One of the most profound metaphors that I have ever come
across is a Sufi story about a river that seeks to return home and encounters a
seemingly impassable obstacle: the desert. In spite of overwhelming challenges, the river
finds a way to cross the desert, then continue its journey over a daunting mountain range
and, finally coming full circle, reach the ocean.
The river had begun as a spring in the far away mountains to
the east. It bubbled out of the earth joyfully, full of hope and excitement.
The waters of the spring had been fed by the sporadic mountain showers that
rained down from the huge billowing moisture-laden clouds that occasionally
arrived above the spring.
The spring become a small stream that was joined by other
small streams and a large stream met other large streams and they became a
river moving with great force and velocity down the mountain canyons and
through beautiful green valleys and meadows that lined its banks. It flowed
with enthusiasm and energy confident it would reach its far off destiny.
However, in the many miles it had traveled, it had never
anticipated encounter a desolate, bleak desert filled with little life or
beauty. As it flowed downward from the high mountains, it all of sudden found
itself flowing slowly through the level barren and dry desert. In the mind of
the river, there was a great fear of dissolving and disappearing into the warm
sands of the desert. The mind of the river feared becoming nothing and being
erased forever from the earth.
Because the river had such a strong will to live and to
return to its home, the heart of the river over came the fears present in the
mind and began to pay attention in hopes of finding a way to survive and to
reach its goal. The fear lessened and a strong belief that it could, in fact,
survive overcame the initial fear. It listened to the desert; it looked deeply
into the desert; it felt the desert, and it became the desert. It would not
disappear. It transformed into a lake and waited. It patiently waited knowing
that getting lost in the desert was not the destiny of this river.
In order to reach the
Ultimate, we too as human beings, must enter the desert knowing we will find a
way to survive and to reach our destiny. By not being afraid to enter the
desert, we discover the way to overcome any challenges that we may encounter in
the desert of life. By being afraid to enter the desert, we will never learn
how to reach our ultimate destiny.
So, by entering the desert, the river could learn that 1)
when it dissolves into the sands of the desert, it may enter the deeper, hidden
unseen waters under the barren sands and therefore, it may survive by entering
into the unknown and unexpected paths of life or 2) its spirit and soul…its
substance and being, can trust the unknown and to move forward knowing there is
a way to make it through the desert that surrounds it. There are answers that
it must discover by moving forward rather than by giving up. For example, can
the river fly across the desert? It can, if it believes it can and listens to its heart, for a heart with wings
has no limits!
When the clouds appear around it, its water are suddenly
drawn skyward and drawn into the clouds as tiny droplets of moisture light
enough for the clouds to carry them. When the winds appear to move the clouds
westward toward the mountains, the river is carried across the desert into the
mountains. When the highest mountains are reached, the clouds come to rest and
release the droplets individually back onto the earth and the river, once
again, begins a downward flow toward the ocean at the base of the mountains.
The droplets become a stream and the stream becomes a river flowing toward the
Ultimate. It is now returning to the beginning that is the end. The cycle of
life ends and begins again.
By trusting and
following its heart rather than its mind, the river survived and regenerated
itself in spite of all odds that it would be swallowed up by the desert. We
will not reach our goals in life or our destiny as a human unless we risk
rather than cling; unless we trust rather than fear and unless we follow our
hearts instead of our minds.
Flow on!
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