Mind Blossoming

The soul is that mysterious and penetrating part of ourselves that longs for depth, growth, aliveness and union with the divine.  I think of the soul as the intermediary between what is known and what is unknown within me, helping me to blossom into the light seeds that are buried in the dark. In this blossoming, the light is connected to the dark, a tension that when properly understood brings us into great vibrancy and creativity.  

For this growing to occur, we need to cultivate a tolerance for the discomfort of shame, humility, and paradox. Life itself through the soul’s intersession does this for us.  Necessary losses, failures, falling apart, the encountering what we had hoped would never happen is the stuff of the life-giving compost for our soil.  It maybe that the soul is the part of ourselves that reaches out into the world to bring us into composting experiences that will stink at first but in the end become transforming, tenderizing, maturing. 

This summer, a plentitude of lotuses grew in the shallows of the lake where I swim each evening.  Pearly white petals balanced on lily pads that undulate in the twilight breeze. Their blossoming rooted deep down in the muck of the lake, all that remains cold, unseen, sticky, and more than a bit scary.  

The blossoming in my psyche that emerges in the struggle with my darkness, takes in the light with a reverence that is only possible because it is so precious. When we grapple with paradox, the soul comes alive.  When we honor the natural tensions threaded through all life -  to belong and to be free; to rest inward and go outward; to seek risk and comfort - the soul helps us to find a ‘third way’ forward.  Often what we find most confusing, shameful, unacceptable about ourselves is where the soul can find beauty.  This is the kind of beauty that ignites the mind into a new blossoming of thought, insight, wisdom, the flower adored by the sun, the sun adored by the flower.