To Harvest Self
I write at 7:45 p.m. MST on the continent of North America. For me, the sun set a couple of hours ago. For a person in eastern Africa, the Middle East, or western Russia, the sun is rising. Somewhere there is a place that seems to experience 12ish hours ahead of me in Time or more, and that’s because our location on the planet relative to its spherical shape, its rotation on its axis, and its revolution around the sun determines whether we experience light or dark.
This may seem fairly obvious; all I did was describe what science knows. Yet consider this in light of illusion. People on the other side of the planet don’t really experience the future. Although, if you’ve ever called someone when the moon is out for you and they answer in a noisy, crowded place that buzzes with aliveness, it may well feel like they are experiencing the future. Especially when your tomorrow is yet to happen, and you wonder what aliveness you will encounter when it’s time for the sun to rise for you.
But everyone and everything really exists together at this precise moment in time: what we call the Present. As many ancient philosophies teach, the Present is all that there is, built upon the entire past of Everything, always at the point where any future can happen. The Present is an infinitesimal glimpse that stretches to the Infinite in every moment that passes; right before it becomes the past, and right before it changes the future. And in an infinite universe, all time is really happening at the same time, because everything is everything (which seems straightforward, but definitely isn’t). Without a linear perception of time, it dissipates. But of course, we are human with human consciousness, and it is here that we move through the ever-moving flow of the Present.
Knowing that we exist at this precipice of possibility can be frightening, and it feels like there is a need to tread carefully and be wary of every move. If Life is like walking along the edge of a cliff, then there is certainly something to be said about being surefooted. Yet it is along and through the journey that we learn this sure-footedness, not before it’s happened. It is through trials and tribulations given to us in the Present that we strengthen our step toward the future.
We are not always going to make the perfect decision, or even a good one. Navigating the Present can be very difficult at times, like walking along the cliff through a thick fog. You will stumble and falter, misstep and trip, fall and have to climb back onto the edge. And sometimes, things outside your control will sweep out your feet from below you quicker than you know what happened. But the thrill of the walk wouldn’t exist without the possibility of falling. If you walked along in perfect rhythm forever and ever, it would get terribly boring!
This is why pain must exist. Without pain, there would be no pleasure. Nothing can exist without its opposite. This is the Yin and Yang of the universe. The black and the white, the night and the day, the sorrow and the joy. Understanding that each is necessary for the very existence of the other, and therefore the whole of Everything, helps us appreciate when we lose our feet and feel life’s terrible woes.
In these moments of falling or failure, we are always presented with opportunities to learn; opportunities to strengthen our step for next time. A lesson is like a seed planted in the soil of our souls. It is watered by the tears of our pain, and when we nourish a lesson in this way, it grows to create something new. When we truly accept a lesson the universe has given us, we accept the necessary pain that comes with it. When we accept the pain, we allow ourselves to feel it. Pain is energy like everything else, and it wants to flow its course. When we deny a lesson, we deny the pain, and the so the seed is never watered. Instead of growing toward the light, the seed stays trapped in darkness.
Each of us carries these seeds. Some more than others. Seeds left to darkness rot in our souls, and they leave us with scars and shadows that we carry through the Present. We are born with seeds, even if we do not realize it until much later in life. We come into this world with the pain and shadows of our parents and theirs, and a long list of people before them. Then we go off into the world and find an abundance of our own. Unearthing and healing from pain both gifted and found is a terrible feat, but a terribly important one if we ever wish to cultivate an abundant, thriving garden of self.
Walking through pain was designed to make us grow. It is through pain that we learn how to trust ourselves. It is through pain that we find the greater truths of who we are. We are never in control of the total situation of things (the Total situation is the universe), but we are always in control of how we move forward from where we are. When we accept and do not deny, when we embrace rather than reject, when we trust instead of fear, we grow. When we grow, so too does the garden of our soul, and its harvest is Love.
