Rice paddies stretched out before my eyes in all directions. I was 18, Riding the bus from Manila to Baguio City on the beautiful isles of the Philippines.
Looking back I remember noticing the tiny farmers shacks way out in the distance. As we cruised through the countryside I wondered what it would be like to live out there, surrounded by rice and water.
The simplicity of that way of life was calling to me. The deep connection to the earth, the surrender to the seasons and the consistency that comes with the life of a farmer.
Today I’m sitting in my own makeshift shack, an 8x12 foot hole in the ground surrounded by dirt walls and crowned with a roof full of wheat grass sprouts.
I suppose, in a strange way, I’ve manifested that original desire, the simple life of a farmer. But I’m raising wheat for building not for eating and unlike those Filipino farmers I’m surrounded by dry hot desert.
What I wouldn’t give for some fresh fruit plucked from the jungle behind my shack!
At one point My father heard my romantic dreams of farming and informed me that it is hard work, as if hard work is some kind of horrible thing we should avoid.
I suppose that comes with the curse laid out in Genesis. “Cursed is the ground because of you, Through painful toil you will eat food from it.”
I have found nothing but joy in farming. As a gourmet mushroom farmer I worked nearly 70 hours a week. I didn’t care for the long hours but the fruits of my labor made it all so worth it.
Cultivating wheat grass these last few months has also brought me much joy. It is the stress and anxiety that comes with the hustle to capitalize on my work, my time, my skills and dreams that feels like a curse.
What lies beneath the Elohim’s curse in Genesis is a notion that pain is somehow a bad thing. Certainly it is unpleasant and challenging but there is reward in learning how to hold and work through and with the pain.
Whether that is emotional pain in relationships or physical pain from illness or bodily ailments. All pain can move us deeper into our awareness of what lies beneath.
If you dive deep enough, below the pain of your state of suffering, away from your mind and into your heart, there is an ocean of primordial purity waiting. A state of bliss that results in letting go.
Samarpan is the Vedic word for surrender. Samarpan to the Antarguru, the teacher or Christ or Buddha within.
Living in a state of surrender to the teacher within, the divine mind that illuminates your very existence, leads one through the pain that is a natural part of life in this 3D reality. When we live in a state of samarpan, we surrender to what is, including all the bullshit capitalizing that fills our world.
In this state we can taste Ananda or eternal bliss. It comes and goes until we realize we are and always have been swimming in it, like little fishies in the great big cosmic sea of divinity. That which we live and move and have our being in is and always will be Ananda, we just have to let go to experience it.
Surrender to the seasons and lessons of life like the farmer who lives in harmony with the earth, knowing that their toil will bear fruit in the right time and place.
Shalom