We learned some wonderful lessons from a dove this week.

Just as our lives were reeling from vast changes and unknown outcomes, we were visited by a mother dove.  

She began making a nest under the eve of our front porch. Every day she brought more twigs and built layer upon layer. Soon there was a baby dove  in the nest.

Then began a feeding frenzy that seemed to go on for a long time.  In fact, at one point we began to worry about this baby dove. It seemed to be staying in the nest a mighty long period, still being fed. It’s physical growth had been rapid. We wondered if the mother would ever push it out of the nest! How long could this go on?

Then we considered this story from the baby dove’s view. There it was, looking innocently at our front doorway. It was the only thing it had ever known. The baby dove had no information about wings, movement, air, or ground. It only knew that a few feet away was a wooden door. The space between this little dove and the door was its entire world. The sky was in the other direction, hidden.

This was a bit how we felt about our lives at that time too. We were hesitating to go forward because we couldn’t see what it would be like. We too were sitting in a stationery place, just like the young dove.

Then early one morning there was a great commotion that awakened us from sleep. We heard such a rustling stir that we knew it was the mother dove taking strong action to remove the young dove from the nest. The young bird’s resistance was fierce. But, in the end, the mother’s plan won out and the baby dove flew. And rather incredibly, the baby dove had to make an enormously tight and difficult turn out of the nest to fly into open space. And it did. The dove discovered not only a new world – but that it could fly! All was well – but in a whole new way.

It was a poignant lesson for us too. We decided to take the attitude of trusting that all would work out for us, even though we couldn’t see the outcome in advance. Trust means that we don’t know the outcome in advance.

Living a soulful life, we open ourselves to change, sometimes vast change. We don’t know how it will turn out. We yearn for assurances. Yet looking back on our lives, some of the biggest changes have led us to the most advanced places of personal growth. Had we stayed in our present place we would never have experienced the new, expanded, and improved place.

If you are a student of the light then you are on a rapid growth path. It is helpful to remind ourselves during uncomfortable periods of growth that we need not fear. Let the light guide. Let the light inform. Let the natural way of the light take you to the next place of your growth.

All of nature teaches this lesson. The seed doesn’t question when it becomes a tree trunk. And the tree trunk doesn’t question when it becomes filled with branches, then leaves. It’s just as radical with the strange transformation process of the caterpillar as it moves to the larvae stage, then the cocoon, and finally becomes a butterfly. How radical a change is that! Does nature have a plan for each stage of life? Yes, and a purposeful plan!

In change, there is a pull between the old and the new. These two opposing realities stretch further apart. Things heat up. Then something new emerges. This appearance is often called a place of transcendence. Yet before the time arrives for the transcendence, there is a great and uncomfortable pulling between the two polarities. Sometimes our place of change feels unsettling, and even unbearably uncomfortable.  

Something new cannot occur while we are still in the old place. When we are outgrowing an old position which once gave us comfort and security, we go through a period of being aware that the thing that once offered us security, no longer offers it to us.

This moves us forth into a period of transition. At that point, we can no longer go back to the nest, to the old way. We must move forward. But we don’t yet know what moving forward means or how to initiate it.

Much like the dove who sat in the nest a long while, until it was the exact time to move forward, it was being readied for what was to come. No longer in the egg stage, it was hatched and growing. But the baby dove could not fly too early or it wouldn’t be fully prepared for its new life. During our growth periods, there is a period of preparation for our next stage. Like the baby dove, with each step of our advancement, there is greater freedom and a whole new world to explore.

Living our lives from a place of willingness to grow means there will be radical, transforming change. We can rest in the fact that the very circumstances that bring forth growth also bring forth new and better possibilities that await us when we are most ready. Congratulations if you are growing into greater light. Welcome the new light. Your new wings were given to you to fly. Welcome to the heart of love!  

© Copyright 2005 by Dr. Scott Peck & Shannon Peck

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