Whose World are we Living In Anyway?

Over the holiday weekend, I went to my parents' house in Pennsylvania, and came home with a box of tulip bulbs, with little green shoots coming out the tops. They are sitting in my entry way, awaiting my attention. I will plant these to come up next year, as the season has passed for planting bulbs for this year's blooming.

Right now, my life is like this box of bulbs. What was no longer needed has been dug out. Certain ways I was used to being, and certain methods I have used in my healing work have been extracted by the Divine Gardener. What is yet to form has not yet bloomed. I feel like I am in this box, waiting. It's not a comfortable place to be. Rather disconcerting, in fact, to the aspect of the self that likes things to show up just like they always had before. I have not written here for some time, because I had nothing to write. What can you write, when you are sitting in a box, waiting for the new life to form?

Well, this morning, I got an email from my friend Dani Antman, with a poem that came to her as she was waking. Dani is a Kabbalistic healer, an artist, and a teacher of the Tree of Life. We have shared our spiritual path for many years. I was so relieved to get her poem. I asked her if I could share it with you. Here it is:

When "MY" and WORLD" disappear
Divine sparks ignite shells
Burning around the heart
What remains
Witnesses

This is like a koan, to be held in contemplation. What is "my world?" What makes me think that "my world" is a singular entity, separate from the intricate web of life that is all of our worlds housed in the Big House of Divine Love? I found this poem comforting. Letting go of how I want "my world" to show up ignites Divine sparks! Divine sparks are far more exciting than anything I could create on my own while waiting in this box.

The last line of the poem says that what remains are "witnesses." We are truly witnesses here, to our own unfolding, to the unfolding of each other, and to the life unfolding around us. We watch, and participate in, how the Divine uproots us and boxes and plants us where we are meant to be planted. Jai Ma! Hallelujah! I don't have to do it alone. Nobody does.

There are a lot of bulbs in my box. They smell of the earth, and of the yellow dancing flowers of next spring. How wonderful that they are willing to leave their old world behind and expand into a new, unknown garden. Oh, to be as gracious and willing as the daffodils!