I am safely back in Seattle, the place I apparently live.
Notice the word “safely”.
I’ve been thinking about fear lately, from the very slight nervous anxiety, to full blown trauma and terror, and everything in between.
Fear is a strange and fascinating energy and experience. And usually, it only comes alive when in a flash, the entire psyche mechanism thinks *something* is threatening.
I mean, right now, if a meteor crashed through my roof and I died mid-sentence….
….had I heard nothing, seen nothing, felt nothing, smelled nothing….I would have experienced no fear.
I’d be, simply, gone from this particular form. A pretty simple, quick, easy-going movement from one state of existence to the next, in whatever format that takes.
Fear, I notice, only happens when you get the chance to use your mind, to anticipate what COULD happen, and terrify yourself.
When I was eleven, my friend Anne had a slumber party for her birthday. She lived in a big white house near the tennis club. It looked a little like a castle. I was soooo excited.
In the basement where all the guests stayed, we had soft camping pads and sleeping bags. Some girls claimed the couches. The floor was beautiful shining hard wood, glossy and smooth.
I suggested a slip-n-slid sort of thing…without the water.
Put on your socks, run as fast as possible, then slide like a skiier all the way across the floor. We screamed for joy, and took turns sliding over and over. Our wool socks worked well on the smooth wood.
Until.
A small click sound, almost imperceptible. A stabbing pain shooting through my left foot, right through my thick sock. Pain stinging into the center of the middle soft part of my arch. Agony!
I pulled off the sock, and this sent another shooting extremely sharp pointed pain through my foot.
I gasped.
Right into the middle of my foot was a thick, wide splintered off piece of wooden floor the size of a large fireplace match. Horrified, I pulled at the end of the wood. It hurt so much and my skin just pulled up with the huge splinter, I released it.
Everyone came over to look.
A girl reached for my foot and I slapped her hand away “NO! Don’t touch it!” Fear pulsed through my body. I told everyone to keep away. “I’ll do it myself. Anne, do NOT tell your parents!”
I don’t know what I actually planned to do myself. I knew this thick piece of wood needed to come out of my foot, but my heart was pounding and I felt more panic at the thought of an adult yanking the thing out. There would be blood.
I had my knee bent, the bottom of my foot facing up towards me, like in the cross-legged position. Slowly I moved towards the splinter and pulled on the end.
Excruciating pain. It didn’t budge. The skin seemed stuck to the sides of this gigantic splinter.
I don’t remember how long it lasted. I kept shoeing girls away. “NO! Get away! I’ll be OK, just leave me alone! And DO NOT TELL ANY GROWN UPS!!”
All the girls had gone silent, watching and wondering what to do.
The place was dead quiet.
We were frozen in time, it seemed.
This is a deep way humans sometimes react to something threatening. Go into a cave bomb-shelter, close the hatch, and ignore all knocking from outside. Doomed. Terrified.
Who might I have been if I didn’t believe I would get more hurt if another human tried to help me? Who would I be if I had stopped pushing everyone away?
Little did I know, Anne in her nightgown and socks, snuck up the back stairs and off to somewhere in the house above where her parents were.
Suddenly, breaking the silence, was the voice of her father coming down the main staircase.
Greater panic inside me. I decided I had to HIDE this injury! Everything in me was screaming “don’t let anyone see!”
I quickly shifted my hurt foot from the cross-legged position to sitting on my calves, the bottoms of my feet facing the ceiling behind me.
I sat frozen as Anne’s dad, mostly a stranger, was saying things to Anne on the stairs. “OK, honey, we’ll take a look. Who has the hurt foot?” his head poking around the corner of the room.
I felt around for the end of the splinter, desperately hoping to get it out before they descended on me. Even though it was an awkward position and I couldn’t see my foot really, my heels tucked up against my rear end.
I pulled.
The splinter slipped right out.
What?!
I brought it around to the front of me immediately, about an inch of it covered in blood with a very sharp red point. My foot was then bleeding from the hole, but I was so, so relieved.
Anne’s dad quickly got a towel, and said to get bandaids, and it was washed up and gauze put on my foot with medical tape.
It was over.
It had come out so easily when I moved the position of my foot to soft, with the foot relaxed and caved in towards the site of the injury. But I discovered this accidentally, trying to hide that I was hurt, trying to do it myself.
I had the entire slumber party wondering what the heck to do, the whole event stopped with no way to resolve the problem for what I remember was a very long time….refusing to let anyone help me….
….only to find relief when I switched position entirely and tried again from a different angle.
This is just what self-inquiry is like.
What if that moment was safe?
What if you felt it was safe for someone to help you? What if you were going to be OK, whatever happens?
You might save time. And a lot of agonizing and panic.
“The unquestioned mind is so loud, you don’t realize the happiness underneath that mind. You’re not in charge of it. It’s already there for you. I don’t have to do anything for my happiness; I just notice the world without my story, and in that I notice that I’m happy. It’s always supplied. The unquestioned mind fights with anything that would bring you joy.” ~ Byron Katie
You might notice that what REALLY happened was, you survived and all of it went well, every moment unfolded just fine. Despite your great fears, your panic, your pushing people away…you got help eventually.
You were supported.
You are OK now.
Can you see how that’s true?
Grace