I was 15 years old and on the most daring adventure my academic traveling parents had taken yet.
Despite being able to identify a few imperfections about my parents (LOL, I’ve had the privilege of doing The Work)….
….my mom and dad both rocked the house when it came to love of learning.
They had rented a van, referred to as a kombi, in South Africa, and we joined another family with three kids (ours had four) in their own car, making a caravan to a fascinating place all the adults wanted to see.
We were in the tiny country of Lesotho (you say it “Lahsootoo”).
We had been driving for hours. Days, actually.
It had been raining just as long.
Even though I was 15, I notice now I didn’t question or ask how my parents and the other parents picked the village we were trying to drive to, or why.
They loved seeing places.
We were traveling a completely unpaved road at this point.
Well, things had been unpaved for a very long time, come to think of it.
Far, far, far into the deep heart of this small country.
We passed only people on foot, pretty rarely, carrying items on their heads. They would stop and stare at us as we bumped by like a gigantic turtle splattered with mud, going ten miles per hour. Maybe.
We could see the back of our friends up ahead also in their mud-covered car, the color now unknown as I remember only…..mud.
Then, I heard the spin.
The alert of tires, turning wildly in the thick mud.
I sat up straight and looked up at my dad from the back seat.
Would this be yet another time when he’d jump out, my mom would take the wheel, and he’d run alongside and push the van?
Spin, spin, spin.
Cough.
The engine died.
He turned it on again….success, motor engaged.
A moment later he called “everyone out!”
Our friends were up ahead, also spinning in place. Tires whirring and splatting mud in shooting streams.
They beckoned up to us as we all unloaded and moved to their car.
Everyone’s clothes were also, basically, mud-colored. At least our trousers.
Me and every other kid had bare feet. It was easier than trying to actually pull on mud-coated shoes.
We leaned, shoved, and in one big lunge, their car moved forward and up to more solid less liquified ground.
Then came the project of getting the kombi unstuck, and also up to solid ground.
I could tell my dad was getting anxious. It would be dark eventually.
They tried putting paper under the tires for traction. Everyone was offering solutions. A few men walking together along the road, who spoke no English at all, also began talking, waving their arms around, gesturing. It soon became clear, we will all set to gather piles of plants, grass, flowers, sticks, and make something solid in the road.
After a very long time, with shouting, and lots of rocking the kombi, lightening the load by unpacking some of it, and gathering everything we could pick, carry or throw under the wheels….
….there came that moment.
Just like when the space ship breaks through the last leg and the astronauts make it.
Cheers went up! The van was unstuck!
Hooray! All these people, some of whom didn’t speak the same language, shouting Hooray!
We then made our way only 30 minutes farther down the mountain as the day began to fade, entering a remote little village of maybe eight rondavels (small round lovely huts).
We made it.
Nothing like the thrill of Team Work.
Even though we traveled for an entire year, none of us ever forget that moment of the Lesotho mud road.
That village was the most beautiful place, ever, and my memory is the sun came out the next day….although I don’t actually know if that’s true. It was the sunny feeling on the inside of making it through a difficult problem, everyone pitching in and taking part, everyone having a role. Relief. Success.
The feeling of going at it together.
The other day, during a Year of Inquiry weekly call, someone in our group got stuck with her turnarounds.
“I absolutely can’t see”, she said, “how I could find any examples at all for why my ex shouldn’t work with me to help our teenage son.”
There was a pause, and then she asked everyone…..”can you all help me? Does anyone else see an example for my turnaround?”
Someone “raised their hand” (I get to see it on my screen, after someone pushes *2) and I called their name.
Then someone else offered a suggestion, and someone else.
It reminded me of Byron Katie here in Seattle several weeks ago, when a man sat on stage after the suicide of his son, looking at the turnaround on his worksheet and shaking his head “no”…..
…..”he should be dead”?
Katie turned to the audience.
Can anyone find an example?
One by one, people raised their hands and shared: He doesn’t have to live into old age, sickness or decay, he’s no longer suffering in this life, he’s free of a body, he’ll never have to go through other hardship and loss again like we all do while here on planet earth.
The point is not to try to feel better, if you don’t.
It’s not to be in denial.
It’s not pretending that what breaks your heart into a million pieces, didn’t.
For me, it’s about understanding this thinking, that I call “my” thinking (which can be questioned)….and being here, together with reality, instead of separated and in pain.
This work is about investigating the human condition, our thoughts, our suffering, what we believe that’s so agonizing.
And when it’s really difficult, and we can’t see any peace, we can get help from others.
Team Work.
And maybe we are all working together, all the time, all along, in every moment–no matter what has happened or is happening–and you always have available for you the question “can you help me get unstuck?”
“We seek because we feel separate – from each other, from life itself, from The One we love. We feel separate, but are we actually separate? To whom does ‘the sense of being separate’ appear? Does anybody own this ‘sense of being separate’? Even ‘the sense of being separate’ is inseparable from what you are. It does not belong to you. It arises in total intimacy. What you are allows every sense, every feeling, every thought to arise and fall, in a vast open space that cannot be fathomed by mind. Freedom from separation within that very sense of separation. Stunning!” ~ Jeff Foster
Much love, Grace
P.S. If you’d like the collective energy of people gathering together to question stressful thinking, come to retreat. The next retreat: Abundance, Desire and The Work Weekend. We’ll look at what we wish was here now (desire, abundance, love, excitement, the thing) and examine this longing for the truth. March 18-20.