Yesterday I signed off the computer. I had not scheduled any clients or classes. I took a good book, and went to the bath house.
Outside it was raining cats and dogs. Dark, gray, dreary winter. I wanted to be alone and felt very contemplative.
Unfortunately, I had one of those weird times when being alone with my own company wasn’t all that fun.
Sometimes irritability is like an energy that asserts itself into whatever is here, whatever it is, even if you’re in paradise. I had on Irritation Glasses.
Why on earth are there so many people in the bath house on a Monday? Why do I live in a place that rains 11 months of the year? I should use this time to write, I should use this time to research, I should be doing some kind of “look-at-the-year-ahead” strategic goal-setting thing, I need to finish my taxes, didn’t I say I was going to learn to play the mandolin? Well, you should be playing it TODAY.
And by the way, you should stop complaining. What kind of person are you? JEEZ.
It’s like there’s splinter stuck in the thinking process, a cedar splinter…too small to pull out without good tweezers and no tweezers in sight, it seems.
And what happens with this annoying, edgy, dissatisfied, uncomfortable, whiney way of seeing everything?
A new idea…the idea known as “I QUIT!”
There is a new energy, although certainly not peaceful, with I-Quit Thinking.
I’ve had enough! This is unacceptable! I’m outta here! I refuse! Good riddance! Never again!
It’s a great dramatic moment in movies and theater. You can take this job and shove it! I want a divorce! You have offended me, you are no longer my friend and I will never speak to you again! We are hiking over the alps out of Austria to freedom!
The curtains close. The dust setttles. The conflict is over. Freedom has prevailed!
At least, that’s what the mind thinks.
Of course, life goes on and new challenges meet the heros and heroines who have moved into the I-QUIT zone. They may even repeat the exact same sequence with someone new, in a new situation.
Before I had the tool of self-inquiry, my mind would chatter incessantly and I would, indeed, quit something. If the chatter got too loud.
There is nothing wrong with quitting. But it often is not necessary. We think we have to, that there is no way out of this rat-maze of experience unless we make a big change, put our foot down, draw a boundary.
It is an absolute demand for improvement. THIS situation is bad and I will not stand for it. I will force a change. I will get away from that BAD person or situation.
Yesterday, in my mind, it was like I was saying if it weren’t for taxes, rain, learning the mandolin, money, time, and other people….I would be having fun here in this life. But since all these things are here, and they are irritating, then I am unhappy.
We can even have the thought that if it weren’t for our THINKING then all would be well.
Gosh, if it weren’t for my irritable, annoying brain, I would wake up and be happy.
“Loving-kindness—maitri—toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves.”~Pema Chodron
I notice that in my alone day, despite there being crankiness around every corner, I also have a voice of curiosity. I am watching, or something watches. There is someone or something here that knows all is well. Or perhaps all is very NOT well, and that’s OK too. This is just a dream world.
If I really, really, really do not have to get rid of anything….if I do not have to move away, cut off ties, ban anything, go on a special diet, lay down the law, get a lobotomy….wow.
Suddenly there is relaxation. Openness, the unknown. What happens next is mysterious.
I don’t have to DO anything, or change anything. Things actually just change. That’s the nature of reality.
“Mind is so powerful that it could take the imagined fist and beat it against a wall and actually believe that you are the person whose fist it is. Because mind in its ignorance is so quick to hold its imagined world together, it has created time and space and everything in it. Mind’s ability to create is a beautiful thing, unless as the terrorist that it often is, it has created a world that’s frightening or unkind……Eventually, mind discovers that it’s free, that it’s infinitely out of control and infinitely joyful.”~Byron Katie
Yesterday I watched, and didn’t do much, and didn’t accomplish much, and rested and lay still, and thought with wonder about how I will die at some point and this whole thing will quit, at least in this particular form.
And later, at dinner with my three sisters and my mother, we all laughed so hard our stomach’s hurt. Irritability was gone. “I” didn’t “make” it leave or decide to never speak to it again. It came and went.
Remembering that everything changes and that reality is on the move is the sweetest thing. I don’t have to be at war with what I am not in favor of, like other people or the weather.
Today it looks like I have another day on the planet. The rain is very soothing and lush. My cottage is gorgeous and bright. My thoughts are flowing.
Even if I Quit, I didn’t really. It keeps going.
“All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.”~Tao Te Ching #66
Love, Grace