First Friday Inquiry Hour is 7:45 am – 9:15 am Pacific Time.
Join me live right here. Audio only. Use phone or WebCall to connect for free and be heard (should you decide to share). If you prefer to be listen-only then connect using Broadcast.
The options for joining First Friday sometimes don’t appear until 15 minutes before the call. Come at 7:30 to take your virtual seat on the call.
Can’t wait to do The Work with you.
This past week, in the very same format as First Friday,(everyone gathering via teleconference) a profoundly stressful thought appeared from one of our group members in Year of Inquiry.
About mother.
She should have stopped the suffering.
I witnessed precisely this same thought a few weeks ago on retreat, and the same thought in a retreat last year.
I’ve sat individually with others investigating at this thought.
I’ve felt the rage of wanting Someone Else to fix it, and believing I was unable–but they were.
They should stop the suffering!
She should take us to safety. He shouldn’t have let this happen. They shouldn’t have taken such risks.
I remember believing this about my father and mother.
We’re driving in our van on a dirt road through tall yellow grasses. My mother is looking tensely at a map and speaking sharply to my father who is driving and saying “this has to be the right road, there aren’t any other roads!”
The sun is getting low.
I sense we were supposed to be somewhere by now, wherever our destination is for the night. My three sisters and I have been playing word games and looking out the window at the African landscape.
We hear gun shots.
In the distance I see a lone house begin to come into view in the orange light. Someone is standing and waving their arms back and forth above their head in the way that appears to be a universal sign for “Look here! Over here!”
We bump down the dirt road, my dad stops the van, and grown ups are talking to one another while we four kids are still in the car. My parents come back to say we’re not staying here, we still have a ways to go to get to the peanut farm.
Nothing more happened. Nothing terrible occurred.
But there was so much tension in the air, I still remember it quite vividly. The fear, the sharp words, the not knowing what was happening or where we were exactly (a country called Rhodesia).
When we get to the peanut farm, the white family greets us (we are also white) and there are whispers about the dangers, but we’re ushered into comfortable bedrooms with mosquito netting.
I look back and learn of that year we were on the road, and all the insane political events happening very close. I wonder about my parents taking us to dangerous places.
Is it true they should have stopped?
No.
The situation I describe was nothing compared to the other painful situations I’ve explored with brave inquirers looking at the violence in their childhoods.
You might answer “yes” to this question. The one I trusted, the one who was supposed to look after me should have taken me away from that danger.
Can you absolutely know it’s true?
This is never about condoning or passively accepting an awful situation, or saying it was good when it was not.
But what a profound question: Is it absolutely true–is the entire story true–is everything I think about this situation actually true?
For me, no.
For the inquirer in our group, even though the answer was initially “yes, it’s true”….
….we kept going.
How do you react when you believe the thought that someone (mother, father, anyone) should have protected you, done something, stopped the suffering?
Who would you be without this belief?
As I’ve heard others answer this question, the compassion that arises for the one who couldn’t protect is astonishing. The compassion and sadness for the whole situation. The heart-break for humanity.
To touch into the power of this kind of love for what we thought was dangerous, frightening, intolerable, someone-else’s-fault….what a gift.
I hope you’ll join me for First Friday in a few hours. Let’s do The Work.
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No one is guilty of anything other than believing their thoughts. ~ Byron Katie
Much love,
Grace
