This metaphor came to me…
There’s a rock in a busy, bubbling, babbling stream. It’s been sitting there awhile, the water flowing under, around, over it, mostly intermittently. Then a time comes and the stream is now forceful enough to actually move the rock and force it along the stream’s course. Tumbling, tumbling, the rock gets bounced along with the current, bumping other rocks — some rooted in the stream bed, others moving their way downstream, too. All the impacts are wearing the edges off the rock, slowly smoothing the edges, making it smaller, rounder, smoother, small and smooth enough even a minimal stream carries it forward.
And the stream continues its work moving forward to the vast ocean, as the rock grows smaller, and smaller, and smaller until there’s only stream, only now the ocean.
For me, this metaphor for the spiritual journey was pretty moving. It tells me there comes a point in the “rock” (physical) life when the journey will be everything as the rock, the personality/identity bumps along. Losing the edges, diminishing in size, and gradually, only the stream of life and eventually the ocean of oneness. There is a part of me that understands this is so and it will be beyond ecstatic, there is a part of me that is resigned to the truth, but unsure.