Let Yourself Grow

Exposure and coming alive!

At this time of the year the dark, cold of winter, where everything seemed so empty and lifeless, begins to transform, ever so naturally, ever so organically, into the emergent newness of spring. The days begin to lengthen, the buds begin to appear on the barren branches, and the birds seem to find a renewed energy and song.

New life is on its way!

As winter gently transforms itself to spring, I’ve found myself pondering one of my favourite pieces of spiritual writing, a reflection called ‘The Exposure’ by Anthony De Mello. In ‘The Exposure’ De Mello reflects on what it means to “come alive”, and at the end of his meditation, he writes:

I end
by watching nature all around me: so flexible,
so flowing, so fragile, insecure,
exposed to death
—and so alive!

In this nature-inspired meditation, De Mello takes a courageous, deep and honest look at his own life, pondering the times when he came alive and the times when he was dead. Of the times when he was stagnant and dead, he realises that he had “drawn back from taking risks” in order to remain “comfortable and safe”, while, it was those times when he had “dared to take a chance, to make mistakes, to be a failure and a fool, to be criticized by others”, the times “when he had dared to risk being hurt and to cause pain to others”, when he came most alive.

De Mello comes to conclude:

Life abhors security:
for life means taking risks, exposing self to danger, even death.

Jesus says that those who wish to be safe will lose their lives; those who are prepared to lose their lives will keep them.

Life is for the gambler. The coward dies.

Later, he continues:

Life goes hand in hand with change. What does not change is dead.
I think of people who are fossils.
I think of times when I was fossilized: no change, no newness,
the same old worn-­out concepts and patterns of behavior,
the same mentality, neuroses, habits, prejudices.

Dead people have a built­ in fear of change.

So much of our modern world fears real change, fears real aliveness, fears real growth, and so it does its upmost to entice us to play it safe and to remain stagnant. The wider world so often calls to us, reminding us that its too dangerous not remain fossilized in stagnant work, fossilized in stagnant entertainment, fossilized in stagnant ideas and worldviews, in stagnant institutions and systems, in stagnant life…

And yet, there remains within us all a deeper, truer part, a wilder, more animal, spiritual, soulful part, that never forgets where we have come from and never gives up its longings for new life, for wholeness, for wildness, growth and change.

And so, as winter gently transforms into spring, we all face this essential choice - to stagnate or to come alive?

For those of us who long to come alive, De Mello give some wonderful advice:

I must learn to accept whatever life may bring, pleasure and pain, sorrow and joy.
For if I close myself to pain my capacity for pleasure dies
—I harden myself
and repress what I regard as unpleasant and undesirable, and in that hardness, that repression,
is rigidity and death.

So I decide to taste in all its fullness the experience of the present moment, calling no experience good or bad.
Those experiences that I dread—I think of them, and, inasmuch as I am able, I let them come
and stop resisting them.

Paradoxically, we don’t have to do anything to make ourselves come alive.

Aliveness and new growth lie at the heart of our essential being, just as they do in all of nature. Our challenge, our simple yet terrifying task, is to give up all our resisting and attempts to remain safe and in control, all the things that stifle and stagnate our natural aliveness, and instead surrender ourselves into the transformation and raw new life that wants to be lived.

All we have to do is give ourselves over, entirely, to this new life and let it unfold in and through us its own wild, organic and bitter-sweet way!

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Exercise For The Month:

For this month, I invite you to follow Anthony De Mello’s advice in ‘The Exposure’ and to go outside and spend some time watching nature.

Watch for many minutes, observing how flexible, how flowing, how fragile, how insecure and exposed to death nature is. Observe also how alive it is!

Then, after you have been watching nature for many minutes, ponder the following two questions:

What changes have there been in me over the past six months?
What changes will there be today?

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Poem for the Month:

Below is my poem “Growth”, beautifully illustrated by artist Mike Sprout, for our ‘This Place’ collection.