Once, I was invited to take part in an Easter Egg-painting session. On my egg I painted the words ‘God is a broken egg.’ For the chick inside has no knowledge of the ‘without’, only the ‘within’. It is cramped in a tight, dark space and has no concept of the space and freedom that lie outside. Obeying a primal instinct, the chick begins to peck at the hard shell until it cracks, whereupon it discovers what lies beyond, and with it the freedom to fly. So it is in life; we constantly have to break the outer form in order to make a discovery and so move on. Only then can we embrace the totality of experience.
As Kaneko Shoseki observes in Nature and Origin of Man,
‘Let go of your fixed notions and feelings, indeed, let go completely of your present “I”. Original truth reveals itself only when we give up all preconceived ideas.’
