How do you grow a tree? Do you give it some special mix or some fancy, expensive juice? Do you need to massage the soil or cast some extra lighting? I think the answers are pretty straightforward. You simply provide an environment so that water, soil and sunlight are present. In other words, you allow the tree to grow itself without needing to do anything on our part. No extra attention is necessary. It might even be a bad idea to try to force its growth. Everything the tree needs will be provided by nature and the tree will simply grow by itself. In fact, all lives on this planet essentially go by the same concept. All lives grow, expand and flourish seemingly by themselves. Perhaps a different way of saying it would be that there is a ‘force’ or ‘energy’ that allows this growth to occur. This is the essence of all life forms.
Humans are no exception to this phenomenon. We are life and life is within all of us. The fact that our bodies are functioning without needing us tp interfere or control any of its process is a sign that there is ‘life’ within us. While we can provide the right living conditions for our bodies, it’s the ‘life’ that’s really running everything. The essence of spirituality is basically to allow this life to ‘grow’, or ‘be’ and let it simply flourish by itself. Its natural state is a perfectly functioning being, just like a seed that flourishes into a magnificent tree with far-reaching branches or a bird that flies thousands of miles without really ever needing to take flying classes.
There is a difference between this ‘life’ and the life as we know it. The life we are more familiar with is associated with our families, our societies, our jobs, our nations, our identities, etc. It is the narrative or story we have been conditioned to recognise and believe. But this is really a superficial life, not the essence of life, the real life. The essence of life is the force that allows all living beings and creatures to expand and flourish. It knows what’s best for each individual being including us. Our job is simply to allow this life to express itself and let it do its job. This is why we want to meditate or be present, we want to cut out all the noises of the life as we know (the artificial life) and get a glimpse of the true essence of life (real life).
We can of course do our part by providing good environments for ourselves, but the goal should always be to allow life to express itself because this life in its nature state knows exactly what it wants and this in turn provides the optimal well-being for us as well. When we align ourselves to the essence of life, we flourish. This is also the essence of letting go.