More opportunity to practice (AFGO)

On the CD that comes with the book Spiritual Liberation by Michael Bernard Beckwith, he says "In the mind of God there aren't any problems, there are just impetuses for us to evolve." He goes on to say that the real question to ask as we face challenges is "where must I grow, where must I evolve?" What is it within me that I must set free to empower myself in the face of this issue?

I've also been thinking about the difference between self-delusion and serenity. If I just choose to be happy, as I'm often invited to do, isn't it possible that I'm just looking on the sunny side and not dealing with the muck and darkness like I've always done?

After more thinking I've concluded that delusion is when I choose to be happy by ignoring or otherwise distracting myself from problems; and that serenity and empowerment come when I can choose to be happy in the presence of challenges and obstacles. This involves acceptance regarding what I can't control, and faith that I have everything I need within myself to meet all challenges that come my way. I can grow, I can evolve. It may not be easy, it may not be pleasant, but it's definitely something I can do. I can find the opportunity in any situation if I really want to.

So I have another opportunity, and my grand conclusion is easier contemplated than practiced.

Husband found out last night that he's being laid off in January. With my consulting work a trickle the past month, my mind immediately flings off in the direction of foreclosure.

This is part of my sickness. I fall into a downward spiral and hem and haw about disasters that haven't happened and things I can't control.

I have A LOT OF FEAR about financial insecurity, and about Husband being able to handle the stress of job loss, job hunting, stress in his current job, his continuing health issues, his upcoming operation, staying on his new medically supervised liquid diet, and sometimes not being able to get enough good sleep. I worry that the addict is going to pay us a visit.

So...I'm going to meditate more, exercise more, ask myself how I can evolve (I've already got a hunch this involves restructuring my relationship to abundance and surrendering to what I can and can't control,) talk to my higher power and turn things over...and we'll see. I'm getting better at seeing what is mine to deal with and what is Husband's to deal with, so that's useful progress.

Maybe over the past 18 months I've gained some facility in dealing with groundlessness and the impermanence of life.

Both a wave and the water

I've been thinking a lot about a passage from Thich Nhat Hanh's book No Death, No Fear:

"...Looking deeply, we can also see that the waves are at the same time water. A wave may like to seek its own true nature. The wave might suffer from fear, from complexes. A wave may say, "I am not as big as the other waves," "I am oppressed," I am not as beautiful as the other waves," "I have been born and I have to die." ...But if the wave bends down and touches her true nature she will realize that she is water."

"Water is free from the birth and death of a wave. Water is free from high and low, more beautiful and less beautiful. You can talk in terms of more beautiful and less beautiful, high or low, only in terms of waves. As far as water is concerned, all these concepts are invalid."

I feel powerful and free in my life when I remember that my husband and I are both waves and the water. We are each individual expressions of the same thing - whether that is God, my higher power, the universal consciousness or something other. Non-duality. We are all aspects of one thing, so there is nothing to be afraid of in the not-knowing of it all.

Tonight (on the treadmill where a lot of my good thinking seems to happen) I realized that I've been holding my husband responsible for the unknowability of life. "I am afraid, I've realized I can't be certain about anything in life, and it's your fault."

But the unknowability of life is not Husband's fault. Husband is only the vehicle for this lesson. I don't believe it's possible for me to know the future, no matter how sure of it I feel. But in some areas I had forgotten that. In some areas I felt sure that I knew what I could trust, sure that I knew how life would go. But despite the surety I felt there was never really any knowing. How can I know what hasn't yet happened? It only felt that way.

That is not to say don't trust, don't have faith, don't be optimistic.

Instead, I see there is a possibility of learning to trust, to have faith and to be optimistic in the face of not knowing. Of being present, experiencing the moment with whatever it brings, feeling the pain and the joy of being alive instead of trying to escape into the future or the past, into desire or distraction.

Sometimes I can actually wrap my head around these things, and in those fleeting moments there is such serenity and peace.