Not long ago, someone asked me “why do you do what you do?”
Good question.
Really, this question has been one of the most powerful in my life.
It’s driven me to understand why I did crazy things like binge-eat or drink, to study philosophy, go to graduate school, read volumes of books, pay for expert help, seek answers to my insanity and crazy thinking, and eventually led me to learn The Work….
….which somehow has stuck and offered profound clarity in so many areas.
The answer to “why” I do what I do has been pretty selfish for the most part.
I wanted to end my suffering.
I did addictive escapist things to end my momentary suffering of anxiety or sadness. I quit jobs to end my suffering of feeling like a slave. I pursued knowledge or connections with people to end my suffering in loneliness or fear of abandonment. I traveled and didn’t stay in one place to end my suffering in fear of intimacy, or boredom. I enrolled in educational experiences to end my suffering of feeling worthless or unable to help.
I’ve gone to business trainings and spiritual teachers to find success in the area of service and peace, and end my fear of failure or a pointless future.
But what would it be like to live and do things and create or pursue or be busy and have a super full schedule and talk to many people and travel all around and learn lots of new stuff or even sit in silent meditation on retreat….
….without suffering being involved?
Huh?
Gosh.
Never thought of that before.
Why would you do The Work, for example, if you weren’t really bugged, or upset, or worried, or sad?
I realized, the other day, not being super troubled has still offered a window or pathway into The Work, as long as I’m interested in wondering if something’s true or not.
It’s like the suffering is either very mild, and maybe not even there, but I find I still have a strong opinion, a sharp judgment, a flash of thinking something like “he should get a job” even if I also don’t know if he should get a job and basically also don’t care (in a good way).
The Work offers great questions to contemplate, I realized along the way, on anything.
Any thought. Any feeling.
So let’s do a lighter concept today, or at least, it feels like I forget about it and don’t really care for the most part, but it still occurs to me from time to time when it comes to life.
So….here it comes….wait for it….
….there isn’t enough time.
Yeah.
That’s right.
There isn’t.
I’m limited in years here on planet earth. I’m in my fifties. I’m only just hitting my stride. I should have started meditation in my teens, I should have started my own business in my twenties. I want to live to see my children’s children’s children and it probably won’t happen. I want to see what amazing things will happen with our natural world and humans and technology.
I should have….
Is it true?
Are you sure there’s not enough time?
No.
How do you react when you think this thought?
I feel so temporary. I feel like it took me so long to get here. So much wasted time on suffering and believing stressful thoughts and reacting and freaking out and withdrawing and hiding and seeking pleasure or escape and having a really contentious relationship with this life and reality.
Now my relationship with reality is actually feeling pretty wonderful, even though there’s still suffering in the world and in my life, I just don’t feel the agony of it all.
How amazing to even be able to say that.
Why couldn’t I have relaxed earlier in life?
I need more time!
Who would you be without this thought?
Ha ha!
Laughing!
It’s such a persistent and goofy story.
Obviously, everyone is here only for a while. No one has unlimited time. Ever.
I’ve already found how I wouldn’t give up one single horrendous moment of war within because of the truce or freedom it led me to eventually. Many difficulties led to something far greater than I could have imagined.
Thank God, thank goodness, thank Reality.
I turn the thought around: There’s enough time. More than enough time.
This much I have is just right, plenty. Perfect.
Couldn’t this be just as true, or truer? What are examples?
Well….it seems reality has it that we are here for one life time, however long or short that is.
We do not live in this body forever. Why would I miss the natural flow of things?
I also notice, I’ve had every experience at the core that can be had: loss, pain, sickness, death, surrender, awareness, maturing, acceptance, love, birth, curiosity, no idea what’s going on, sorrow, joy. Nothing’s actually missing.
I am. Time is not necessary.
Woah!
“Love says ‘I am everything’. Wisdom says ‘I am nothing’. Between the two my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both….What is perfect, returns to the source of all perfection and the opposites play on.” ~ Nisargadatta in I Am That
Much love, Grace