized to make my point more clear.
Now I can pull it all together..
Though we fight to grow, our struggle is not our testament to our suffering, we also forget that growing is a struggle in itself. Do not let affliction be the method to growth, let it be the testament for the need to continue to struggle. Fight when it is necessary because growth has turned to death, don't let your life be a testament of being nothing more than war.
