Tuesday, September 22, 2015

"I expect too much of the place"

"Yet it is at this precise moment, where I give up looking for the burning bush, that my retreat usually begins"(Lane 16).

From a very young age, I felt the insignificance of my existence in comparison to the force with which our world was created. The mind of a child is permeable to the unseen influences similar to the receptiveness of animals to spirits. Imaginations run free, though it does not run for long without friction. As we age, we collect experiences, likes and dislikes, and we build walls around ourselves as we observe the negativity of our world. Once these walls are built high and we can no longer see success within ourselves, we attempt to look beyond the wall. To no avail, the walls are too high, the imagination shackled. The shadows with which we experience life finally become too dull and we seek the source of light beyond. In attempt to break down my own walls, I have traveled to places both mentally and physically. In pursuit of phenomenological training, I voyaged to Maui, Hawaii. A landscape such as that of the mystical Maui, I remained in disbelief, not trusting my own eyes while gazing at the immaculate beauty of the island. I began to expect conditions of spiritual enlightenment from this land. Couldn't the wind tell me a secret or the volcano grumble a life purpose? I heard nothing, saw nothing, but the moment I took my ego out of the equation and released my will to the flow of prayers and chants was when I felt a rush or rather a download of serenity, a sense of beauty. Beauty, as most people find, holds great wisdom, but beauty is just as much of a construct as happiness, it does not require a definitive description to experience its power. In the beauty of letting go, I reflected on a parallel of my childhood, a redefining moment of intentional insignificance. I saw the burning bush through which God appeared to Moses, metaphorically of course. The burning bush was not consumed by the flames which endangered it. The landscape of Maui appeared too beautiful for its own good. A symbol for many religions, the burning bush represents a sacred light, one of God’s divine energy and a communication line between the sinful human and the Almighty. The expectations or rather fear before the divine presence blocked my receptiveness to such. At the moment of my serenity download, I felt the presence of a higher energy, one which solidified itself in physical miracles that appeared before my own eyes; there was no disbelieving in miracles after this point. The allusiveness towards my experience with the divine is portrayed in such a way because sacred experiences are made only by those partaking and even then, participants may just be observers rather than believers.

Quit expecting and start experiencing.

Sutherlan Spruck 


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