I pull the word "Transformation." Again. For two years, this word keeps entering my life. Can one be transforming for years on end? When it first started appearing, I got excited, anticipating a dramatic, even a sudden, shift in my life. I suppose moving from California to Hawaii and then on to Vermont qualifies. I suppose writing, editing and finally publishing the story that has been blooming in my heart for five years qualifies. So what other transformation promises to take place? In what metamorphosis am I still engaged?
What I find is that life is a series of transformations, some of them more intense than others, all of them in service to the evolution of the soul. We are all constantly becoming. I could perceive this as frustrating--doesn't an individual constantly oriented toward achieving, doing, growing, yearn to at some point say, "I have achieved, I have done, I have grown?" Not according to certain philosophers who would argue that our very constitution contradicts itself in our inherent desire to achieve but not ever to 'have achieved.' They suggest that the moment that one has achieved a goal, s/he begins seeking to articulate and subsequently manifest the next, because the condition of actually having reached a goal is not indeed what we crave. It is the striving itself that we long for and which fulfills us, but we are beguiled by the goal into thinking that it is its consummation (and not the effort to consummate it) that makes us happy. I believe it was Dostoevsky who called this human tendency a "joke."
But I consider that perhaps our constitution is not so contrary to our reality. Perhaps our achievements are only perceived as 'ends,' but in reality they are simply transitions, and when seen in this way, the disappointment that inevitably accompanies the anti-climax of achievement can be eradicated. If I view life as a series of transformations, I can understand myself as occupying exactly the right place on a continuum at any given moment. Never falling short, never failing, indeed never succeeding either, but instead rolling with the tide of experience, expanding and contracting, splitting and dividing like a great cell contained in my proverbial skin, the diaphanous membrane between my soul and its eternity. Perfect in my learning. Perfect in my blooming. Ever embodying a great transformation that has every moment the potential for perfection. I am engaged in transformation now. And now. And now. Here. And here. And here. Oh. And Om.
What I find is that life is a series of transformations, some of them more intense than others, all of them in service to the evolution of the soul. We are all constantly becoming. I could perceive this as frustrating--doesn't an individual constantly oriented toward achieving, doing, growing, yearn to at some point say, "I have achieved, I have done, I have grown?" Not according to certain philosophers who would argue that our very constitution contradicts itself in our inherent desire to achieve but not ever to 'have achieved.' They suggest that the moment that one has achieved a goal, s/he begins seeking to articulate and subsequently manifest the next, because the condition of actually having reached a goal is not indeed what we crave. It is the striving itself that we long for and which fulfills us, but we are beguiled by the goal into thinking that it is its consummation (and not the effort to consummate it) that makes us happy. I believe it was Dostoevsky who called this human tendency a "joke."
But I consider that perhaps our constitution is not so contrary to our reality. Perhaps our achievements are only perceived as 'ends,' but in reality they are simply transitions, and when seen in this way, the disappointment that inevitably accompanies the anti-climax of achievement can be eradicated. If I view life as a series of transformations, I can understand myself as occupying exactly the right place on a continuum at any given moment. Never falling short, never failing, indeed never succeeding either, but instead rolling with the tide of experience, expanding and contracting, splitting and dividing like a great cell contained in my proverbial skin, the diaphanous membrane between my soul and its eternity. Perfect in my learning. Perfect in my blooming. Ever embodying a great transformation that has every moment the potential for perfection. I am engaged in transformation now. And now. And now. Here. And here. And here. Oh. And Om.
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