Ten thousand forms of suffering. Joining Year of Inquiry can help.

An old zen question: what was your original face before you were born?

Before everything became “this” life. The face who has lived, is living, will live an unknown amount farther into the future.

This morning in early meditation, for some reason, maybe it was the bizarre changes in the world out there with the massive stop of travel and social time and weirdness of the virus and death notices….I thought of the man who went spelunking one day all by himself, an expert cave crawler, and a great huge boulder rolled with a shift onto his forearm.

He was trapped, and alone and down in a canyon or a cave.

He eventually realized his only way out alive was to cut off his own arm, free himself, and make his way back out to the light.

Yikes. Sorry for the disconcerting visual. It’s stayed with me ever since I first read about it when I visited Moab National Park about 15 years ago.

I felt the familiar heightened awareness as I sat in stillness. Wondering what it was like, how he could have managed to do such a thing.

But the reason I mention this, and I really don’t mean to be adding MORE to the visuals and nerves that seem to be arising….is to say that I’ve observed the mind working this way in the past.

It feels threatened for whatever reason, a generalized notion of uncertainty, haunting music playing, people with anxiety, scary sounding news….and what does it do?

It thinks of MORE disturbing images from both the past and the future.

Like a slide show playing on ultra-speed; is this one making you nervous? How about this one? What about this one? Oh, and how about that one from 1972?

And it pauses on that old story of the guy who amputated his own arm. Jeez, not that one again.

(I’ve also got a repeater of another young man climbing Half Dome without ropes, paused part way up with his back to the cliff and “resting”–it was on the cover of a National Geographic).

All these images, worries, wonderings, unknown mysteries, strange adventures.

This seems to be a time when wondering is up, strong, intense in the atmosphere.

Which is why I loved a group inquiry that just happened, yesterday, in Year of Inquiry.

It was a simple, core, sweeping thought resounding through the group:

IT’S TOO MUCH!!

Everyone found their collection of thoughts that all built together for a moment when the abrupt cry entered the mind “it’s all too much! Nooooooo!”

(We may have heard it several times a day the way the world is unfolding lately, I know).

Too much to organize, too much work suddenly transferred to the living room, too much anxiety about what will happen next, too much nervousness about getting the virus or losing money, too much thinking about death or disease or bodies, too much talking with everyone in the family home at the same time, too much laundry, noise, news headlines.

In our group, someone had too much time suddenly on their hands, another was being driven crazy by the kids, another exchanged harsh words with his dad, another drove into then out of the grocery store parking lot.

Someone else was having to figure out teaching college online.

But hearing peoples’ images, visions, thoughts, feelings all in this inquiry work feels like such a relief–we’re not alone, we all have the same SMACK DOWN even if the images and situations are different and unique.

A thought whizzes in with the grand statement “Too much! Too much! Seriously too much!”

But here’s the thing.

As we walked through this belief, we discovered the only thing that’s really too much, in any given moment ever, is the belief itself.

My thoughts fill the air with visions of the future that are entirely unknown. Worries. Perhaps there’s been physical pain.

But was it ever too much?

No.

I’m here, breathing. I didn’t die.

Too much for what? Too much for me to feel, to imagine, to wonder about, to hold?

What if that is just not true?

I reflected on how in my life I’ve felt abandoned, hated myself, experienced terror, lost everything including all my possessions, gotten physically hurt….and it was never too much, except in my head.

When I believed it was too much, frequently my action was to eat, smoke, drink, read historical novels, gather information and quickly, grab for answers, work harder, stay awake at night.

When I believed it was too much I never questioned it.

Now, thank goodness for four questions.

Turning the thought around: It is not too much. My thinking is too much. I AM too much for IT.

Life, circumstances, happenings, situations, people, emotions.

“I am” lives through it all, the life force (as one year-of-inquiry member said), the buzzing beat of being here. The pulse of living is here–and the thoughts fall apart, dissolve, collapse. They even go away the minute we sleep.

Things shift, despite my thinking. Things get OK again.

“I am” holds it all and the Too Muchness fades and returns, but doesn’t destroy What Is.

Something that was here before All This, and will live on after All This….can’t be touched.

Who or what our faces were before we were born.

If you notice stress thinking or disturbed thinking pesters and bothers you about life–and it doesn’t have to be about the virus–come join us as the doors are open this month of April in Year of Inquiry. We’re a mighty fine group of sincere people, wanting simply to question our thoughts.

Click HERE to read details. We meet live, we share a private forum for doing our work in writing and communicating online, and we partner pair with others.

I am so touched by all the new folks who already just joined Year of Inquiry, wow. My hands are clapping.

The ship is taking new inquirers on board this month, then we’ll close the doors again until the usual annual open time: September.

Join for a year (saving quite a lot), or month-to-month (still such a deal compared to solo sessions), and please ask me if you are out of work and in dire need of scholarship help. Just write to grace@workwithgrace.com