Last night for the fourth night in a row I walked under a black sky studded with sparkling stars. Walking very slowly in the crisp air with my huge puffy blue down coat zipped up tight, I turned off my flash light, head tipped back in wonder.
A new friend and fellow scholar of the Orphan Wisdom School I’m enrolled in said “there are so many stars, I can’t even tell which is the big dipper”.
We paused under the brightness, and soon found the big dipper, and little dipper. Others were also here with us, all making our way back across a huge expansive night field towards our cars parked in a long row on a dirt road near the place we’re meeting.
Everyone was looking up.
At the very same moment in my mind I was thinking about something posed in our group just before we broke for the night.
Retreats are not necessary, not required.
Because this life is not about being as careful as possible so you make no mistakes, or figuring out how to fix yourself, or resolving your inner world once and for all, or finding the answer to what makes you happy.
No.
Life will always be imperfect, we’ll make mistakes, we won’t feel quite resolved, things will be messy.
Happiness will most likely be found through a powerful acceptance of the nuttiness and surprise of life, not in getting it all figured out and managed.
I thought about this concept of not needing “retreat” because not only have I been on many, many retreats of all kinds, shapes and sizes….
….I’ve also been in the place where I could not afford either the time or the money to go on retreat, or leave my daily life behind and meditate for a week.
Which brings me to one of the things I love about The Work and doing it as an ongoing practice every day.
All it is….is four questions, and trying on the turnarounds.
And all you do is ask these questions when you notice you feel stress, suffering, anything that keeps you from actively engaging fully in your own daily life.
Your daily life is your personal school.
When I notice there’s something that would prevent me from movement, action, a sense of holiness about even the most mundane daily activities, or lack of imagination and respect, I can ask these questions.
- Is what I think right now true?
- Can I absolutely know it’s true?
- What happens and how do I react when I believe what I think? How do I speak? What do I say? How do I treat others? What do I do?
- Who would I be without this belief running in my head? What would this look like? What would I say? How would I be with others? How would I treat people, myself, my life? What else is possible instead of thinking the same way I’ve always thought, or everyone around me has always thought?
Much love, Grace