Want a new identity?

Open yourself to this moment, and everything falls into place
Open yourself to this moment, and everything falls into place

This month the Year of Inquiry program is looking at the body, physical conditions or limitations, feelings like “exhaustion” we don’t like.

But really, the sticky beliefs we have about the body are almost the same as the ones we have about anything that feels uncomfortable.

If it’s a person, an experience, a condition, an interaction, part of reality and it causes anxiety, heartbreak, worry, or rage…..

…..often we have the same reaction.

Kill it.

Now, I’m kind of joking around here.

But “kill it” can mean the following: get away from it, destroy it, figure out how to crush it or punish it or make it go away forever, work hard to eliminate it, seek help to change it, and never be happy unless it looks like you might be successful at putting an end to your contact with this thing, person, condition, interaction or experience. Forever.

People in Year of Inquiry were noticing weight, shape, or feelings all as being “wrong” and how much the mind suffers when something is present that it thinks shouldn’t be.

I’ve had the same feeling with people, or with the condition of “not enough money” or even towards my own MIND.

It’s a problem.

How to solve it?

Make it go away. It shouldn’t exist. Not like this.

But let’s look at “change” and the wish that something was different than it is.

I demand this to change. Now.

Can you feel the stress? The frustration? The fury at that thing Not Changing?

What if you wished this about your mind, and the act of thinking itself?

Yeah! It should be calmer! It shouldn’t run around like a Tasmanian Devil. My thoughts should be relaxed, still, sharp, genius, and non-judging, and Not Bored.

Haha! As if.

(You know the saying “as if”? You say it with sarcasm like a super rebellious teenager and it means….”As If that could EVER happen!”)

So let’s do The Work on this demand for something to change–even the mind itself.

Is it true that it should change?

Answer this question about whatever it is you really, really think would be waaaaay better if it changed, upgraded, improved, stopped.

Are you absolutely sure it should?

Um. Pretty sure. At least…..

…..dang, now I’m confused.

Maybe not. Maybe I can’t know if it should change, this thinking mind. I’m not really trying to MAKE it think. It’s just doing that.

How do I know it’s not supposed to, or that I’d feel better if it didn’t?

I know how I react when I believe my mind is a problem.

I hammer away at it. I read books about “thinking” and changing the mind. I feel irritated with it. I’m sure there’s something I’m missing, that other people are enjoying out there. Poor me.

Who would I be without this belief, though?

Clunk.

Going blank.

You mean….no belief that this needs to change? No conviction that this is bad, and must be fixed?

Wow.

Wait, even the mind?

Yah.

What if you didn’t believe your evaluations were true, that this should go away, it needs to change, you will be happier later (and you aren’t right now)?

Who would you be without your thought that your thoughtsshouldn’t be as they are?

Hilarious, right?

“At the core of our suffering is the sense that something bad is happening to us. In fact, that’s what the word suffering literally means–to undergo or endure. There’s a sense of passivity (from the Latin passio, meaning ‘I suffer’), of not being in control, of being the victim of life….When the pain is not deeply accepted in this moment, I become ‘the one who is in pain’. And then the search is on. I do not want to be the one who is in pain. I want to escape pain. I want to be the one who is NOT in pain. I don’t want to be pain’s victim. I want a new identity!” ~ Jeff Foster in The Deepest Acceptance

What if you turned it all around and you stood here, right now, without any sense of anything being wrong, or happening to you….

….not the difficult person, your condition, your body, the uncomfortable moment, or your fearful or troubled thoughts?

No need for any new identity.

As if.

“Open yourself to the Tao, then trust your natural responses; and everything will fall into place.” ~ Tao Te Ching #23

Much love, Grace

Bye Bye Identity

Today is the day! In about 8 hours that my right hamstring will get reattached to my sits bone deep in the pelvis. Around 1:30 pm Pacific time.

I have been limping, feeling pain, and moving more and more slowly for several weeks.

The usual marching, speedy, springing woman that I normally feel like has gone away for awhile, at least physically….

….and a new very slow person has replaced her.

