Every time I see an insect struggling...
🐝 🚪
Every time I see an insect struggling… flying into the same glass window over and over again in a desperate search for freedom from the prison in which it has captured itself…
I am reminded of what the ego’s struggle looks like to the Infinite.
Via the language of results, Life often communicates with us, “The answer does not lie in that direction. Try something different.”
Often, a small adjustment is all that’s needed to change everything. Though, sometimes we are buzzing into a dusty corner of a closet and a full-scale overhaul of our plans is in order, lest we end up caught in a 🕸.
Another aspect of these moments is the self-inflicted nature of the insect’s struggle. How, too, is this akin to the struggle of the ego. How many times have we gotten ourselves into sticky situations of our own making, only to find ourselves grasping anxiously for deliverance from our own poor choices.
Life is not punitive. Life is not trying to kill the insect by trapping it in our house behind a frustrating invisible wall of glass. The negative experience of the insect is attributable to only one thing: ignorance.
All suffering is the product of ignorance.
Ignorance, in this context, is simply a non-understanding of the Forces at work. The insect simply does not understand what ‘glass’ is, and how glass holds both the problem and the solution in its hands.
If the insect understood the nature of glass even a little — if it understood the nature of the problem — the insect would find itself in possession of the solution simultaneously, and fly out the open door through which it first entered.
The insect is not flying into the glass again and again because it is stupid. It’s flying into the glass again and again because it can see freedom. It can see that freedom lies in this direction. The glass is a conundrum every single time. It ‘shouldn’t’ be there, according to the insect’s understanding of the Cosmos.
But it is there. The glass is there.
And if the insect does not evolve — does not pause, collect itself, and try to see things from a broader perspective to find a solution — it will perish. Furthermore, it will have a miserable time of it all along the way as well.
^That is Hell.
When people refer to places like Heaven and Hell. That is Hell.
Notice one key element: No one sent the insect to Hell. The insect went of its own accord. Furthermore, no one was trying to draw the insect to Hell. Houses aren’t evil, they’re just houses. They aren’t devious traps made by ‘the deceiver’ for sucking naive insects into a deliberately-crafted world of pure suffering. Houses are often pretty nice places.
What made the experience Hell was the insect’s choice to remain in ignorance of the Forces at work in its current life experience.
How easy is it to overlay the struggle of the ego in this example. The drama and the self-pity the ego would drizzle onto the situation as well — like misery syrup over pancakes of misfortune — adding yet another layer to this living Hell. Suddenly, Dante’s idea of ‘circles’/layers of Hell seems almost literal in its accuracy.
And all of it is self-inflicted.
No one sends us to Hell but ourselves. And liberation, if it comes at all, only happens… When?
At the point of exhaustion.
When we are trapped by an outside force (“Oh no! How could this get even worse!?”) and carried outside beneath a cup.
At death.
At each of those points is an opportunity to see the benevolence of Life.
When we are exhausted, Life is not saying to us: “Well let that be a lesson to you. Now that you’ve been properly punished and have spent enough time in misery, I will now help you out.” No. When we reach our exhaustion point, we are like the insect finally becoming calm so Life can cradle us in its hands, carry us outside, and set us on a flower so we can fly away to freedom when we have our strength back. When we reach our exhaustion point, Life smiles and says, “Here’s my chance.”
When we are ‘trapped’ by an outside force and an already-terrible situation seems to have just been made qualitatively worse (as we are now trapped beneath an even smaller glass prison than the one we were just railing against!), faith. Trust. Life has heard our plight and is responding. Life is carrying us — via the most direct path available — back to where we are supposed to be. We got ourselves into that mess, now Life is benevolently bailing us out. Our suffering in these moments is not God’s/Life’s fault. It is the fault of our ignorance — our non-understanding of the Forces at work — and ignorance is no one’s ‘fault’. Ignorance is simply ignorance; it’s part of the game we all sign up to play. The only cure for ignorance is wisdom, and wisdom comes from living life with conscious attention and a desire to learn.
Our final option is death. This is the option reserved for the most stubborn and bull-headed egos and insects. The ones who simply will not be helped. That’s fine. We can do it this way. Eventually, the infinite benevolence of Life grants us freedom from our own colossal ignorance in the form of death, and we pass seamlessly into the next chapter of Life. In these instances, Life uses even ignorance itself as a blessing. For it is ignorance that grants us the forgetfulness of our past experiences and allows us to live this current life as if it were the only one. It is ignorance that grants us freedom from memory of all our prior mistakes and graces us with the opportunity to just be here, in this life, now.
This is the Love of God on display. This is the infinite benevolence of Life in action. All suffering is self-made. Little self. Ego self. Control self. Grip self. Pressure self.
All freedom is Self-made. Big Self. Soul Self. Generous Self. Open Self. Release Self.
When we trust Life, benevolence flows.1
A forthcoming article about karma — known more easily to Western minds as the concept of ‘momentum’ — will share some insight as to why, when we first begin to trust Life, our lives often turn into dumpster fires, rather than Soul satisfaction and harmony.
When this dumpster fire phenomenon happens, once again, this is not Life punishing us, but the fruits of our ignorance playing themselves out.
Once the article is posted, I will link back to it here for continued reading.