Today I am moving very slowly as I injured my back yesterday being my crazy energetic self while dancing.
Yesterday, wild dancing. Today, resting and taking ibuprofen.
In the past, I would have been soooooooo upset about this injury. OUCH! This hurts! Dang-it, why wasn’t I more careful! I should have known better! I hate this!!!
Strangely, today I immediately saw advantages. I knew not to go to the gym or do any exercise, but to stay quietly at home. I worked with clients only. I checked emails, I had time to return some inquiries from the weekend about upcoming workshops.
But I’ve had the thought creep in before…OMG, what if this pain stayed this way? What if I didn’t get better? What if I had to endure ongoing pain? There was someone in the Pain, Sickness and Death class who has constant back pain! Oh no! I could have the same!
I have the thought in the back of my mind…this may be fine for now, but by TOMORROW, I may hope it’s fixed.
So here I am with this body, feeling this sensation I call pain today, holding quite still, and I can remember feeling sorry for myself, and what it feels like to have something happen…perhaps something quite “big” like a major huge accident that results in permanent change…
…and I discover once again the connection between what I believe about this body and what I believe about the universe.
If I think and believe that I can be injured…and right after this thought, I clench off internally and set forth to build a good defense and prevention measures.
I don’t feel free to live, move, be, venture out…I feel like I have to be careful.
Byron Katie says “Don’t be careful, you might hurt yourself”.
Seriously?
Yet most of us “get” the nauseating or hardness of being careful, careful, careful and not trying anything new or experimenting or feeling free.
If I think that being “hurt” is depressing, sad, discouraging, hopeless, frustrating or terrifying….then I’ll work hard to make sure I don’t get hurt. Because I don’t like those feelings.
I’m believing the feelings come from being hurt. It sure seems like that. Without getting hurt, none of those feelings. With getting hurt, the stressful feelings come.
But can we be sure the two are connected?
The mind can appear quite logical. It deduces that a) getting hurt is very bad, b) it is possible to avoid getting hurt, c) since getting hurt is very bad, I must learn how to avoid it, d) if I do not avoid it, I will suffer.
What if I could feel the sensation of what I am calling “pain” and at the very same time, drop the thought that there is something I need to do about it, or fix, or change, or learn in a hard way?
NOOOO! Then I would go on running into things, getting hurt around any corner, randomly suffer because of contact with objects (or people, for that matter)! I need to pay attention! I need to be vigilant! I need to be VERY VERY CAREFUL!
Which is more stressful though….thinking I need to fix this and be very careful, or thinking I’m fine and something beyond me is already on its way to balance and healing?
Because, when I think about what is true….I know that something far beyond me, something mysterious and wonderful is moving things into balance inside this pulled muscle right now, as I write.
And the Universe, the reality all around me, is moving into goodness and balance and healing.
Even in the middle of a woman (me) with a pulled back muscle, and with people who got into car accidents today, and people who are living with cancer, and people terribly injured…there is something next, and next, and next and there is movement into that “next”.
I can feel the difference between my mind now, that is open to the wild, crazy, unpredictable universe in a different way than it once was….open to whatever this thing is called pain, open to not-knowing, open to even this being “friendly”.
And if “friendly” is a little much for you right now, that’s OK. You can just see about the universe being “neutral” instead of mean and evil and dangerous.
Back injured. Good news. Hushed morning, not moving from couch. Talking with clients. Sun streaming in the window. Silence. Reading. Excited as the body slows, deciding its definitely time to call that massage person, looking up yoga classes. Change.
Good news. Universe as my friendly co-conspirator could be saying “happy quiet moment” for some amazing reason.
I watch. This is not about denial and trying to be “positive”. This is noticing what IS positive, even when something difficult happens.
I once met a woman who had been in a car wreck, where her husband and one daughter were killed, and she and another daughter had lived. I felt the pain well inside as I heard her story, the whole thing, from the beginning.
Terrible pain. The kind I might say to myself “I could not ever handle that”. My heart wells up inside me even remembering her.
And gratitude. Because she started an organization to help people with sudden trauma and death know what to do next. She’s helped police teams and fire fighters learn how to guide people best when there is sudden death.
Another woman I know created a website dedicated to putting your will and all paperwork and items together for if your loved ones die unexpectedly, after her husband was killed.
Who would you be without that thought that you have to be careful?
Alive, slowing down, moving on, resting, bursting out. Living now.
Noticing that everything comes and goes, things rise up to be attended to, then they fade away not needing any attention at all.
Tears flow, grief, then quiet, then pain, then rest, then love. Beauty everywhere.
This sensation of pain is here in this universe for this body today, and it’s OK. I am not alone, and I don’t “have” to do anything. I don’t have to know anything.
“Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease. First realize that you are sick; then you can move toward health. The Master is her own physician. She has healed herself of all knowing. Thus she is truly whole.”~Tao Te Ching #71
If you know you’d like to open to not-knowing and to see how your thoughts and feelings about bodies relate to your thoughts and feelings about the universe, then come to Breitenbushat the end of June. Four days of the work can shift your perceptions in a most profound way.
Love, Grace
P.S. Pacific Northwesterners! Come join the new Powerful Living workshop May 3-4 in West Seattle with three powerful guides, offering three powerful modalities; The Work (yours truly), Nia movement, and Systemic Constellations. You’ll bring one important issue to shift, open to not-knowing what you’ve known so far about it, and energize it with power.