Lay Down Your Burden
There is something about those words that speaks directly to the human condition. Most of us move through life carrying far more than the moment itself requires. We carry old regrets, unfinished grief, the quiet belief that we must somehow hold everything together by our own strength.
Poems, Quotes and Parables
Lay down your burden
Lay it all down
Pass the glass between you
Drink it up
Place the Light before you
Come through the door
The dragon doesn’t live here anymore
Sing with the choirs that surround you
Dance to the music in your soul
Look into the eyes that really see you
Place all that you have into that bowl
O lay down your burden
Lay it all down
Pass the glass between you
Drink it up
Place the Light before you
Come through the door
The dragon doesn’t live here anymore
Colleen Crangle.
Read by Nigel Lott teaandzen.org
There is something about those words that speaks directly to the human condition.
Most of us move through life carrying far more than the moment itself requires. We carry old regrets, unfinished grief, the quiet belief that we must somehow hold everything together by our own strength.
Over time that inner weight begins to feel normal. We forget that it can be set down. From the other side of silence, the invitation in those words appears very differently.
It is not telling us to abandon responsibility. It is not asking us to escape the world. It is asking us to release the invisible burden of the self we believe we must defend.
In the imagery of the song there are gestures that feel ancient: sharing a cup between companions, placing light before us, stepping through a doorway. These are the symbols of human community and inner passage.
First comes the light—the willingness to see clearly. Then comes the doorway—the moment when we step out of the story we have been telling about ourselves.
And then comes the discovery that surprises many people when they cross such thresholds. The dragon we imagined guarding the entrance is no longer there.
For much of our lives we fear that if we truly open—if we trust life again—we will somehow be harmed. The mind fills the doorway with imagined dangers.
But from the other side of silence, the doorway is not guarded at all.
It has always been open.
And beyond it lies something much closer to music than struggle.
The song speaks of choirs surrounding us and of dancing to the music within the soul. These images point toward a truth that mystics have spoken about across centuries: beneath the noise of thought, there is already a harmony running quietly through existence.
When we set down the burden we have been carrying, we begin to hear it again. And perhaps that is what the song is really reminding us of. That the burden we thought we had to carry alone was never truly ours to begin with.
Nigel Lott teaandzen.org
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