Emptying Misty Mind of Stressful Thoughts

Here I am deep in the tall woods, rain pitter-patting on leaves. The morning is very still. I’m at Breitenbush Hotsprings. A low bell in the distance sounds, signaling a half hour until breakfast is served in the lodge.

I hear my husband breathing deeply as he still sleeps.

The cabins here are incredibly cozy, heated by the mineral hotsprings with big pretty old-fashioned looking radiators. A small soft lamp sits on a little wooden desk, sending a quiet yellow light into the cabin. Once again I think of Laura Ingalls Wilder, only there’s plumbing.

My annual Breitenbush retreat began Wednesday night.

When a circle of people gather to learn and do The Work together, a part of me feels strangely unable to convey with words the freedom possible through questioning your suffering.

It’s hard to describe what it means to catch yourself thinking something painful, to believe you’re doomed, to feel terrified or nervous…..

….and to suddenly remember in the middle of the flow of reacting…..

…. is what I’m thinking actually true? Who would I be without this belief?

Before I knew how to inquire and investigate into the nature of “thinking”, my immediate interpretation of things that felt scary or hard, was that it was TRUE that they were scary or hard.

It went like this:

Something happened. It’s bad news. I ran. I fought. I cried. I felt hurt. I felt stress.

I then walked around a little shell-shocked or upset the thing might happen again. I consider life to be a bit dangerous (or very dangerous). I made plans to fix the bad thing, incident, or relationship (or myself, endlessly).

Now, there’s nothing really wrong with this. It’s normal.

It’s sort of brilliant we have these brains set up to be aware of danger, and move away from it. Kind of like the hot stove analogy we’ve always heard growing up “Don’t put your hand on a hot stove-you’ll get burned!”

Got it. No hands on stoves. Check.

But what if your mom or dad or caregiver shouted at you that you’d get burned….every time you walked past the stove?

What if they screamed “Watch out! Remember the stove?! You have NO IDEA if it’s ON or OFF, you could get burned!! BE CAREFUL!! OMG!!!”

You might have an extra big ALERT in yourself about stoves. You’d always feel a little nervous in kitchens.

It’s like the awareness of what works and what doesn’t (stoves burn) would have a sort of instant anxiety-producing result, rather than being filed in the mind as simple data, which the mind is so brilliant at doing.

If it even looks like a stove, you’d feel cautious. If you heard the word “stove” you might have a flash of adrenaline inside. You may decide not to cook.

What I love about The Work is, you get to take what’s already happened inside of YOU, your own basic day-to-day life experiences in the real world, and explore how a disturbance in the past (an event, a word, a conversation, an incident) might still be affecting you in a limiting way.

In a way you don’t feel free.

I wanted to feel free to come and go in life, and have stoves be in the room, without running away, or getting all defensive, or worrying about getting burned.

Now, I get to sit with all these dear people in our retreat and already witness them tasting this freedom.

I don’t really have to explain anything.

When they answer the four questions, and find turnarounds….

….the sweetness of them finding new ways to be with “problem” people, the awareness they are not victims but can feel empowered in any situation, the tears and the relief I see….

….it’s sooooo inspiring.

I love doing this work.

How did this happen, that I get to be a part of a retreat such as this?

So inspirational, so profound, so full of a sense of the greatness of humanity and the awe of how people can transform simply by seeing something or someone disturbing….differently?