Daily Spiritual Insight from the Story of The Little Prince
So many of are working on ourselves and working at improving our life. We want things to work out a particular way.
But if things aren’t really working for you, are you ready to quit trying to work your life out and instead simply become present in your day?
There are two fundamentally opposite ways to approach everything in life. One is a struggle, the other a flow of fulfillment.
One yields limited success intermingled with a lot of disappointment, the other more satisfaction than we could have hoped for.
When the Little Prince asked the crashed pilot for a drawing of a sheep, the pilot worked hard to get it right. After several failures, he simply dashed off a sheep spontaneously, crated and ready to go-and hit the bull’s-eye.
These two different approaches to life are symbolized by two trees in the mythic Garden of Eden in the second Genesis creation story. One is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the other the tree of life.
We can approach life by trying to figure out the best way to do things-the right way versus the wrong way. Or we can approach life in a state of flow, in which everything unfolds naturally and spontaneously.
The route of thinking our way through issues, weighing pros against cons, is how most of the world operates. Do you see why our world is such a mess?
If on the other hand we come from the flow of consciousness, each moment informs us of what we need to do next. It’s a vitally alive way of experiencing life instead of conceptual.
When the airman draws a crate with the sheep in it-something he does without thinking and without trying-the Little Prince realizes that the box in which the sheep is asleep can double as a house for the sheep at night. (See chapter 3 of The Little Prince.)
People tell me all the time that they want to approach their life in a conscious manner, so that they are truly present in whatever they are experiencing, yet they find it difficult. That’s because they are thinking about consciousness and presence, instead of just being.
Everywhere I turn, spiritual teachers and coaches talk about the power of thought to change a person’s life. Really?
With all the new thought going on, if that were true we’d be living in a very different world. Just look at how many people have read The Secret for example-and how undifferent most of their lives seem to be even after years of “working” this kind of approach.
That’s because this stuff doesn’t work. It can only ever deliver limited success because it’s based on the approach represented by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. True, you achieve some good with this tree, but a whole heap of failure too!
Presence is nothing to do with thought.
The more present we become-the more consciously we go about our day-the less and less do we find ourselves thinking, until essentially only awareness thrives, absent all thought.
Awareness is fundamentally different from thought. Thought is like clouds that obstruct the light of the Sun. Consciousness is blocked by thought.
As the Little Prince surveys the pilot’s crashed plane, he comments that the pilot can’t have come very far on such a contraption. How in contrast this is to the Little Prince, who has descended from the heavens.
Our own efforts and the things we devise to advance us spiritually can never carry us very far. They are all part of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, the right way versus the wrong way, thought versus being.
Stop tinkering with life and just allow it to be-and you’ll be surprised how many things get taken care of as you flow with presence, things you didn’t even consider.