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The goldfinch that doesn't look like a goldfinch: Reflections on the unique contribution of Western spiritual teachings

3/28/2021

2 Comments

 
Picture
I love doing water colors, but I’m not an artist and my water color skills are not all that good. You can see for yourself in this extract from a water color that I did recently. It’s a goldfinch sitting on a tulip leaf looking at a tulip… but it sure doesn’t look like a goldfinch! The shape isn’t quite right, and the blue from the sky bled into the beautiful yellow of the bird.

When I looked at it, it struck me that this image captures the nature of our human existence very fittingly. When we come into life we’re pure light, untainted, and when we leave we merge back into this purity. But as we’re living, our life circumstances bleed into us, becoming part of who we are. We are conditioned in so many ways, by our families, the culture around us, the collective human psyche. Trauma and pain cause defensive patterns that become part of our psyche. Our light gets obscured, our shape distorted.

The spiritual search leads us back to where we come from, the purity of our original nature. The question is: how do we understand and live the darker forces, the mess that human life tends to be and create? Knowing that we are indeed goldfinches, how do we respond? By rejecting and trying to escape everything that is not light-filled? By claiming that’s not really us? Or are we open to finding out what this human mess is all about? Are we willing to experience it for what it is, fully, completely, without any disclaimer? What gold could be found in that?
I’ve often reflected on the contribution of the Western psyche to human awakening. Many Eastern teachers, the Dalai Lama and Amma among them, have commented on how deeply wounded and scarred the Western psyche is. It looks like Western goldfinches are even more distorted than Eastern ones. So it’s not surprising that Westerners look to the East for its spiritual teachings. But these tend to be the teachings that instruct us to focus on the purity of true nature, often at the exclusion of everything else.

Maybe one of the contributions of Western spiritual teachings is about how to find gold in the distortions and contractions, the pain and discomfort, in the very messiness that we’re usually trying to escape. When spaciousness meets contraction, when light meets darkness, love and compassion arise. In this true meeting, nothing is excluded, all is received as it is. Distortion, purity, light, darkness, even these dualities melt in the loving embrace of Being. We are the goldfinches we are, golden, bled into, distorted. We come in all kinds of shapes, goldfinches no less.
2 Comments
Rick Earl link
5/1/2021 06:05:10 am

In all the soup of life, how much will I paint my own picture and how much will I simply be an image in someone else’s.

Yes, we have all been influenced and conditioned in our years on this planet. We have learned to open ourselves to our own expression, letting out and growing our gifts, letting others and new experience in, or, we’ve learned and chosen to close off, to minimize these possibilities. Often it’s the latter. We’ve retracted in fear; a reaction into what we think is safety. It may actually be avoidance. Interesting the look of this word... avoi-dance... avoiding a dance.

We each have our own gift to bring I believe. As a gift, it does not impose on anyone. It is an offering. There are those who will recognize it, desire it and receive it. There are those who will not.

It is our choice whether to bring our gifts into the light of day, grow them, expose ourselves and them to the weather of life, to strengthen them, or, to hide them. I picture this like a plant that has been exposed to the air, the light and the elements, strengthened and sturdied, or, one covered with a basket, white, drooping and unhealthy.

There seems two paths on life. One open and engaging. The other closed and walled off. Then there are degrees to both. I’ve been exploring the first while come from the second.

Some things facilitate and support the first, like honesty, openness, responsibility, vulnerability, learning who to trust and what it is to trust. There is “winnowing the wheat”, sorting the wheat from the chaff, letting go of what has not been healthy and taking in what is.

Empowerment is on the first path; our own self expression as well, and our ability to let others close and be nourished by them is here as well. This may well be the hardest thing to do, to let another in. It is for me. It may be hardest to trust another and let our barriers down. I’m getting better at this. Safety may have been, or seemed to be, in walling off, or even walking off. It kept out that which scared us or hurt us, but it also isolated us. There is a world of people worthy of trust, not everyone, but some. Those not worthy of this are still in fear and pain themselves, I believe.

The journey seems one of opening. Opening to our own expression, and, to letting others in. It seems in the sharing, the closeness, the caring and the intimacy of this, that we are nourished and we nourish others. It’s a hard bridge to cross, the bridge of trust, trusting ourselves and trusting others. There is surrender here, and this is hard. It’s hard to surrender our shield and protection, ..our armour. We are then so vulnerable. The light and love that’s here can be too bright it seems, at first, like the sun on the plant beneath the basket. It seems to take gradual getting used to.

At times there seems a shape and character to the path ahead, somewhat in view, but knowing it’s detail, texture and experience only comes with passing over and down it. Life is in the living, being real. This is the path of love, I believe.

It is not to be naive, but wise. Here, many things align, support and build. It’s a constructive path. There is synthesis and symbiosis, there is chemistry and there are dynamics. There is growth and living. There is health and caring.

Life seems a path of growing into our fullness, continual learning, letting go and new embraces. And the irony of learning to stand on our own so that we can be closer to others.

Reply
grace
5/2/2021 04:36:25 am

Yes, beautifully shared, Rick. Wishing you so well in your opening to What Is.

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