Why walk when you can fly?

Have you ever watched children building sandcastles on the beach? They are a delight to watch, totally absorbed in what they are doing. They run around filling their buckets and make their castle higher and higher. When it finally stands in all its glory, they wait in excitement for the tide to come in and pull it down. Then they happily start again, building another castle.

Do you think that before they started building, they thought, Oh no, we shouldn’t build here - the tide is going to come in and destroy it! No, that’s not how they think. When the waves come, is there anguish? No. Just the excitement of the next project, a new moment, as they intuitively embrace creation and destruction as natural parts of life.

We were all children once. We all once embraced the unexpected tide rushing in, accepting the destruction of what has come before, remaining open to the unknown magic that awaited us around every corner. As adults, on the other hand, most of us seek to preserve the walls of our sandcastles at all costs, in a vain attempt to protect our achievements and possessions from the unpredictability of the world.
In times of crisis, we are all reminded of the uncertainty of the world. Yet if we embrace this uncertainty, and learn to flow with the changes that we are presented with, we can find joy and inner confidence in the most unexpected situations.

Embrace simplicity and spontaneity, and let go of the questions, controls, and opinions of the intellect. If you can rekindle the lost innocence of childhood while at the same time maintaining the maturity and sense of responsibility you have gained from adulthood, you will transform your life in ways you can’t imagine.

Ultimately, peace, love and joy are the most important things in life, not acquiring and possessing. When we realize this, we can use situations that seem negative to develop inner happiness. The way these circumstances affect us does not depend on the situation itself, but on whether or not we choose to use it as an opportunity to grow.

When we expand an internal experience of love-consciousness, we find an inner security that can never be questioned or threatened by anything external.

Adapted from: Why Walk When You Can Fly, by Isha

Isha is an internationally renowned spiritual teacher and author, and the founder of the Isha Foundation Educating for Peace. Her latest book and movie, Why Walk When You Can Fly? explains her system for self-love and the expansion of consciousness.