There's
nothing
quite like it. It defies the laws of giving and receiving.
Ordinarily
if I give you some or all of anything I own, I'm left with less. If I
have ten shirts and I give you some, obviously I'll have less. It's
like that with everything: when I give some or all of it away, there's
always less left over for me. The remainder is less than the whole.
There is however an exception to this rule, and this exception is "...
but not when we're speaking
transformation.".
When I speak
transformation,
which is to say when I give
transformation
away, when I give you some or all of what I have, I get
more and you get more. It's more than that actually: it's the
surefire way when it comes to
transformation
to have more, is to give it away. When it comes to my shirts, if I keep
ten shirts I still have ten shirts. But when I keep
transformation
I have less. Like I said, there's
nothing
quite like it. It defies the laws of giving and receiving.
It's not a ball
game
if you hold on to the ball. It can't
be a ball
game
if you hold on to the ball. There's so much more available in
the game
when you pass the ball. There's so much more possible in
the game
when you pass the ball. We humans each start out in Life being
playful.
Just watch
the children
in any schoolyard during recess if you require proof. Just
listen to the
children
in any schoolyard during recess if you require proof. It's quite
obvious. They
play.
Some time between then and now,
something happened.
For each of us,
it's probably true to say something totally different and unique
happened.
Yet it's not necessary to study each of our cases in depth and detail.
What's generally true is at some point we renounced (which is to say we
gave up) our sense of
play
(passing the ball), and acquired the sense of survival
(holding the ball) instead. We left behind the experience of "we" and
"us" and "our" and overwhelmingly took on the illusion of "I" and "me
and "mine" (as George Harrison may have said) instead. When the ball
came our way in
the game,
we held on to it rather than passed it. It was a life altering
decision, one which reigned unchallenged from then on for years if not
decades.
But listen! The truth is it
worked
... at least it
workedto a degree and it
worked
well. We started to amass. We started to accumulate. We started to keep
things for ourselves. We started holding on to the ball when it came
our way. It
worked.
Yes it
worked.
But if we tell the truth about it, once it started
working,
once we took it on, deep down
inside
Life also stopped being fun any more.
You could say interimly holding on to the ball
works.
And it looks like (at least at first) holding on to the
ball
works
everywhere. Yet ultimately there's one place holding on to
the ball ie keeping it to yourself doesn'twork:
in the middle of a ball
game.
And here's the thing about Life: Life itself is one big ball
game
- and the more you pass the ball, the better
the gameworks.
Once you know that, you can't see holding on to the ball, in the same
way ever again.
There are no secrets to Life. A
master
is simply someone who found out (as
Werner Erhard
may have said). But if I pretend there is a secret tp
Life, then it's an open secret which is this:
there's nothing to get,
and you already got it, so give it away. Share it. Share the flame.
Pass the torch.
Pass the ball.