One of my best friends summed up the experience of addiction recently: More.
This moment, this place, this experience is not good enough, long enough, big enough, full enough. It needs to change. Now.
Eckhart Tolle writes about changes and shifts in life that “some changes look negative on the surface, but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”
I find that I used to react to change kind of like this on the inside:
AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! (picture a person falling off a 2000 foot cliff)
I confess, I might have even had this kind of reaction for things as small as missing an exit when driving somewhere on the freeway. Or the phone ringing. Or realizing I’m at the gym without my towel.
Now I really do feel more relaxed, waaaay more of the time. Something changes and I think so soon “Oh! I guess it’s going THAT way…oh, I wonder what will happen now?!” It’s very subtle, but what a different way of walking through the day.
With the Work, we begin to think ‘What could be the advantage here? What’s friendly about this situation, that seems so unfriendly when I first look at it? What is interesting, curious, an advantage even?’
I think about the time I learned I had a cancerous tumor on my leg. Here is what I found so far have been benefits of this experience:
- I realize my body is doing it’s thing, and it’s not me. I am something beyond this body
- my former husband and children brought over roses after my operation to cut the tumor out
- my mother showed up to drive me to the surgery, and take me home, and I realize how she is always there when I really need her, always 100% willing (thank you mom)
- I know all this is temporary in a way I didn’t before, this body is going to end in its own time, just like everyone else—I’m not getting out alive (ha!)
- it didn’t hurt that much, the pain left pretty quickly, I could stand it
- saying I had 45 stitches sounds pretty cool, I survived it
- I have done the Work on cancer and I realize it’s just doing its thing, living its life, shining its star….I don’t have to hate it, in fact, it feels exciting to feel open to it just like anything else (cancer! my new best friend! OK, maybe not quite but how incredible to even contemplate!)
Living a turned around painful concept is an amazing and exciting practice. It feels creative, crazy, fun, playful…entering into the previously unknown. What if things are not as I believed….what if it’s friendly out there?
I feel the thrill of being beyond this ME, this individual person, this being with a physical body. This is literal, not a conceptual thing…it’s like Life is happening, I’m in the middle of it, and when this body is done, Life will still be creatively being itself.
Adyashanti, the spiritual teacher I mention often who I so enjoy, says “the very thing that’s animating you is very mysterious. It’s not good or bad, it’s simply a mystery. As long as you’re trying to improve yourself or break yourself down, you’re missing this incredible mystery. And it’s always been there. As far back as you can possibly remember. We look away from it because the noise in the mind is so much more willing to tell you who you are. “I’m a woman, I’m good, not so good”…very willing to tell you about yourself. The spiritual journey is about getting fascinated with this mystery rather than the little me.
Change comes along and something new emerges, who knows what. Unknown, magical. Just questioning the horrors, injustices, disease, death….what else is there besides all that? Could this be a friendly universe? I used to be so positive that it wasn’t, or so it seemed. But I couldn’t really know it was true, not even before I had the Work.
Now, even if I’m unsure or afraid, I see if I can find examples of how the thing I thought of as terrifying might have something to offer. This is not playing be-positive games, this is seeing what’s actually true for me. Wow, I really don’t know if it’s 100% terrible or not. And this alone is lighter, even if I don’t think I LOVE something.
Once upon a time, there was this bad experience that entered the kingdom….what exciting adventure will happen next, if I remember that it’s just a story? It’s a Mystery.
Much Love,
Grace