When the honeybees swarm, they go out on a limb to make room for birth of a new colony. In our human colony, one “goes out on a limb” because that is where the fruit is to be found.
Vulnerability and risk are precursors to the experience of natural abundance in life. There is a big payoff to be had in letting go of the old boxes and braving the elements for the birth of something new.
Obeying the swarming action of our souls may indeed help us to harvest the fruit of external reward, but this isn’t what the soul is after. Going out on that limb helps us to become a fruitful, nourishing presence in a starving world.
Going out on that limb is a precondition of ripening and maturing into your innate wholeness. Building trust in life, and in ourselves, is earned slowly over the years out there on that limb.
We are not asked to exercise blind faith in order to become fruitful, but we are asked to observe the seasons of the soul and periodically swarm out of our boxes of safety and routine.
Out on that limb, we build a reasoned relationship to the unreasonable dreams of our hearts. Out on that limb, exposed to the elements, we find again and again that our fears were overblown, that we have not been cast down by sudden cloudbursts, that we are not only surviving, but thriving.
Clinging to the intention to discover and live our soul’s purpose in life is itself protective. Instead of looking for external shelter and validation in the form of jobs, money, fame, or degrees, we grow strong enough, wild enough, alive enough, to fly out of our boxes and out into the world.
Swarming honeybees clothe the queen, their mother and Source, with their very bodies, fashioning for her a living hive of love.
Our queen, our mother and our Source, is the soul. We are called to embody the sacred love at our core, to clothe our deepest intentions with action and effort, and to fashion a living hive of love out of our days.
Swarming season is a communal rite of love in the service of new life. Honeybees go out on a limb together to birth a new collective.
It is time we do the same.