Yesterday I had a moment when in about 10 seconds I had the thoughts: “it’s all over from here…there will be a time I can never dance again…I have a limited time left on the planet”.
I was feeling hip pain. From my gymnastics move about a month ago.
The right hamstring was injured, but now the left hip hurts since I’ve been favoring it, walking kinda weird, and ignoring it half the time.
Through my mind ran the following thoughts:
- this pain will never go away
- the writing’s on the wall…if hips are hurting, I’m on my way to the end
- I have to finish my book before I croak! Quick!
- I’ll never see my kids’ in their old age (so weird the way that works)
- I need more time
- one day, I will not enter this dance studio any more, I’ll be dead
Then I thought about the great sage Ramana Maharshi for about ten minutes, as I have many times before, and his story of at age 16, lying down on the floor and pretending he was dead, just to see what it felt like.
BOOM. He saw what he was without a body.
So where’s my ecstatic “boom”? Seeing who I am without a body is kind of attractive at the moment!
I’m way older than 16 and I don’t have to pretend really, to get the sense that it’s over soon, and I’m going to be dead at some point.
But it pretty much feels like I’m stuck in this sack of flesh, for now, to put it bluntly.
Not that I hate the body…in fact, it’s genius, kind, accepting, miraculous and completely fascinating. Hurts, heals, changes.
Off and on throughout the day I feel the dull pain and I think about who I am before my parents were born, the zen koan.
I’m not even TRYING to concentrate on seeing from the perspective of No Body and Who-I-Truly-Am and all that rot. Yet, I’m thinking about this anyway!
There’s that silly mind again. On the job attempting to figure it out.
The voiceover from an old TV ad for Trix Cereal comes in, where the rabbit is doing everything he possibly can to get that awesome cereal, and he just can’t seem to outwit the situation and have what he wants.
The rabbit tries many maneuvers….and then discovers that he’s been trying to get something that is actually not possible for him to “get”.
Because he’s a rabbit.
“Silly Rabbit”, the children say when they realize he’s been up to multiple shenanigans trying to acquire their cereal….“Trix Are For Kids!”
Silly Mind! Awareness is not for you!
But what IS for the mind, thank goodness, is The Work. At least, so far this mind seems to delight in it.
This mind (and yours probably, too) just LOVES to answer questions.
So let’s take a look at the troubling little thoughts about the body that have appeared from this message of pain apparently originating in a human hip.
Are these thoughts actually true that have been streaming through this mind? That the pain will never go away and it’s all downhill from here?
Well, I could be completely pain free (in fact, come to think of it right in this moment, on the same day only a few hours later as I write, I don’t feel pain).
And no, I don’t have to finish my book before I croak, or see my kids in their old age.
And it’s possible I don’t need more time….and it’s absolutely true that one day I won’t enter the dance studio anymore.
I mean, I am going to die….at least the physical body will.
But what if all this wasn’t a BAD BAD thing?
I mean, how I react when I believe these thoughts, and believe they are alarming, is that I am instantly afraid, nervous, planning, calculating, and grasping at all kinds of strategies for softening this situation, either emotionally, mentally or physically.
I’m the rabbit BEFORE he finds out the tricks are not for him. Ha!
Without the thought, however, that any of this pain, injury, change, death, departure or ending is terrible in the great big scheme of things….
….wow.
I am so curious, and interested in All This, including whatever Pain appears to be. (Is it energy? What is it?)
I remember that every time I enter the dance studio, I am different, so I’ve already lived the story of having no dance ever be repeated.
Without the thought, I see there is nothing guaranteed, nothing steady, nothing gained and lost, because nothing sticks anyway.
Without believing things are getting worse, I am excited to see what this body does, what it’s like, what happens next.
I’m psyched about the story unfolding. What will she do now?
Oh look, she went to physical therapy, she made a massage appointment, she slowed down and held still all day, she scheduled the book-writing time on her calendar.
She went to the dance studio and remembered the sweet friends who will never come there again, as they have already crossed over into death, and that we’ll all follow.
“The only way to get out of this is to see through it. Don’t renounce it, see through it. Understand its true value and you won’t need to renounce it; it will just drop from your hands. But of course, if you don’t see that, if you’re hypnotized into thinking that you won’t be happy without this, that or the other things, you’re stuck.” ~ Anthony DeMello
Turning everything around, I see how this is all very wonderful, and nothing is ever truly permanently ending, and everything is always beginning, and fading away…
….and things are getting better. Could be just as true.
- this pain will always go away; emotional, physical, all of it
- I’m on my way to the end, to the beginning, who knows
- I don’t have to finish my book, in fact when I die there will be tons of things unfinished, that’s the way of it
- I have no idea how much of my kids’ lives I’ll see or not see, it’s a mystery and doesn’t seem up to me
- I need less time! Whew, what a relief!
- one day, I will not enter this dance studio any more, I’ll be dead. Woohoo! What, did I want to dance here forever? That’d be weird.
“No-thing-ness…as much as that doesn’t make sense to the mind, is the most alluring thing of all.” ~ Adyashanti
I hear the rain pattering outside, drink an incredible taste of water, read a sweet text from my daughter, look into the vast gray sky, and for just a second my throat wells up with tears of gratitude.
Then even that passes and in this emptiness I am stunned to find gratitude also for the pain.
How else would I have been considering the mystery of life and death, and All This today?
Much Love, Grace