The ebb and flow of life

Generally, we think of life as a linear movement, we start somewhere, and we gather and collect and accumulate skills, money, experience, happiness, and we land up somewhere, which is more than where we started. If we don't have more than where we started, we consider that as, as a failure. And we want to rectify it. We want to figure out what happened, why didn't we? Why aren't we when we say better? Why aren't we better than where we started and better is always almost always about something that is more Are we more happy? Do we have more money? Do we have more skills, do we have more experience? And yet when we consider the archetypal movement of life, the suggestion is that life is an ebb and flow.

So we know that when we speak about the ebbing and flowing of the tides, the tides that come in, the flowing tides, and the ebbing tide is when the ocean tides recede. In the seminal philosophical text from India, the Bhagavad Gita, Deity Krishna, who is the Teacher in this text, offers some beautiful reflections on this movement of consciousness or life. He says that this is the movement of Nature, he uses the word Prakruti, which means Nature, it means Consciousness, our Body, it is this emerging and dissolving or receding. So this movement of flowing and ebbing, and He says that it is when we are able to experience or resonate with this movement of nature, that we are truly living in the intelligence of nature, the linear trajectory that we use is actually not resonant with this bigger movement of Reality and Consciousness, which is this ebb and flow.

And this flow happens at many levels, it happens at the level of the whole universe where the universes themselves come in, to into form and they dissolve, it happens at the level of the earth. We don't know where we are in that movement of this big movement of the Earth. It also happens at the level of our own bodies—every day the cells are renewed and generated and the cells die. It happens in the movement of our breath, the out breath and the in breath. And it happens in the movement of life itself. And our energies— we are not always having the same level of energy, all the time during the day, day after day. It doesn't work like that. Our energies also have that very same ebb and flow, as does life itself. If you look at the paradigm of life, we are born and we die.

Recently, I was watching a documentary on Netflix about David Beckham. I love soccer, and I have been a great fan of Beckam’s game. And in the documentary, there is a part where Beckham is benched as they say in soccer, for several matches. He's playing for a very important European team. And for various reasons, he is benched which means he's got to sit out these important games on the bench at the side. And he turns up, game after game, even though people wonder why doesn't he just drop out and go and find somewhere at some other team, which would have happily welcomed him? And there are these cameras that focus on Beckham sitting there on the bench watching these games being played and him not being part of these games.

I found that probably the most moving aspect of the whole documentary. It wasn't the great triumphs of Beckham that moved me. But those images of him sitting there on that bench and somehow patiently enduring, experiencing those moments of ebbing in his life.

And I feel that that informed him probably more importantly, than his triumphs on the field, the moments that he was celebrated. I feel that these moments where he just patiently allowed that, that universe or that movement of ebbing somehow deepened him as a person, then those great times on the field.

So this is that flow and ebb of life itself. And it's not to say that the ebbing isn't difficult. And it's not a simple thing. But it's not without any purpose. Because it's like a tsunami, for example, you know that when the waters recede, it's gathering that destructive force, which then returns as the tsunami. And it's the same thing with that ebbing movement, we might think that it's completely useless, because in the linear trajectory of life, it is not valued, it's sometimes not seen, and in even people might think of it as a time of failure and a time of retreat. But that is somehow what energizes what is then going to emerge from that receding movement, that dynamic of the receding movement, what emerges is energized by that very movement of retreat.

In my own life, I have found that when I have felt unafraid to be in those movements of receding, even sometimes when people would call it self-sabotage, I have actually found that I have returned with a an invigorated vision. Maybe I don't return back to the same thing I was doing, but I certainly felt renewed and invigorated, even when it was really challenging and sometimes frightening to be in that ebbing movement of life.