This year seems to be a year of shattering. All around me I listen to people as they tell me the stories contained in the glittering glass fragments strewn all around them. They are beautiful as they reflect the light, the stories they contain are lovely and heart breaking and devastating. I hear stories that are still full of the shock that comes from watching a piece of glass get smashed to pieces. Their words contain the sounds of destruction. Their eyes look out with grief for what should have been, what could have been and ask what happened. A dream they were sure would come true if only they tried hard enough not only failed but took them into bankruptcy. The long-term plans they had counted on had a hidden flaw that got hit just right and everything has fallen apart so late in the game that it’s hard to know how to recover. The slow moving train wreck of a friend or loved one’s behavior is no longer slow and no longer deniable. The world is littered with shards of glass.
What’s interesting is that in every story I hear, the glass that is shattered is really the desires/hopes/dreams of the person. It’s like a rock is being thrown through the glass that is separating them from reality. Not in a “rose-colored glasses” coming off sort of way. No one I’ve heard of or spoken with was spinning gold out of straw. It’s that how they expected, planned, or worked for things to happen somehow got out of sync with the rest of the world. That somehow the idea became more real than the living reality and finally the glass couldn’t stand up to the pressure of the world. What seems at first like vandalism and destruction in the light of day is the next step of the journey. It’s people being released from glass houses and being let out into the real world. It’s cold, messy, and frightening in its uncontrollable unknowableness, but its also the place where we can actually manifest our dreams. The glass house might be beautiful even in it’s fractured state, reflecting the light in a beautiful flickering mosaic, but enlightenment smashed it so we could look directly at the stars.
Smashing the glass releases us. We can’t walk into the life we have chosen for ourselves if we can’t leave the box we’ve built. I’m beginning to hear more and more from people who are receiving offers of their dream jobs, perfect opportunities, the exact thing they’ve been looking for almost all requiring a change of geographic location, and ending of an entire career, a transformation of who they have been and a leap of faith into a new phase of life. How they thought it would happen, what it would look like, where it would manifest all get shattered in that instant. All of those glass walls come shivering down and they are left exposed with a question: Am I ready? Universally the answer has been yes so far, but we still have another month of the year yet. Enlightenment can be like a hammer. At some point it’s going to smash through what is holding you back even when that’s your dreams and plans. There’s beauty in the process even if comfort seems a long way off. The question is, will you clutch the shards of glass to you and bleed out over what could have been or will you bless them for releasing you and move forward?
