Realize the Uncontained Life

A young girl moved to the country and planted a garden for the first time. It wasn't doing good so her mother came to visit to help her. She told her daughter, "Before you put plants into the ground you have to take them out of the container in order for them to grow." In order for something to grow it can't be contained. Nothing can grow unless the conditions allow it to grow larger than itself. In order for a human being to grow they must enter into a relationship with a world larger than themselves. We do not know the restrictions inherent in the nature of thought. It is not us that meets life, but our restricted capacity born from the content of our past. Because of this we are in constant conflict with life.

When life brings along a challenge it usually means that something has come along and disturbed our sleep. Then we start to think towards the disturbance, "What do I do to get rid of this disturbance". Our answer to the challenge is a desire to either resist it or to try to get something to overcome it. Desire is always an inadequate answer to a challenge. It is what prohibits growth and the possibility to transcending the present content of our mind. We are limited to what is in the container of ourselves.

In the moment of a challenge, we are met with something we don't understand. The instant this occurs comes a desire to answer the disturbance. The desire is part of our past. We want a possession that will free us from our pain and smooth out the moment we don't understand. We register the disturbance; we name what it is (recognition) and then we get a sensation from it. Everything in life that happens is unknown. There is no predecessor, it just is. Then something comes in and steals from it by naming what it is and adding content to this unknown moment. It is stolen by the nature of desire giving it an unknown quality, judging and assessing it according to one's own past and meets the moment of the challenge by assigning a quality we know to it so we can deny it or try to get more of it.

There is comfort inside of the container but we can't grow there. The roots of the soul need constant new soil. Life itself is the soil. The past is what we turn to, to recognize the challenge. When we are disturbed, we resist it. When things get tough, we turn to ourselves to get the answer. We don't want the ache but what we answer the disturbance with doesn't work and actually is responsible for the moment we don't want. Resistance is not us but our estimation of what is happening.

Desire is always the inappropriate response to the challenge. All doing is an action of desire to obtain a result to mitigate what is making us miserable. It doesn't change the one that runs into life. To do something toward something is resistance to it. An idea can never answer the challenge; it is part of the container. How can desire answer a disturbance?

The reason we don't grow is because we are afraid not to know. Knowing can never grow. No moment passes that isn't an unknown moment. There is endless space, pure silence except for what we name. Our minds long to know what to do when it is disturbed. Everything that runs through us that wants to answer it, is the disturbance, this thing called me, my ambitions, goals and images. In the moment we are disturbed comes into question all we have taken ourselves to be. This is what has been disturbed. And then it consults itself for the answer resisting and coming up with a new plan to escape the punishment.

When we really see that desire is always an inadequate response to disturbance, this is our way out. Life is going to come along and ask us for a moment of relationship. Try and see the instantaneous resistance and desire to save yourself from what has disturbed you. This is how we answer the moment. This nature can't grow. The only way we can grow is to be aware of the container. Desire can't change anything. The challenge is not separate from the self that experiences it. It answers everything from itself. Once we see this it is the collapse of the opposites.