radiance

When we hear the beckoning of the heart, we are being asked to open.  

Sometimes this heart-speaking will be quiet; other times, deafening. In this domain, the force of silence is as powerful as pot-clanging loudness.

We are being called to some action.   Whether it appears grand in nature or of a tiny dailyness, every request of the heart takes us directly into the center innermost part of some thing, thereby returning us to the heart of everything.

When the heart next summons,  we will have the choice, once again, to open or to remain closed.

Often, the possibility of opening collides with the impulse to close.  Both are real; we are both. To describe these moments: standing on the edge of our territory of comfort, wanting to dive, and then pulled back, often as though by some physical force, to the apparent safety of familiar ground, my teacher says we are being, 'wrestled into smallness'.  There is real desire to open, but then the gale force of the fear of the vulnerability of the opening pushes us to the ground, nails digging into dirt.

At this 2013 Spring-time, flowers that have been fed by sun and water in their below-ground chamber begin to stir, being called upward, cracking from seed and pressing their first green into the springtime air.  I am reminded of Anais Nin’s oft-quoted words about the flower, flowering-forth: ”And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

There is  a yogic teaching about the nature of the rose...in order to unfold as the open rose, the flower can no longer be a bud.  This is simple, descriptive: the bud must cease to exist in order to take its new form as the open flower.  In order to open, we must give-up our closed state. In order to open, something must die.  

So, the next time your Heart calls you to new places, you will, once again, make the choice whether to risk your next opening.  Perhaps, this time, you will allow the fertile death of your next birth.  Allow the death of your smaller state.  You will not mourn your smallness.