November 2--Allowing Ourselves to Grow

True growth is a process which one allows to happen
rather than causes to happen.

Gerald May

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Today's Meditation:

Gerald gives us another way of looking at the concept of letting go--allowing life to bring lessons to us rather than trying to find and go through only those lessons that we want to go through, or paying attention to only those things that we feel are important at the time.  The truth is that life will give us all sorts of wonderful lessons that will help us to grow in spirit, in mind, and at heart if only we're willing to pay attention to what life is saying to us.

Unfortunately, many people don't seem to want to grow except in ways that they've chosen for themselves, and as people with limited perspectives, we aren't really the best ones to be choosing our own lessons.  After all, if we don't know something, how do we know that we're supposed to learn it?  How do we know that we could use some growth in the area of compassion unless life sends us a lesson that shows us what we need?  How do we know that we should take more time to rest if life doesn't give us that lesson?

But of course, the lesson is only half the battle--we have to pay attention to the lesson, and we have to take something from it if we're to say that we've truly grown.  And I believe it's about those lessons that Gerald is speaking--it's not for us to choose which lessons we respond to by growing and developing, but in paying attention to those lessons we become more loving, more caring, more patient.

When we plant a seed in the ground, we don't make it grow.  We simply provide the conditions necessary for the seed to germinate and develop into a plant of some sort.  Likewise with ourselves--by staying aware and accepting of life, we create conditions in which love and compassion and wisdom can grow, and once those conditions are good, we still can't force any of those things to grow--we can only accept the conditions and allow them to grow inside us until they flower or bear fruit--or both.

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Questions to consider:

Why do so many of us try to control every element of our lives instead of letting go and accepting what life sends our way?

How might you go about creating the conditions inside yourself for positive things to grow?

What are three areas of growth that you'd like to see in yourself?  Are the conditions optimal for such growth to occur?

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For further thought:

The great thing about life is that as long as we
live we have the privilege of growing.

Joshua L. Liebman