As I continue through the second year of seriously prioritizing my personal growth, an overarching concept has become apparent in my journey: there is a type of enlightenment which is significantly different than what many other religions profess to offer and certainly what the current zeitgeist of the Western world wishes for itself. The ambitions of most of the people in my social, academic, and professional spheres center around achieving a comfortable stasis, which is never referred to as such. As the word appears to imply “stagnation” to most minds (and no human pride would admit to desiring that), this state is instead referred to as “stability” or “peace” or any number of synonymous soothing catch-all terms. Humans think this is what they desire in every aspect of their lives, including and especially the financial and the spiritual, and then, once that is achieved, they can sit back and enjoy their assured safety and happiness.

Dynamism, on the other hand, is warned against as dangerous and unpredictable. How many children are steered away from professions in the arts, for example, due to the unreliability of dynamic careers where there are rarely long-term positions? How many of us are shown by society that the typical consequences of a dynamic life results in, at best, becoming an eccentric, nomadic pauper? People worship at the altar of the predictable, yet they hunger for the dynamic. However, they prefer to take their dynamism in controlled, contained doses such as vacations and amusement parks for some and even more thrilling pursuits for others, such as extreme hobbies or extramarital affairs. They yearn for it as a vivifying wind upon the slowly-dying embers of their souls, and yet not so much that it would cause their innermost selves to blaze to life again as it once did during their childhood. They wish to experience dynamism without becoming dynamic themselves, having the freedom to retreat back into their safe shells of unchallenging stasis when they are done. To these sorts, a spirituality or religion that espouses continuous and dynamic change as its central focus is anathema and even insane.

Since October of last year, I began to embrace dynamism as the preferred state. When done from a position of honed awareness and cultivated wisdom, one can gradually achieve the ability to “live on the edge” in a way that a cat navigates along the 1-inch wide top of a wooden fence: with full control and confidence in their abilities but also the knowledge they can safely fall and land on their feet as a last resort. While an existence of stasis may bring peace (of a sort), an existence of dynamism brings joy. Committing to this dynamic way of being, the embers of the soul erupt into life-giving flame once again. Many other humans now find the presence of such a person in their lives to be just as attractive as a literal warm fire on a cold night. Others are threatened by it, as the existence of such a being generates shame at their own cowardice as well as envy. While these reactions are useful for revealing allies and enemies in life, the dynamic soul seeks and achieves change and growth as its own reward. Once the joy of dynamism has been experienced, the peace of stasis becomes merely a tool – a moment of rest and a launching pad between states, no longer an end to itself.