“You found the earth beneath where I was drowned.” – Zack Gray
That lyric in the song Beyond the Ground written by Blake Wisner and Zack Gray made me think again about watching an acorn transform into an oak tree. When I say it’s spiritual it. I mean it. And I’ve been able to correlate many life lessons from it. For a seed to take root, it must be planted or submerged in water before the tree emerges into the light. In fact, to find a healthy acorn, you do a float test in water. If it sinks, it’s a good acorn, if it floats it’s bad. This submersion, essentially drowned, is ironically what the tap root seeks in the first place, but will soon use the earth to take root.
Rachel Pollack says, “We tend to misunderstand the color black, seeing it as evil, or negation of life. Rather, black means all things being possible, infinite energy of life before consciousness has constructed any boundaries. When we fear blackness or darkness we fear the deep unconscious source of life itself.”
If an infinity of forests lies dormant with the dreams of one acorn, and infinite energy of life comes before consciousness, your potential is also limitless in consciousness. In the beginning, it was dark, but God said let there be light. And here we are. You are reading this now but was once in the darkness of a womb before seeing the light.
So the life lesson is this: If life seems overwhelming to you right now, if you feel buried, remember that the dark place you feel right now can be changed by shifting your thoughts to believe this can be the beginning of the root. The reframing in your mind that this darkness or drowning you feel, grasping for security, this can be the perfect ground to begin the growth from the lowest of lows.
When we are honest in these moments, our vulnerability changes our position to reach up and out. Our extended hand like a tree to the sky. There is nothing new under the sun, you know, that big ball of light? When we feel comfortable to share our stories with the world, how we made it through, that realization helps someone say, I relate to you, “You found the earth beneath where I was drowned.” Your story helped me take root and I now feel like I’m growing in this. I’m better, realizing I am not alone.
So that’s what came to me hearing that lyric. We grow in both darkness and light. We just need to remember that even in the darkest times of our lives, it is temporary, and the good news is we will soon see the light if we choose to take root.
