Recently, I came across this short piece by Adyashanti– and it struck me as a beautiful metaphor for living our evolutionary story– the story that only you, and you alone can live:
“Time to cash in your chips
put your ideas and beliefs on the table.
See who has the bigger hand
you or the Mystery that pervades you.
Time to scrape the mind’s shit
off your shoes
undo the laces
that hold your prison together
and dangle your toes into emptiness.
Once you’ve put everything
on the table
once all of your currency is gone
and your pockets are full of air
all you’ve got left to gamble with
is yourself.
Go ahead, climb up onto the velvet top
of the highest stakes table.
Place yourself as the bet.
Look God in the eyes
and finally
for once in your life
lose.”
― Adyashanti
Stepping into your Evolutionary Story– the story that only you and you alone can live means that you MUST surrender your ideas and beliefs about what you thought your story was or should look like or how it is ‘supposed’ to unfold.
Adyashanti so eloquently puts it… “it’s time to see who has the bigger hand at the betting table– you, or the Mystery that pervades you.”
Our beliefs are our ‘hand’ at the betting table, but our hand has no chance in the face of the great Mystery.
So what does it mean to surrender? To “dangle your toes in the emptiness”? What is the emptiness he’s referring to?
The emptiness isn’t the emptiness of absence but rather an emptiness of presence. It’s the emptiness where our radically personal and unique story resides. It’s where we must go in order to access the story that wants to emerge in, through and as us.
And then… YOU… can approach the “velvet top table of the highest stakes table and place yourself as the bet”….
You don’t need anything else. YOU, who is irreducibly unique and irreplaceable is the only thing need to live your evolutionary story.
Here’s a short video excerpt of a recent mentorship session where I broke down Adyashanti’s piece and interpreted it from the perspective of living our evolutionary story:
