"A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive. “I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived.'”
The graph shown above on the left is pretty, well, straight-forward; it’s the top of the waterfall right down to the bottom. The one on the right goes with the flow that the old man in the river spoke of. The graph in its entirety was captioned, "My life so far".
Isn't it true that we put a lot of time and energy into solidifying our plans? We research, make reservations, link schedules, and we often think how could everything not go from point A to B? Life, however, uses a free-flowing pen with beautifully colored ink and often prefers loops and squiggles to straight lines.
We might not fully appreciate the squiggles but perhaps we are looking at the wrong graph.
The word below is written in Sanskrit. Unless we can read Sanskrit, it looks like a bunch of lines and loops that we don't get. But if we put in the time to learn Sanskrit, these lines suddenly profess their deep meaning to us in the word "Namaste", which means the light in me bows to the light in you.
So… your challenge? To consider that the squiggles Life puts in your path have meaning. With some curiosity and perspective, those loops may even show you a different way down your river.
By: Sandra Coyner, MA, LPC, Yoga Cert.
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