Reporting from the Great Doubt, Part 11, by Avikal
In November 1988, Osho gave me a very specific challenge. I had to take a photograph of a drop exactly in the moment when it started falling.
It soon became clear that the whole thing was not so much about the photo but about my relation to separation and surrender. And that’s what I worked on for years, after I eventually took the picture and presented it to Osho.
The key was to see and experience the trembling which happens when the drop and the leaf are moving from a state of contact to a state of separation. Like two lovers who have been in deep embrace and fusion and now start moving apart. The key was the willingness to experience the shakiness, the uncertainty and the vulnerability.
For years I have focused on the drop and the letting-go of the merged state from that perspective. And as I was the nomad in most of my relationships, that was clearly my most familiar, and often mechanical, behavior.
How did I let go of support? How did I deal with the incoming separation? Was I willing to feel my own feelings and the feelings of the other? How much was I reactive, mechanical, defensive or conscious of what was happening? Was I surrendering control or holding on to it? So many angles, questions, perspectives, possibilities…
However, in the last couple of years I finally saw a completely new perspective, one I had never really considered: the perspective of the leaf; the letting-go by the one who has been giving support.
I have been supporting friends, lovers, companions most of my life, but somehow that was so natural to me and also intrinsic to my personality (the protector) that I hardly spent any time exploring it, inquiring into it: how does it feel when I consciously stop supporting?
How does it feel when I let go of the other as they grow out of their need of being supported and protected by me? How does it feel to let the other fall? Drop away? How it is to consciously not interfere?
A whole new dimension has opened up. Liberating and terrifying at the same time. A whole new experience of the heart breaking… and trust.
Related articles
- About trembling
- Follow the whole series: Reporting from the Great Doubt
Featured image: photo by the author
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