Offering and sacrifice open a pathway

Ascent

8th January, 2009

Windy and dry. I didn’t light the flame. Stood upon the hard, dry body of the earth and poured water into it, placed burning incense into it, plucked a flower that was growing up from it, placed that sacrificial flower on the flat stone altar, offering its beauty and its dissolution.

Suddenly I realised the sacrifice of life that is in the offering of a flower. Symbolic yes, and also actual, as the flower has life.

I release my ego to the Divine, which is a greater energy. I acknowledge the transience of life’s beauty, the illusion of permanence, the bind of attachment, and with the sacrifice, both symbolic and actual, I let go of identification with these things – ego, beauty, permanence – and so comes surrender and transformation and merging.

To merge is yoga. With the offering of the flower, and the giving of water, a pathway opens. Offering and sacrifice open a pathway, a doorway, which we could not even see before that!

Miracle.

The tree is already completely merged in Mother Nature. The tree puja, therefore, guides us with such subtle, gentle messages, towards our own merger.