DW's Blog
The Ripple That Follows the Stone
by DW Green — August 20, 2025
“True enthusiasm emerges from a kind of sacred surrender – when we stop trying to manufacture meaning and instead allow ourselves to be touched by what is already present.”
Despite our endless limitations, it seems that the qualities of attention, risk, and compassion allow us to be at one with the energy of the Whole and the result is enthusiasm, that deep sensation of oneness. Enthusiasm is not a mood that can be willed or forced. Rather, it is the ripple that follows the stone. It can only be felt after we immerse ourselves in life.
True enthusiasm emerges from a kind of sacred surrender – when we stop trying to manufacture meaning and instead allow ourselves to be touched by what is already present. It requires the willingness to pay attention so completely that the boundary between observer and observed begins to dissolve. This is why genuine enthusiasm feels so different from mere excitement or manufactured positivity. It carries the weight of the whole, the recognition that we are participating in something far larger than our individual concerns.
The risk involved is not physical danger, but the courage to let ourselves be moved, to care deeply despite uncertainty. We risk disappointment, yes, but more fundamentally we risk the dissolution of our carefully constructed sense of separation. When we approach life with this quality of openness, something shifts. The world stops being a collection of objects to be managed and becomes instead a living presence in which we participate.
Compassion acts as the bridge – for ourselves when we fall short, for others in their struggles, and perhaps most mysteriously, for the very conditions that seem to limit us. In this space of radical acceptance, enthusiasm isn’t something we achieve but something that achieves us, moving through us like wind through an open window.
Read More – Make No Mistake About It
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