In the timeless pageant of Life throughout the cyclical procession of the seasons, the Angel of Endings always precedes the Spirit of Regeneration so that the innate qualities of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty may be born anew and revealed more skilfully and radiantly at every turn of the evolutionary spiral. Appearance, disappearance, and reappearance characterize the natural rhythm and flow of an emergent process guiding the unfolding of life in every moment.
We are learning to appreciate that life moves in cycles of in-breath and out-breath, with pauses and periods of stillness between the breaths. There are times in each of our lives when it becomes painfully obvious that we need to enter a time of introspection – our version of the ‘forty days in the wilderness’ experience – to release, reclaim and recover ourselves after a long period of outbreath and activity.
During these inward-looking periods, we are invited to examine ourselves carefully from many angles – our values and beliefs, the tidal pull of feelings, childhood conditioning, as well as those other patterns and behaviours acquired along the way on our life journey. It is important and healthy to periodically enter times of Silence as everything issues forth from the silence. Silence is the still point and synthesis of all sound and outer movement. Silence is the sacred womb out of which all new things are born. It is in the silence of our heart, that the Song of the Soul may be heard and where we sense its deep desire to express itself in new and powerful ways.
It is said that the longest and most arduous journey of all is that between the head and the heart – short as measured in physical distance travelled but long and seemingly never-ending when trodden as a personal Path of Liberation. Three months ago, I found myself entering a much-needed period of reflection in order to let go, recycle, and renew. Early on in the process, I invited my mind to live inside my heart and learn to see and hear with the compassionate eyes and ears of the Heart awakened. I was seeking to follow the doctrine of the Heart.
I recall a similar occurrence back in 1982 while living in the Findhorn Community in northeast Scotland. I had been Director of Education for a number of years and sensed that this role had become more of an administrative task rather than the original, inspiring educational calling. One day, I had a stark realization and knew in my bones the need to let go and recycle myself.
Stepping down from the Education work, I became a gardener once again – blessed with the responsibility of tending the original vegetable garden that gave the community world-wide recognition through the experiment in cooperation between humans, the over-lighting Devic or Angelic presences, and the Forces of Nature – the elemental beings.
Announcing that until further notice, I would not be offering workshops or speaking publicly, I immersed myself inside a daily focus of caring for the land. It was the right decision and after two years of a healing hands-on experience in the garden, I remerged with a new sense of life – a new sense of meaning and belonging – together with a deeper appreciation of our vital role and place in the greater scheme of things.
The Ageless Wisdom teaching underscores the impermanence of material forms and reminds us that death always precedes the regeneration of the form-life. However, not everyone understood this and there were friends who offered their condolences at my seeming ‘social demise and death’. For some, it was as though I had undergone a loss of status – a fall from grace with the shift from being Director of Education to a new life as a simple gardener. I had to explain this was a conscious choice to recycle myself, to compost old forms, and allow something new to emerge. In this same spirit of natural death and rebirth, I entered this recent time of in-breath and introspection.
One of the biggest challenges with our beliefs is that we can all too easily believe them to be true and infallible. Beliefs are more of a current interpretation and approximation of the truth that is conditioned by our personal chemistry, upbringing, and other imprinted biases than a fixed and final statement of ‘what is’. I have found that it is a delicate dance to hold beliefs as useful stepping stones on the path and not have them end up as our sole and fixed source of security and identity. To avoid becoming stuck it is necessary to regularly move our feet from one stepping stone to the next in order to make progress.
One of the tests of treading the spiritual Path entails learning how best to embrace a spiritual belief and be guided by a chosen doctrine without inadvertently becoming indoctrinated by the very creed we have chosen to follow and that we hold as essential and core to our life. I frequently ask myself: “How do we each continue to evolve and avoid becoming prisoners of our own mental constructs and adopted beliefs?”
Whether we call the questioning a time of ‘release and renewal’, ‘death and transfiguration’, or ‘crossing the burning ground,’ this necessary and periodic process of surrender offers us the possibility of recycling and healing the past through the light of Love and Truth while creating an open and fecund space in the heart in which something new may emerge. The path of personal liberation and freedom from attachment lies as the heart of the Buddha’s teaching.
We are being invited to walk that upper Middle Way where we are supported by the Wisdom of the Ages and yet, in the end, must be self-reliant and stand solely in the strength of our own sovereignty.
At this pivotal time, as one great cycle comes to an end with the crumbling of its outworn and unstable foundations and structures, the call from the Soul of Humanity is being registered in the heart as it invites us to enter a time of reimagination and reconstruction based on those principles and values that serve the highest good of all.
Appearance, disappearance, and reappearance – birth, death, and rebirth. These are the natural cycles and phases in the pageant of Life. It is the acceptance of the inevitability and gift of ‘endings and beginnings’ that allows the continuous and generative process of renewal to take place on Earth: epoch after epoch.
By Michael Lindfield