A gift for a celebration. One day we, all of us, will recognise it.
We are so used to thinking that everything in us, everything around us, belongs to us. Everything is “ours”, we own it, are responsible for it. But there is another part that doesn’t conform to that sense of belonging, of being “ours”- a part that was there even before we were born and stays with us throughout life. It’s invisible, unknown, but there. Present. It doesn’t derive from us, nor does it derive from the earth. It’s been given to us as a gift, a very vital gift placed at the very core of our being, within our heart. An inner treasure, from a realm not of our earth.
Unless we were very sensitive as a child, or very fortunate to have spiritually inclined parents, nobody ever told us about this gift, or not in a way that was recognisable to our consciousness. Quite likely its presence has never been revealed to us. But it reveals itself, ever so quietly and subtly, because it is always present. For the most part we quite possibly don’t even notice it.
Because we don’t have a sense of “owning” it, because it was given as a gift, we can’t determine or control it. It’s not our prerogative to do that. But there may come a day ….. a day when it begins to reveal its presence and we notice it perhaps for the first time. And if that happens do we do that? Do we acknowledge its presence? Mostly not. We’re very busy with life. With our childhood, with education, our growing into adulthood, our family, our career. All necessities of life which cannot be ignored. Busy with all the consequent joys, dramas, considerations and stresses. But there comes a day, in whatever way, that we say “enough”, that we slowly or rapidly, depending on our individual life circumstances, start to become disillusioned with life, that we start to turn away, that we start to look for something else, something different, something better. And we start to search. We search and we search, everything and everywhere. It takes much time, much effort, much energy. Disappointments, distractions, failed revelations. Nowhere do we find the still-unrevealed object of our search. Nevertheless something still prompts us to continue. At the point of giving up, recognising that the elusive goal is not to be found anywhere on this earth – surrendering – we look in the only place we haven’t yet explored, where that something better might possibly be found. We start to look within. We turn around, away from the outside world. We begin to discover something else, quietly waiting within. A crucial point, a recognition. The gift residing within us celebrates this experience, comes to life from its patient and often long period of waiting, of apparent dormancy, and begins to inhabit joyfully the space we have opened within ourselves. It begins to reveal its presence, perhaps for the first time. And we, in our turn, begin to recognise the true object of our search, begin to nurture it, allow it to grow. In doing so we discover a path, a path through life, individual to each of us and yet upon reflection, somehow the same. A path leading us away from the old ways of life to a wondrous new state of reality! An unearthly reality but inwardly experienced. A reality beyond words.
Is that not truly a gift for a celebration!
