Flowing to the Great Sea

Susan Evans, West Chester/Cincinnati, OH

As I was reading the June issue of The Vital Force, I was reminded of a story that Ed recently told at a Seijaku accreditation in Kentucky.

A gentleman was watching as a butterfly struggled to escape the bondage of its cocoon. He felt sorry for the butterfly and helped it free itself from the confines of the cocoon. As he released the butterfly he touched a wing. Later he noticed a butterfly having difficulty flying and when he looked closely he realized that it was the butterfly he had helped. One wing was malformed. Could it have been the wing he had touched?

The message I got from this is that all things, including struggles, are for a reason. And even though there may be a yearning to help, some things are just meant to be.

I felt prompted to respond to the June issue to address what I see as a recurrent theme. I am one of the people who spreads themselves too thin. Just some of the things I do are: T’ai Chi Chih, Seijaku, Tai Chi Chuan, Qigong, Reiki and pottery. (I really need to give up my day job!) I know others do Yoga, “formal meditation,” etc. I do not feel that I am desperately searching for the meaning of life, these are just things from which I get immense pleasure and enjoyment.

However I do believe that we are all on a quest to enlightenment in life’s journey and each of us will complete this path in our own way. As I do not consider myself “enlightened” I realize I may be completely naive (and possibly wrong). T’ai Chi Chih may be the only or the fastest way to get there. But is this the issue? What I’m doing now is what I think is right for me at this time. When I need to change the way I believe, the chi will channel me into the correct current in the flow of life.

The way I look at it is: We are all streams, coming from all different directions, flowing to the ocean of chi. Some streams meander and dilly dally in the many eddies in and around the current along the way. But, eventually streams merge into rivers and so on to the Great Sea.

Some of us may take longer to reach “true enlightenment,” but which way is the right way? I think they all are. If we listen with our whole being, we’ll be guided to the right path. We each have our own path to follow. The route we take shouldn’t matter as long as we reach the destination.