Will and Dry Soil in the Spring Wind

Sometime the inner voice, the Higher Self, the Universal Wisdom seems silent. The spiritual soil is dry or frozen. Nothing's coming up. I think of the line, "To everything there is a season." Right now, I'm in a season of spiritual aridity and darkness.

I re-read my last few postings and I honor myself for TRYING, trying to make wisdom or find meaning. Alas, that doesn't work. The only thing that works is finding stillness and waiting. I think about blog followers and how the statistics show that if you don't post frequently, you will lose them. I worry. Don't go. Hang in there with me, please.

This morning, I was meditating in my wicker rocker staring out at the unusually early spring that has come to the northeast. The grass is greening up and the lilacs are almost ready to bloom. A strong wind is bending the birch tree towards the ground. I am riveted by the scene. It changes every second as the wind gusts and swirls or calms briefly. I realized that I am drawn to change, to drama, to movement. These things seem to inspire me or, at least, make me FEEL in this dry spell.

As I closed my eyes and released the view from my mind, focusing on the breath, the words of an old hymn came to mind, "Be still and know that I am God." Be still. How much I want to create and shape meaning, how little I want to stop and let meaning come to me.

Am I afraid I will be bored with silence? Am I afraid that if I clear my mind of its thoughts as interesting as they are, I will find an unbearable emptiness? This seems to be the spiritual journey, the elixir, the requirement of enlightenment. To surrender the will. To surrender that part that creates and shapes. I'm so attached to MY meanings, my visions and metaphors, my little life, that it seems impossible to surrender all that to a higher process.

What if there's nothing? As a friend said last night, "Each day, I begin by asking a higher power to take my will." I was so moved by that, and then he added with a grin, "I spend the rest of the day trying to get it back!" So many of us imagine, despite the chaos of the realities we've created, that our wills are the only thing keeping us safe and worthy. It's terrifying to hand over what seems like our last weapon or even our last grace. What will become of us?

What "unbearable lightness of being" may arrive? There's such a paradox in the spiritual journey. The more we surrender, the more we attain. The more we lay down our defenses, the more we are protected. The more we empty our minds, the more we are filled. Or, so the great spiritual traditions say.

Roxie