Imagination without investigation = h – e – double hockey sticks

imagination without investigation feels like Hell
imagination without investigation feels like Hell

In our Year of Inquiry group, this month we’re looking at The Worst That Could Happen.

Nice and cheery. (Ha ha).

But here’s the thing. Doing The Work on events we’ve found terrible, tragic, horrifying, difficult….seems to expand the mind to include not only the sense of being shattered (no denial of the event in other words) but MORE than only this.

How does that work, being shattered and yet alive, even whole?

It’s the strange paradox of life apparently, part of the duality everyone is speaking about.

(I don’t think of duality as a terrible thing, by the way, and like we all must get to NON-dual ASAP, or else….)

When our Year of Inquiry group is investigating terrible tragedy, or frightening images and visions (the worst that could happen) we notice there’s a never-ending supply of ideas the mind can come up with.

That’s not what this work is about….accumulating scary pictures and scaring ourselves with them, like watching horror movies on purpose.

What this exercise is about, for me, is addressing fear, and noticing what’s actually really true.

Almost every time I’ve considered something “horrifying” or a really bad terrible experience, it’s not as bad as I thought.

Long ago, I was driving on a long road trip with my former husband.

We were in the very last week of our 3 month adventure, driving through tall yellow wheat fields in California on a small blue highway. Rounding a corner in the late afternoon/early evening sun, we saw a truck turned up on its side, and two bodies lying on the earth some distance from the truck.

We stopped.

The bodies were moving. Everything came into consciousness very fast.

Woman, bloody head, turning from side to back, calling out. Small boy, no blood, lying face down quite a few feet away. We’re both jumping out of the car, doors slam, I run to woman, he runs to boy. High alert. Woman talking, moaning, drunk. Boy shaken opening eyes. My husband getting a blanket, boy standing up, lots of blood coming out of a big cut in woman’s forehead.

Two other cars stopping on the road. Someone shouting they’re going back to store to call 911. This was before anyone had a cell phone (1990). I stay with mother of the boy, holding her hand which she’s squeezing, trying to keep a towel on her bloody head and it’s not working well since she’s moving around, worried about her boy, not thinking clearly. Her leg is in a crazy twisted position and must be broken.

In the dusk, a helicopter. First aid men running. We can leave now.

Back in the car, everything was back to normal motion.

Can you believe that happened? We say to each other.

We’re far later traveling to our destination than anticipated. My sister’s place where she lives while she goes to school at Berkeley. We hear her worried voice when we stop to call and say what happened. She waits up.

We arrive at 11:00 pm. At midnight, I can’t sleep. At 1:00 am. At 2:00 am. at 3:30 am. I basically stay up all night, adrenaline coursing through me AFTER the whole thing was over. I was entirely safe. I was always entirely safe, but my mind is seriously freaking out, seeing the pictures of what happened over and over.

During the whole thing, I was waiting, calm but extremely awake. I never thought once that time was passing too slowly. I had no reference for time passing at all as we waited for help, as I held this woman’s hand and tried to stop the blood from her head and wondered if I should try to move her twisted leg and decided against it.

I can’t sleep more than 2 hours for 3 nights.

Then I start telling myself I shouldn’t be so freaked out, it didn’t even happen to me, no one died, what’s wrong with me am I too sensitive?

The truth is, that was a traumatic, sudden, surprising situation.

Often, sudden surprises like this are shocking….and they are The Worst That Could Happen.

But what I see now, from here, from doing The Work on this very situation even though it happened 26 years ago, was how everything was present there, including peace: support (the earth), first aid, me and my then-husband, a beautiful California night, my sister’s home, a quiet landscape with soft wind blowing.

Maybe it was the end of drinking for the mother, the end of her driving while drunk. Maybe it was the end of them not using seat belts.

I really don’t know what it meant in their story, all I can know is what I assumed it meant in mine. My entire psychic, physical, mental and emotional system held the belief “this is the worst, it should never happen, there is no good that can come out of this event or any event like it, the world is a dangerous place.”

Was it true?

Could I absolutely know that situation was 100% entirely dangerous, and no good could come from it?

No.

I’m here. Nothing fundamentally permanently terrible really happened, to be honest.

How did I react when I believed it was terrible, dangerous, horrifying?

Surged like an electric fence with anxiety. Repeating the event over and over and over in my head for days, then weeks, and even now I can remember it vividly.

Who would I be without the belief it was the worst that could happen, a terrible event….dangerous?

Huh? Weird.

Although I see, it’s only dangerous to my mind. This body was untouched. There were many healthy bodies all helping out. The hurt bodies of the boy and his mother appeared to be intact (not dead, that’s for sure).

What was in danger? My mind! My believing! Threatened! Scared! Panicked!

Who would I be without the thought the world is a dangerous place, as I consider that scene?

