Sometime last year, I was startled at the sight of the cover of National Geographic.
It was a photo of a young man standing on a very thin ledge at Yosemite National Park in the US. This ledge rested in the middle of a massive face of rock called Half Dome, hundreds of feet from the ground, hundreds of feet from the top.
The young man had no ropes, no equipment of any kind.
I guess in the world of rock climbers, at some point someone had the thought “Gosh, I’d be able to climb Half Dome FASTER without all these annoying ropes and safety devices”. It’s called Free Climbing.
Now, many people would consider this a huge risk, even crazy.
I kept thinking about the photo. I was inside that body on the cliff, looking down at my shoes barely fitting on the ledge, looking out at pure space and air. It would only take one small movement, grabbing at an edge that broke or moved, the foot moving 3 centimeters off good support, and the body could fall to the death.
The nervous part of me was alarmed. I didn’t mind that the climbers were achieving these feats, but something got stirred up when standing right in the shoes of that man on the cliff.
Where would the body land if it fell–would other friends and fellow-climbers be standing right there at the bottom? What would they see? What would the fall be like on the way down?
For some the images can be so frightening just to imagine death, accidents, terror….we only have to see a photo. The reaction isn’t as far as we think from being in the middle of the actual event.
But, it’s only truly terrifying when we start believing that this image is TERRIBLE. The worst that could happen: Death is horrifying. I need to preserve my life. I need to be careful. Everyone should be careful, especially children. I need to live. That guy on the cliff shouldn’t die until he’s older.
The thing is, being afraid of what COULD happen is really only a story about what has already happened in the past and deciding that the story is BAD.
No one really knows exactly and precisely what happens the second we’re falling, dying, the moments after, everything beyond that moment. There may be people who return from that experience of “dying” to live and who have stories to tell, but even that is THEIR experience, not ours from this body’s perspective. It’s a great Mystery, absolutely unknown.
“What I love most about reality is that it’s always the story of a past. And what I love most about the past is that it’s over. And because I’m no longer insane, I don’t argue with it. Arguing with it feels unkind inside me. Just to notice what is, is love.” ~Byron Katie
So what IS reality? Some people love to move their bodies up a cliff and feel the joy, power, expression, the urge to GO, to focus, to stay in the perfect flow, to play, to win, to try. Some of these people “fall” off the cliff and their bodies die.
I see that people die at every age, in every circumstance you could ever dream of. Young, old, taking risks, taking no risk at all.
Without the terror of death or accidents, I notice that today I feel excited, adventurous, peaceful, happy, in the flow. I notice it’s fun to take risks, ones just right for me. I notice I’m having so much fun in so many areas, I have no interest in climbing cliffs, and yet today could be my last in this body, it’s totally possible.
I notice what a Playground this place is, people running all over the place taking all kinds of rides. When I feel uncertainty, anxiety, worry when thinking about the young man on the cliff, I write my concepts down and investigate them. I have to stop and slow down to do this. Are they really absolutely true?
Death comes along. We’ll all get to participate in the adventure. That’s Reality. “It doesn’t wait for our vote, our permission, or our opinion—-have you noticed? ~BK
If I were to fall off a cliff today, it seems most wonderful if I felt joy doing whatever I was doing in the moment before falling, even during the actual fall. Relaxed, thrilled, entering the Mystery. Knowing nothing about what will happen next. Because I actually don’t.
Love, Grace
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