Have you ever stopped to consider diamonds? They take
the light from any direction and turn it into the most beautiful sparkle of a rainbow of colors. From every angle of view, they present a myriad of shiny faces. Yet in spite of being so beautiful, they are the hardest substance on Earth. Their internal structure presents a perfect arrangement of carbon atoms, the basic element of life, so well tied together that they are almost indestructible.
Consider, how do they get this way? When they form deep in the earth, they look nothing like this. In their unrefined form, they are rather unremarkable looking –
nothing shiny – just ordinary-looking rocks. Yet the potential for the beauty and value is still there inside, just waiting to be brought out. What is needed to bring this out? Interestingly the answer is a lot of hard knocks. You can not entice a raw diamond into becoming shiny. You can not tell it that shiny is its destiny and that it is entitled to be shiny and see any difference. You can not give it the best setting and all the right companion stones and then see it transform itself. No, the brilliance comes about through the application of lots of pressure and the continuous beating by lots of other diamonds.
Once the rough diamond is analyzed and the unusable parts have been chipped or laser cut away, the rough stone is attached to a stick called a dob and then pushed down onto a spinning disk covered with lots of other tiny
diamonds. Water is slowly dripped onto this spinning “wheel of life” to reduce friction and heat while the rough diamond is slowly ground away by the impact of the thousands of tiny diamonds embedded in the wheel surface. The skilled diamond craftsman, called a crossworker, cuts away the rough material to form the main facets of the stone in alignment with the internal molecular structure of the diamond stone. These facets are polished and secondary facets are ground into place to maximize the reflection of the light that enters the cut stone. More polishing is done, which is more beating with finer and finer grits of tiny diamonds, to produce the brilliant radiance of the cut diamond. The final product is a work of art, which highlights the beauty of the inner structure of the diamond stone while creating a jewelry piece that is so hard it can easily cut glass.
A couple of references and allusions I made in describing the process of making diamond jewelry probably clued you into the point of this article. We are just like those diamonds in the rough. Built into us is unimaginable
beauty and strength. But none of this is revealed until the “wheel of life,” the lifetime of trial and error filled with honest feedback, grinds away the self-centered fear-based ego that drives most of our lives. Very few people ever make it to the polished diamond state. Most of us deny or avoid the harsh pain of real feedback about how we act in our lives. We become experts at covering up and displacing the consequences of our actions. Many of us even indulge in blaming others for the outcomes in our lives instead of owning that everything that we experience in our lives is our creation. Things might happen, but how we experience those things is all about us, no one else.
Why am I thinking about this? I have been fortunate to meet a couple of really lovely people recently. And in both their cases, they had childhoods that were really awful, I mean really really awful. As I was reflecting on them, I noticed that most of the truly lovely people I have ever met had similar pasts. They have all had to go through very rough times and face massive challenges. The net result was people that have some honest humility and loving appreciation for life. They take life as it comes, without demand or expectation. They have learned how to make the best of things through their own efforts. These are precious skills, powerful skills. It seems that these are not skills that come easily but are the consequence of having no other choice.
This is not to say that having a rotten childhood will make
you into a saint. I would expect that 90% of the time a rotten childhood will produce a rotten adulthood. But for some reason, a small portion of those challenged rise above the story of their situation and find a new way. I have no idea what the magical element is that empowers those few to make the leap out of the pain and suffering to discover a better way. But a few of them do.
The rest of us get to take on those challenges more slowly and in more manageable bites. The lessons to be learned are the same, but the “do it or die right now” pressure is not as great. Most of us are able to get away with our ego-driven games with life for quite a while. When we are called to accounts, we are usually able to wiggle out of any real change of character or identity that life is calling for us to make. We learn lessons. Of
course, we do. Life grinds away pieces of our narcissism as we interact with other people and learn that they don’t see us as being as important as we think we are. Intermittently we get to see that the people that we have been in judgment of are really just reflections of unacknowledged parts of ourselves. Their actions may be a little different, but the feelings that are driving their actions are identical to our feeling drivers. All judgments are self-judgments. Look for it, it will scare you just how accurate this is.
So why would we even want to look at this stuff? My belief is that inside each one of us is that flawless diamond looking to shine out. The beauty and strength of that perfect diamond inner structure is built into our core being. It wants to be revealed. It seeks expression. It desires to be made real – to become realized. All the fear-based ego masks we have built for coping with a world that is not actually interested in the fact that we exist can be dropped as we learn how to participate with life in ways that have value. Our inner core means
nothing to anyone until we figure out how to make it shine in a manner that is helpful to others. Until then we are invisible and matter to no one.
I have heard many many folks tell me that they have nothing they can give to the world. This is so untrue. Usually what this really means is that they do not feel special or important in a way that will make their gift to the world highly valuable. This is just another ego game. Life does not need special or important people, just loving people. If your gift to life uplifts things even a tiny bit, that is enough. We are enough when we give from that beautiful diamond of light in the core of our being.
It is not our job to fix things or make them right. Other people’s lives are their concern, not ours. Our job is to make us compassionate and loving inside so that we can act with goodwill in our lives. At least that is how I see it.
We are all diamonds in the rough. Embrace the polishing
wheel so we can all shine.
Take care,
David