Somehow…..empty. But a good kind of empty, like a light unknowable, unknowing empty. It’s almost funny for some weird reason, right now.

Life went on. I have lived for 26 more years past that incident, and had many, many good times and awe-struck moments, and love, and peace, and awareness and difficulty and loss and clarity.

It seems we’re all here temporarily, I notice. What if this is a good thing? What if I trusted Reality?

Without the belief the world is dangerous, I notice I’m sitting at a table in a quiet living room, writing. I hear a lawn mower in the distance outside, and the refrigerator humming.

“Who or what would you be without this story? You’ve already been living the worst that could happen. Imagination without investigation. Lost in hell. No way out….But there’s not dark hole you can go into where inquiry won’t follow. Inquiry lives inside of you if you nurture it for awhile. Then it takes on its own life and automatically nurtures you. And you’re never given more pain than you can handle. You never, ever get more than you can take. That’s a promise.” ~ Byron Katie

Much love, Grace

Every Loss Has To Be A Gain

When a beloved furry pet dies, it can feel very sad.

Several people have written me lately about their animal friends dying, and feeling grief, depression, regret.

I haven’t had a pet as an adult…but I understand the welling up of tears and all the thoughts that start to churn that may turn out to feel stressful.

  • I miss him
  • I should have done more with her
  • If only I had known that was his last day
  • her life was too short
  • I could have done better

Funny how when something is “lost” and the life of that animal, or person even, is over….we sometimes want to reach back and grab for more.

More time, more cuddles, more conversations, more intimacy.

A dear inquirer who recently lost a little cat noticed thoughts of guilt entering her mind….

….if I had known she was going to die, I would have let her eat more food and enjoy more pleasures, not been so strict.

Let’s take a look at this difficult thought that can appear with loss of someone you love, whether a pet or a person.

I could have done better. 

Is that true?

Are you sure?

Because you only knew what you knew, in that previous moment. You know a little more now, here in this moment. What if you weren’t supposed to know it back then?

The mind may argue….“but I DID kind of know. I should have paid attention, I should have followed my intuition, I knew I could do better, I could have been more clear, honest, aware, trusting, astute, kind…”

Are you really sure you could have done better? Are you 100% positive that you should have known what you didn’t know, or decided what you didn’t decide?

Many years ago, I became pregnant, and after terrible agonizing, had an abortion.

When asked later in life what I believed to be the absolute worst thing I had ever done, the thing I felt most guilt about…..it was that.

I had never known prior to that experience what post-traumatic stress syndrome might be like. I was beside myself with grief and regret. I was sick for days. It stayed with me for a decade. I was shocked by my own dreadful thoughts towards myself. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for years.

One of the first Byron Katie events I ever went to, a woman stood up and said it out loud. She regretted having an abortion.

I still felt so much shame, I couldn’t believe this woman told the same story, publicly, holding a microphone!

But as Katie asked her to question her beliefs, to do The Work, something shifted inside about this thing called “regret”.

In the dictionary, regret is defined as the sorrow about the loss of opportunity.

Ah, there’s the rub.

The image of the future or past (which is actually false and does not exist) where opportunity lives, or used to live.

Now, not only is this life lost, but this imagined and vivid alternate opportunity. The one where the person or animal I care about is alive, or happy.

Over and over again, in the distant past, I imagined the birthdate, the gender, the life of this child that never was.

Deep torture.

Who would I be without that thought, that I could have done better?

“You can’t let go of a stressful thought, because you didn’t create it in the first place. A thought just appears. You’re not doing it. You can’t let go of what you have no control over. Once you’ve questioned the thought, you don’t let go of it, IT lets go of YOU. It no longer means what you thought it meant.” ~ Byron Katie

Imagine who you would be without the belief that you could have done better. Because it’s possible that what you’re thinking NOW is imagination, too.

Without that thought?

Freedom, acceptance for this self that is beyond knowing. Peace far, far past all the stuff I think.

A great feeling of everything being exceptionally well and very strange and mysterious.

I turn the thought around: I could not have done any better. I did the best I possibly could.  

How could that be truer?

I can find how that experience drew me into such suffering that the equal and opposite breaking-free became possible. I contemplated short lives, and noticed that every length of life you could ever imagine happens here on planet earth….from a few hours to over 100 years.

I don’t have three children to take care of, I can focus on two.

“Clinging creates the bricks and mortar with which we build a conceptual self.” ~ Michael Singer 

I gave that entity a gift of very little agonizing and suffering, and a return to a place without bodies…somewhere I’ll be again one day.

My life has been filled with so much, this life has not been empty because another life “left” it.

“Every loss has to be a gain, unless the loss is being judged by a confused mind….The simple truth of it is that what happens is the best thing that can happen.” ~ Byron Katie 

What is the gain, in your life?

Much love, Grace