(From Handbook For Humans)
Darkness can be beautiful, but we can’t see very well. Turning on a light is creating—discovering—a radiance in the darkness. But whereas in the spiritual dimension we do that through bare attention to the contents of consciousness, in the dimension of mind we do it by deliberately creating a positive focus for our lives. That is, we discover, create, and implement our life-theme.
The mind dimension is where we consider how to make our contribution to things. It is asking how we can put something into the pot. It concerns our manifestation in the world, the mystery of expressing our unique combination of ability and inclination and experience in a way that creates benefit for others as well as ourselves. We consciously create the song, the dance, the painting called our life.
Some of us feel that to be accepting of existence means being passive, that it means just to wait and see what comes into our life. Yet, speaking metaphorically, existence loves it when we take brush in hand and start putting something on the canvas, when we start playing with our painting and being joyfully creative just purely for the sake of making something beautiful.
Bernie Siegel has pointed out the importance for cancer patients and others of taking an active role in their own recovery. Studies have shown conclusively that cancer patients and others with a sense of self-responsibility for dealing with their illness have a much better prognosis than those who feel either helpless or that the health professionals are basically responsible for their health.
It is essential for our well-being that, in crucial matters, we make our own choices in life. Yet paradoxically, if we get too caught up or attached to our choices, our happiness and well-being also suffer. Right there in the middle—between apathy and craving, between helplessness and insistence—is where we’re most effective and most happy.
When the process works, we’re simultaneously making choices in our painting—red over here, blue over there—and yet inside we’re surrendered to the flow of existence. We choose and create from a place of being unattached to the outcome. In effect, we serve as a creative instrument for existence to play and create through us. It’s both: We act, create, choose, yet do so from a place of surrender to wherever the river will ultimately flow.
This dual level—passionate detachment—makes good sense if we see it as a process of falling into harmony about our goals, of discovering how this painting wants to turn out. Michelangelo used to speak of discovering or uncovering the sculpture frozen within the block of marble. That is what we want to do with the sculpture known as our life.
For it’s our own life that’s the most important work of art to uncover or create. Each of us is unique; no one has ever existed quite like us, and never will again either; existence never duplicates. Our painting is needed because there is none other quite like it.
Yet our contribution need not be some “great” undertaking. Life needs all kinds of contributions; small or large is not the point. All of every kind are equally needed. The real journey is to find something that feels right for us, that has the right fit. So existence poses a question to each of us: How can we make our unique contribution by being most truly ourselves? How can we express who we are in such a way that it’s most useful to others?
We can go on piling up money or success, but it won’t be fulfilling per se. It’s easy to be successful and yet still feel empty-handed, as many have discovered. Thus the question posed to us is not just how to be successful, though certainly that’s part of it. But life’s real question is: How can we be in harmony? How can we find our unique melody, the one that allows us to both flourish and be fulfilled at the same time?
In that harmony will be found our enthusiasm, our joy in doing what we do, and a success that’s satisfying. Then work can become joyous and fulfilling instead of empty and a struggle. Then the expenditure of our energy becomes its own reward. And success in worldly terms comes as a by product.
© 1997 by James Sloman
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