An egg's shell is an incubator of life but is not for life - there comes a time when the baby creature inside must break free. The eggshell container serves a valuable purpose by holding and protecting a fetus during this initial stage of development but must eventually be broken for the flow of life to continue to develop and transform.
And the new life form must break out! The eggshell now provides resistance against which life struggles to come into being. The contraction and tension of the fight builds strength. A hatchling that has not contributed to its new state of being is too weak to survive and will die.
I read this attributed to Osho where it is written:
“Life is there only as a potentiality. You have to work it out. You have to bring it to an actual existential state. Nobody is born alive, only with the possibility of being alive.”
He uses the analogy of a seed. A seed is the potential for life but is not life. It is only in the struggle to crack open it's casing, break through the earth and rise against gravity that there is an expression of life. Like a hatchling, a seedling, by breaking from it's protective shell, become vulnerable and insecure. This is the nature of life.
Having something to push against gives rise to form - it allows for the realisation of potential. If the will for life is there, working within limitations and constraints allow something greater to come about that transcends. Struggle is the process of transformation. The result is magnificence and beauty.
Applying this analogy to relationship I consider:
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There is a time when the container of relationship provides necessary safety and security for incubation; that this is a time of nurturing.
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There is a time when that protection become an inhibitor of life's expression and must be released; that the struggle in relationship to break from what protects from vulnerability is the very thing necessary to develop the richness of our unique expression. We must each do this for ourselves because if it's done for us there is no struggle and our potential remains locked away.
Importantly, this does not necessarily mean the end of relationship. The struggle is not with relationship but with whatever ideas have been created about it, whatever relationship containers or contracts created for safety no longer serve or support life's manifestation.
In letting go old ideas new ones are formed – incubators for the next stage of becoming. These too will eventually present a limitation and a struggle to be broken free from. Nothing is permanent unless dead. Each new struggle is an opportunity for magnificence and beauty to hatch or flower.
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