The Invisible Roots of the Soul

How much like the lotus am I: without any effort of my own -- and seemingly set
against any effort otherwise -- I find I am rooted in mud; stuck in the struggles and daily burdens of this mundane world...

...Where, regardless how much of myself I invest in its promises... returns to me no peace beyond some momentary satisfaction born of an equally temporary condition.

And yet, like the lotus, even while still rooted and visibly, physically connected to the earth below, another part of me rises through the silt-laden, opaque waters to rest upon their surface; where--newly opened petals turned upward -- toward the sun -- I am able to drink in a Light that is Life itself.

In which of these two kingdoms will I dwell all depends on being able to remember the following truth about this world... and my place in it, accordingly.

Much like the lotus, venerated through time as a living symbol of the soul's unique place as a creature suspended between heaven and earth, so does the soul have two sets of roots:

One is physical, and much like the roots of the lotus they derive life from the "earth" in which they are rooted.

But the soul, as again the delicate lotus, has another set of roots, invisible ones that rise up from its delicate petals, reaching out to the sun to drink deeply from its radiance.

And so it is the Divine Journey begins: first by seeing that it is ours to choose which of these two worlds will be as our own... and by remembering that while earth and Heaven are bound together as is sunlight to the flower it serves...

... This earth, and all upon it, will pass.

The Light of this awareness is the action of leaving one, and rising to enter into the
other.