One of the most comforting, interesting ideas that is repeated by many wise teachers is that we all have some part of us that is solid, unchanging, and kinda beyond this world, beyond the body, beyond whatever is happening.
I was listening to an interview with Stephen Covey, the man who wrote the popular book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People some time ago.
He said “People can’t live with change if there’s not a changeless core inside them.”
Deepak Chopra said “in the midst of chaos and movement, there is a stillness inside you.”
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross who wrote so famously on the subject of death and dying said “Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose.”
I used to wonder what this silence was that people mentioned from time to time. When I closed my eyes and tried to meditate and be quiet, it was like a crowd chattering in all different languages, plus a jack-hammer going and some loud beeps like trucks make when they’re going backwards.
I would start thinking about everything. In fact, it even drove me nuts.
One of my favorite things about The Work is that I have questioned enough painful beliefs, it seems, that I began to feel a core inside me that was unchanging, and silent, and very solid and deep.
Great comfort with silence within is an absolutely amazing side-effect of The Work. Once I had questioned my thinking about the things I was most afraid of in all of my life for a couple of years, I decided to go on my first silent meditation retreat.
The first few days, I thought I might go completely bonkers. So many thoughts and voices talking, thoughts like “this is boring” or “I’m not doing this right” or replaying conversations with people I had known 20 years before.
The other day I was riding my bike and listening on my ipod to Katie talk with people about their greatest fears when they lose their jobs or can’t pay their bills. People were talking about how terrible it would be to have only a shopping cart on the street, to be homeless, to not be able to pay their utilities and have no heat or light.
Katie loves to ask “have you ever really NOT had enough? give me a time when you really didn’t have enough, what is that story, the absolute WORST moment.”
I have done this worst-case scenario thinking many, many times. My mind loves to think of scary things and present them, sort of like a fashion show of possibilities. Like my mind is saying “you thought that one was scary? How about this one!”
What a relief to have the question “who would I be without this thought, that this scene or outcome would be TERRIBLE?”
What if everything that happens offers something beautiful?
Katie says “Life will give you everything you need to go deeper.”
I love the deep places, the place inside that is very silent and expansive. All those pictures my mind invents about a scary future or annoying moment in the future, I know they are not real. They’re in my imagination.
Right there in meditation, as my mind is thinking loudly, I can realize that what I’m imagining is not even true, and remember who I would be without this story.
From Loving What Is “how do I know I don’t need two arms [fill in the blank on what you think is missing]? I only have one. There’s no mistake in the universe. The story ‘I need two arms’ is where the suffering begins, because it argues with reality. Without the story…I’m complete with no right arm…”
Wow, if I think about something I thought was missing, like more money for example, and then I drop the story that it is missing….there is an alive, open, buzzing, happy unknown space in the center of me….silent, trusting.
We all have it.
Much Love,
Grace