“When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego, when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forests again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we do not know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in, passion will make our bodies taut with power, we shall stamp our feet with new power and old things will fall down, we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.”

- D.H. Lawrence

There is so much more awaiting our discovery than we can even begin to imagine!  I received this quote in my email yesterday from my friend, Mary — at least I think she is my friend.  She sent it as a challenge, saying that she would like to hear what I might have to say about it.  A challenge!  How appropriate, since that is what D.H. Lawrence is doing — challenging us to move beyond our self-imposed limitations so that we might fully experience all that life has to offer.  When I first read “glass bottles of our ego,” I thought of Aladdin’s genie describing his life as “all the power of the universe — in a teeny little living space.”  Is this what we do to ourselves when we allow our egos to contain who we are and restrict our own growth?

Let’s not be too hard on ourselves for having an ego.  Egos are important things in human society.  They are the boundaries that define where we begin and end in a physical world that we share with other people; and without our egos, we would have a terrible time figuring out where one person ends and another begins.  An ego is a useful thing to have, and in calling out, “I am,” it tells the world, “I am different and unique in this particular way.”  But there is so much more.  I love Lawrence’s image of the ego as a glass bottle.  I think of my ego and the way it defines and contains me.  It allows you to look through my surface and see some of the things that define and differentiate me in our shared world.  Like glass, it sometimes is fragile and might chip or crack if challenged by life in ways that demand a redefining of what I believe to be true about myself.

Am I a squirrel running in an exercise wheel in a small cage when, in truth, I was created to climb tall trees and jump and fly from branch to branch with the wide-open sky as my roof and the sun and wind as my walls?  I feel safe in my cage; and I have learned to love its reassurance that the unknown things that lie beyond cannot touch me there; and so I run — exercising my body, and convincing my mind that this is where I belong, when the truth is that I am going nowhere.  What is it that calls to us and allows us to face our limitations and to overcome the fear that holds us captive in an existence that is only a shadow of the one we were born to live?

I would have to say that it must be the Light that calls to us and allows us to unlatch our cages and venture into something much bigger.  Shadows cannot exist on their own.  They need light to shine behind them and bring them into being.  When we finally realize that we are not alone and that our very existence depends upon something incredible and indescribable and limitless, we can no longer be content to run in a wheel.  We must run through the soft grass and feel the fresh wind blow on our faces.  We must touch the bark of the tree of life and feel its pulse; and once we have, we will never again be content to run our fingers over glass or wire and call them “home.”

“We shall shiver with cold and fright,” Lawrence says, and we will feel as though we have lost ourselves and no longer know who we are; but as the vast and eternal Truth of the universe rushes in, we will remember who we were before we created the walls that were made to define us among other people but also have separated us from the Light that shined us into being.  Once this has happened, the cold and the fear will evaporate in the warmth of the Light of Creation — and we will understand fully the wonder of living.  We will laugh and jump for joy as we soar through existence where no walls divide.  We will know the sort of power that no bottle could contain; and finally home, we will shatter the bottle and leave our cage to rust and decay — we will perch on the tallest treetop and sing to the skies.