CAR AND COMPUTER

There are two things that can throw me into a panic: something going wrong with the car and something going wrong with the computer. It's not the oh-my-god-how-can-I-function-without-it sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it's not because I know nothing about them and am therefore dependent on other people who I hope know what they're doing. It isn't even the money it will cost to fix either of them, 
     I think the panic goes deeper. It's my fear of being without something I need which I can see is a kind of fear of abandonment. I'm a child saying, "Mother, don't take that rattle from me - Mother, don't take yourself from me." I feel bereft, and as I had bad parenting, I learned to cover up whatever I needed so I wouldn't feel the pain of not getting it. 
     The car and computer are crucial to my daily life and, even though I'm an adult and know whatever the problem is will get fixed and probably sooner rather than later, I find myself feeling resentment at the universe for doing something mean to me, and the powerlessness of a child, and  anger at myself for having that reaction in the first place. I know it's irrational and I have ways of quickly moving past the turmoil of those feelings, but the buttons that were installed in childhood will always be there. They've seared pathways in my being, and the feelings they give rise to will surface at the most unexpected times. I've learned that's all right. Those fears and needs have taught me most of what I know about surrender, letting go and the transitory nature of all feeling, both good and bad. Those feelings have taught me how to deal with them.
     Today, there is nothing wrong with the car and the computer is working just fine. No need for panic, no need at all.

LETTING GO

Just what is letting go? You could say it's moving away from old ideas and embracing the new. It usually comes out of a spiritual or psychological admission of powerlessness, a willing surrender to whatever it is that represents to you a power greater than yourself. It's the search for the courage to take your hands off the rock you've been clinging to, the steering wheel of a car you thought you could run. It's a release of whatever has been holding you back, and if you can't see what's up ahead, you have the faith and its child, courage, that you will be all right.
     I'm fascinated by the fact that we can let go, that we can shift from one way of being to another, widen our perspective, discover new ideas, see what we haven't noticed before. Sometimes it comes in a sudden burst - I was blind but now I see! - but those awakenings, conversions, and thunderbolts of clarity and intuition are rare. For most of us, change happens slowly, step by step, until we realize we're in a different place.
    I'm sure scientists and philosophers would laugh at my fascination. I imagine them saying, "Duh - that's what consciousness is." I suppose what I mean is that I'm in constant awe of the miracle of consciousness. That it springs from the brain in a way we still don't understand. That it's given us the ability for self-awareness, to look at ourselves and others and understand that we're separate, to feel an inside and an outside to our bodies, to project the future and know that we are going to die. It's at the heart of our ability to feel love. Well, it's at the heart of everything when we're talking about human beings.
     It's impossible to say all of what consciousness is and what we can do because of it. I'll leave that to the experts, the neuroscientists and the artists.  But I know what my fascination with consciousness does for me. It fills me with awe, an awe that doesn't come all that often in my every day life. It makes me feel I know what miracles are. When I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking of the deepest things with the deepest part of me. It gives me a sense of spiritual connection - which of course occurs in my consciousness.

   

A WEARY WETNESS

The weather today is my favorite - around sixty degrees and light rain. I like the grayness and the rain so light I feel I could walk between the drops. Somewhere in Raymond Chandler, I think The Big Sleep, Marlowe says, the world was a weary wetness. He may have said, warm wetness - but I like weary better with its suggestion of stillness. In weather like this, everything seems suspended, quieted, and when I look out the window things blend in the low contrast and become all of a piece.
     Stillness and all of a piece...they're so difficult to find as I move through my days. So often my mind is very loud, with non-stop chatter about superficial things, and instead of feeling all of a piece, whole and harmonious, I feel conflicted, ambivalent, full of doubt. Those feelings grow out of what I think of as my terminal self-consciousness, my ego constantly weighing and measuring how I'm doing, am I right or wrong, can I do everything, or anything, right, what if, if only, I should have.... 
     Over the years, I've learned how to step back from that constellation of black stars. I've learned how to let go, to turn my angst or fear over to whatever exists beyond my babbling ego. I've learned in meditation to find a still point which I have only for moments at a time, but it means everything to know that stillness is inside me, a refuge that is always there. 
      Dante's Inferno begins, "In the middle of my life, I came to a dark wood." I feel so often in the middle of a muddle, but I'm not heading to darkness as I used to fear, but to light, to moments of stillness and harmony. I have to surrender the muddle again and again, but each time I do I'm pierced with the possibility that I can live with the light inside me, always available when I reach for it. It's more than a possibility; it's real and there and steady.
     Each surrender is a new beginning. I'm always coming a great distance in order to begin.

SURRENDER AGAIN

Over the years, I've had many images of surrendering. One of the first was that I was a rat in a maze, frantically searching for the way out, when all I had to do was stop and the exit sign would appear. 
     "...all I had to do..." That's the hardest thing to do, to get to the moment when I fall to my knees in defeat, and in that falling find myself in a new place where change and answers can come. A place where I am willing to surrender all the manipulations of my ego, my expectations and demands, my certainty that there is only one right way for me to live and I can't live without achieving it. Willing to surrender the belief that only I can and should be the sole creator of my destiny.
     Life would be much easier if there was a step by step guide to liberating surrender. Although I've come to that point many times, I can't say exactly what gets me there. All surrenders follow a similar path - I hold on and hold on until I can't do it anymore, then I let go and stillness comes. But I never am able to hurry it along; I can't say, oh, I need to surrender, and then simply do it. My desire to surrender doesn't help me surrender any more easily or quickly. 
     But once I directly experienced what a relief it is when I do surrender, I began to develop faith that if I kept trying to get free of my frantic will, my desperate demands and expectations, I would be led where I wanted to go. I began to see that the bubbling cauldron of fear and doubt and self-loathing that was reaching fever pitch wasn't my fate, wouldn't shatter me, but was part of a process leading me to insight and possibility. More and more, that bubbling cauldron had a context, a purpose - to move me along toward freedom. With each surrender, my belief that there was a purpose to my pain, that it was leading me toward insight, gave me the courage to keep on, to not cut and run, to hold steady and to keep my eyes focused on the possibility of change. 
     I can't make surrender happen on my schedule, but I can prepare the way so that I'll be ready for the moment of release. Where does that moment come from? Some would say it's grace or a moment of clarity or the hand of God. Wherever it comes from, it's a moment of expansion, a stabilizing connection to someplace beyond my own distorted ego.