I must admit. I’m a little anxious about the pain.

I saw photos of how they do this. It wasn’t exactly looking….gentle.

The surgeon cuts into the leg, slices across, goes underneath the gluteal muscle mass (that all gets lifted up with some kind of metal device), then the pelvic bone gets grazed up so it bleeds (this doesn’t sound peaceful) and then the shredded end of the hamstring that is detached gets pinned with two titanium pins onto the bleeding bone.

No problem!

Three days ago, I lay on a bench up in the choir loft of a gorgeous brilliantly lit church, the sun pouring through the colored glass and making the whole interior of the place glow with golden luminescence.

My leg was throbbing. Underneath the friendly, articulate, amused voice of David Whyte, who was standing far below (he has two working legs, I note) with a microphone….

….my mind would shout sometimes even through his eloquent words “oh god, 72 hours until the knife cuts the back of my thigh and goes deep into the place that is already throbbing right NOW”. 

David chuckled once, mid story, sun beaming towards his face like a spotlight, and picked up his podium with both hands, moving himself several feet to his left.

“I can only take so much light”, he joked.

I wonder if that’s how MY mind functions.

Because it is strong, stable, kind, loving and relaxed….and then….it appears to offer a slide show of dangerous Coming Events.

Me in a wheelchair, me laying face down for 6 weeks with drool coming out of my mouth, me crying because I can’t go outside, me not being able to get up to go to the bathroom with crutches, me with the entire right leg cut off, me realizing that this whole body thing is on its way out.

  • this is going to hurt
  • what if they can’t repair it (the worst thought)
  • I’ll never be the same
  • my life is over as I’ve known it
  • I’m going to shrivel up like an atrophied raisin, my muscles will shrink and petrify, and I will never come back to my athletic energetic self
OK then!
I know, I know, it’s a little over the top.
But allowing these kinds of thoughts to be as they are, knowing they are not all of me, has been one of the most wonderful things to accept.
“I shouldn’t think bad thoughts, I shouldn’t be worried, I should be positive, I should not anticipate pain, I shouldn’t be so dramatic.”
 
Is that true?
Can I absolutely know that it’s true that I shouldn’t be making such a fuss, that I shouldn’t be worried, or that I’m saying goodbye to my life as I’ve known it?

 

No.

How do I react when I believe that this is a troubling situation? That this pain I feel is BAD, that I’ll never be the same, or that I’ll be in MORE pain soon?
Sick to my stomach, nervous, angry, full of visions of scary images.
Who would I be without the thought that I shouldn’t be afraid?
Who would I be without the thought that this is disturbing, that it’s not guaranteed to go perfectly, or that this is a bummer?
Without these beliefs, I’m in a Don’t Know state. I feel the sensation in some parts of my leg and I’m calling it “hurt”, I write, I see other visions, I imagine myself hiking some day in the future, I hear a cat outside.
I breathe deeply.
I laugh as David Whyte talks, I see the pictures he describes. They are not of legs or hamstrings.
Can I turn these thoughts around to their opposite? YES!
  • this is going to heal
  • what if they can repair it
  • I’ll always be the same (especially the me that isn’t even a body)
  • my life is just beginning, with a new leg
  • I’m going to bloom like a juicy grape, my muscles will grow and loosen, and I am already back to my athletic energetic self

I just waved my arms around while lying on my back in the bed, laughing, my heart beating and my body getting warm enough to take off my sweatshirt.

My arms might have a fantastic, strengthening time. And my mind.

Why not?

Gratitude for everyone, for support, for change, for injuries, for surgeons, for the amazing technology of even being able to attempt to repair such things.
Gratitude for beds, couches, wheelchairs, legs, voices, blood, photographs, imagination, joy.
Gratitude for medicine, destruction, evolution, treatments….that we all move through the veil, eventually.
“We think that we’re afraid of the death of our body, though what we’re really afraid of is the death of our identity. But through inquiry, as we understand that death is just a concept and that our identity is a concept too, we come to realize who we are. This is the end of fear.” ~ Byron Katie

 

Much love, Grace