The outer and inner journey!

The flowers arrive after a journey!

From the tender shoots where a bud begins its journey, to being a an open flower, is a journey of several weeks. 

As I watch this gestational season in the garden for each of these plants, I realise that the soil conditions and atmospheric conditions which facilitate this formative process of becoming flowers. 

In a conversation with a family yesterday, I sensed the joy of the family in listening to the sentence formation in the conversational language of their twin daughters. They were waiting for months from the time of them starting to use words. They waited by investing to form their spoken language to acquire the semantic, pragmatics, prosody and vocabulary of the language. 

Another family shared the joy of seeing their son focus on getting ready to find a place in the Nation Institute of Architecture. Finally when he qualified to get the admission, they spoke about almost of two years of focused attention with which their son pursued the intense preparation. 

It is the journey that leads to the destination. The journey has its demands and travails. 

Anna and I have had an occasion to recall our journey path when she celebrated her birthday recently. I recalled her journey path since I got to know her from our courtship time and compiled my memories into a story line to present it to her n her birthday. It was while doing that I realised the critical and defining times in our lives. It is a marvel that we were guided to choose the way when on different occasions our path led us to a cross road. 

The young man, Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd by profession in the novel, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho represents the travails, detours, departures, distractions, fantasies and pursuit of a treasure by travelling to a far away land only to discover that the treasure was actually hidden in the place from where he started on his journey. 

The physical journey and the inner journey are two experiences we encounter in our lives. 

We engage the physical journey seriously, but give lesser attention to the inner journey. The inner journey is a soulful journey where we learn who we are and who we are becoming! 

A rose bush gives rose flower and a Lily plant gives its own flower. It is the flowers that make the plants authentic. 

The human behaviour is that flower which makes us authentic and reveals the seriousness with which we take our inner journey to become people of mindful living. 

A text which challenges me is from the New testament of the Bible in the book of James in chapter 3 verses 13-17 :  " Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behaviour his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom". The description of the wisdom in verse 17 is a message: " But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering without hypocrisy" !

This is the heart of the inward journey. To be able to transcend the existential dimension of our being to find the transcendent dimension of living, by finding the depth of our being, where the virtues and values of life abide. The surface of our soul is like the turbulent waves of a sea. But beneath is the oasis of values and virtues which wait for us to welcome to our consciousness to become our way of behaviour! 

The journey is towards the outward and inward ! It is during the inner journey we become truly ourselves. Until then we are only like a bud, struggling to  be a flower !

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)