This past weekend I reviewed a course I took thirty years ago. I actually took it two times, thirty years ago, six month apart.
The course was called est. Which is “to be” in French.
I loved that title. And that’s the punchline of the whole course. A focus on Being. Being who you really are, without stressful stories.
I was pretty sure I didn’t “get” it the first time, thirty years ago. I was pretty young, hardly an adult. Everyone else got it. But not me.
I wasn’t entirely sure I got it the second time either. But there were some really, really cool ideas presented.
The most important?
That life is meaningless and empty.
In a good way!
Kinda takes the whole heavy load of burden off a person around seeking the meaning of life.
Trouble is, I forgot, then remembered, then forgot, then remembered. I kept thinking my stories and what happened to me was real, important, alarming, or good.
Not long after est, I began to study the Course in Miracles and met with a group every week for a long time. I read everything I could on mystical experience, philosophers, visited ashrams and churches and places of worship, went to lectures.
It really was my only true interest. I was suffering, I wanted to stop. I was one big question mark, I wanted an answer.
Well…we all know where the search for answers goes. Ha! Nowhere! Surprise!
And yet, studying who you are, who you are right now, is an immense and incredible practice. One I love more than anything, and everything fits into this adventure, so nothing is left out.
It was fun, delicious and gentle to remember the beginning of my intense journey in understanding this life and this world, that began in my teens. (The class I took this weekend was called the Landmark Forum).
The great question….who would you be without that stressful story? Without that troubling idea? Without thinking, evaluation, managing, or analyzing it?
Glorious empty space. Without meaning.
“What got him was nothing and nothing’s exactly what anyone living (or somebody dead like even a poet) could hardly express. what i Mean is what knocked him over wasn’t (for instance) the knowing you’re whole…life is a Flop or even to Feel how everything (dreamed and hoped and prayed for months and weeks and days and years and nights and forever) is less than Nothing (which would have been something) what got him was nothing.” ~ ee cummings
Much love, Grace
P.S. Year of Inquiry starts soon.