Soil
In the beginning, God spoke. As a result of God speaking, there was a frequency. Then sound came to be, and something emerged. But before the sound, there was nothing. In the same way, before the seeds of life and faith or whatever humanity resides in us, there was also nothing. Before something grew inside us and the breaking forth of things from within to outside occurred, there was nothing, just like in the beginning. We often talk about the metaphor of planting seeds in people’s lives, but the truth is, we need the soil first for the seeds to find expression. What exists in our lives before seeds grow within it? We do. So, in this sense, we are nutritious dirt designed to have seeds planted in us before creation can grow from us. Now, let’s consider that sometimes we feel emptiness to the extent we hit rock bottom. If I’m to define it, hitting rock bottom is the soil. After hitting rock bottom, some people become hopeless to the extent that they do not see a way out. Others find getting up from there challenging. They think to themselves, “Okay, I have hit rock bottom, and I’m just going to stay down here.” That was my state some years back. There was no magical way of getting better. In fact, I didn’t want to get better. I felt if I did get better, they would just knock me down again. “Nobody wants me to get better; so, why try in the first place?” That’s how I felt in corporate America for a long time. I would get up, conquer my situation, only to get knocked down again. It was like, “What is the point in getting better? Why am I fighting? Let me just stay down—no need to fight anymore. I’m tired.” When we get to those moments in life, we can recognize them as soil. It is not compulsory that there should be a purpose, mission, or drive at that moment. That’s not the focus; our aim should be how to prepare the soil, or better yet, prepare our soul. In our moments of emptiness, when there is nothing and we think God is gone, when everything stays silent and we have reached a sure place in our empty selves (some call it solace, peace, or cold loneliness), our job at that distinct moment is to prepare the soil. When we prepare that soil, that’s when we begin to have an intimate relationship with something deeper within ourselves. Preparing the soil includes asking the questions, what are you feeding yourself in those moments? What are you bringing into yourself? Whatever you bring into yourself becomes the seed that births and gives existence of what is to come. Preparing the soil is the most powerful point of meditation. It is the thud at the bottom of the well. It is the sound in the darkness that goes boom, the big bang inside ourselves where everything concerning our nothingness condenses into the seed that will give birth to the power which is the essence of our soul. We must not misinterpret this step because the misinterpretation will lead us astray, and we will actually dismantle the process rather than take up what we’ve cultivated and created. For example, self-talk which limits our vision of the future has the potential to unravel the works of compounding nutrition within our soil, or perhaps interweaves fear or a spirit of destruction within the seeds we create. To illustrate, I recall events that had an impact on limiting my vision of myself over many years. In high school I was a tremendous athlete, recognized for my achievements in track and field. I had jumped nearly twenty-four feet in the long jump my senior year, placing me among the best in the nation. In college I expected to do even greater, however, after being injured most of my freshmen year, I had to have surgery on both my knees. This injury was more than just an injury. It was a shot to my ego and my identity. It was a rock-bottom moment for me—an athlete no longer in the spotlight, no longer proving to the world my superior strength and ability. While some may have recovered and gone on to rejoin the sport they loved, I did not. Compounded by being at a school where I experienced active discrimination, loneliness, and now a loss of identity, I shrunk into myself. I still remember the night in my dorm room, when people were yelling racial slurs outside and students shattered light bulbs by throwing them against my window. Disillusioned, feelings of hopelessness drove me to an addiction of isolation. I fed my soul fear, hurt, and other lies, which later became self inflicted prophecies of shame and defeat. I turned to ways of escaping life rather than being an active participant in creating it. My sense of hurt and fear defined my version of identity at the time. That moment when I hit rock bottom, I witnessed the sense that my heart collapsed inward, and with that sense of implosion also came an external explosion of my passions. Put simply, it is a little bit like what happens when you bite into an orange. When you bite an orange, what happens? Juice comes out. The implosion creates an explosion of juice. Once we have collected feelings, thoughts, and ideas in the emptiness, the intensity of these things implodes, and a seed is born. A seed will nearly implode on itself before the explosion of life when the roots begin to take form. Concerning our own circumstances, we often misperceive what happens inside of us by thinking of implosion as death. Instead, such a situation actually allows us to explore and stretch our roots, which are the very foundation of growth in taking ownership of our lives. Consider when my surgery occurred, what might have happened if I had chosen in that emptiness to meditate on healing? Or if I had taken the time to journal or read an inspiring novel? Imagine if I had surrounded myself with new friendships or taken the time that I would have been training to explore new goals, opportunities, and dreams. What if I had chosen to recognize my feelings of hurt, and in the intensity of feelings, chosen to cry? What if, within that explosion of emotion, I had allowed a seed to be born? In the soil phase we collect nutrition and bring it into our souls to later implode, then explode into a seed. Another way of understanding this collection in the moment of emptiness, people find themselves saying I need to ask Jesus into my life; I needed to bring something into my soil or soul. When my heart was broken, I needed something to hold onto. That’s the idea. Often, we return to the empty soil state rather than proceeding to the seed and to the roots. We abandon the process. We abandon the growing seeds, thereby going back to being nothing. We should know that the implosion is the start of life, which I refer to as the birth of love. It may be hard to accept that within pain and anger we can also manifest growth and love.
Questions to Ask Yourself
What were some of the best lessons you learned or are learning in your rock-bottom moments?
What did you find you had to take responsibility for in these moments?
What did you find you were grateful for in these situations?
