The desert is a wide open exposed place. I was in the desert very recently to spend some time in inquiry.
One day I was outside stretching my legs in the very bright, cold afternoon. The sun was so bright, I squinted my eyes. My skin felt the dry, crisp air. I had to run to stay warm even though there was not a single cloud in the sky.
All the yards were full of gravel. Maybe a cactus bush or two.
I marveled that as I was there in the desert town, moving down the sidewalk, that the landscape matched my inner mind.
Vulnerable, brighter than I can almost stand without dark glasses, and sort of harsh but full of delicate, colorful structures. And the most infinite, vast sky, full of mystery.
Right there on the sidewalk I felt scared for a moment about how vast the sky was.
How strange that thought is, right in the middle of your day, “I am vulnerable” or “this world could be a dangerous place” or “this place is so mysterious, I don’t get it.”
It seems like stressful thoughts sometimes appear out of nowhere, for no particular reason.
It’s a clutching inward, like a stomach ache, or muscles tightening, except it’s the mind tightening.
Wouldn’t want to get too vast or anything crazy like that!
Fortunately, in those moments where a fearful thought arises, not long afterwards, almost on the heels of the thought, there is an awareness that the thought isn’t actually true.
It was just a thought.
And by looking at it, off it goes into the wild blue yonder.
Later, when I was safely inside again and not contemplating the big humongous sky…I laughed because that worried mind is such a nervous ninny.
But there is something to lose here, in this big mysterious world. It’s the sense that “I” am important, that I mean something, that I’m extra special.
Honestly, I am of course unique in all those ways we know, but not really. In the great big scheme of things, whatever this person is that I seem to be, is just another human being living life.
My name will not be remembered in only one or two generations. Even if my name is written down somewhere, or I do something that is written down, no one will actually know me. No one.
People still study “famous” figures in attempts to understand their motivations. Only the story remains, not the person. Most of that person’s daily living is unknown, forgotten.
The interesting thing about all of this, is that in the past, before The Work, my attitude towards the impermanence and inconsequence of ME and my little life was sadness, pessimism, a sense of being so small. It all seemed so pointless. The feeling was that in my little lifetime, who cares.
My name not remembered…sooooooo saaaadddddd. I should do something important!
But now, with self-inquiry…I need to do something, or be important. Is that actually true?
My name needs to be remembered, I need to make a difference, I’m NOT making a difference…really really?
“The basic creative energy of life—life force—bubbles up and courses through all existence. It can be exeprienced as open, free, unburdened, full of possibility, energizing. Or this very same energy can be experienced as petty, narrow, stuck, caught.”~Pema Chodron
I notice that when my world opens up and a vast desert landscape lies before me, inside and outside, without the thought that “I” am something or that I need to be, all is well.
Everything is free, untethered, unnamable…and that’s wonderful. Maybe things don’t need to be named. Including me.
“The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real.”~Tao Te Ching #1
Love, Grace