Think of someone you met once. You had a deep conversation with them that changed both of your lives. Let's say 30 years passes and someone asks you about that person who changed your life. Could you describe them? It's been thirty years. By now, you have changed physically. They would have changed significantly as well in the last thirty years, at least physically. But when you think of that person, even if their face has become fuzzy in your memory, even if their outward appearance has faded from your mind, you remember that being. You remember their spirit. Why? Because who we really are is not our thoughts, it's not even our bodies.
Who we are is a spirit being inside a physical form with mind and emotions. But the mind and emotions are not Me. I am not my thoughts. I am not my emotions. I am me. I am that I am. I am something eternal. I never understood that before, when God spoke to Moses from the burning bush and Moses asks, "Who should I say sent me?" And God responds with "I am that I am."
My mind and emotions are just distractions from the real me. And if I let them control me and distract me my whole life, I will never realize who I am. Who am I? Who is the I am that I am in me?
This is the practice I hope to embrace, openness. Allowing my spirit self, my consciousness to transcend these momentary disturbances and distractions of thoughts and emotions. As Michael A Singer points out in The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment, often the easiest way to get to practicing openness is actually to recognize and get really good at seeing when I am closed first. And then stop being closed.
I was thinking of a time in 2010 when I made a pilgrimage across Europe. I trekked over 1100 miles in 75 days with my little cocker spaniel, Sam. I experienced both incredible, heart-expanding openness and gratitude and the abundance of the universe and I experienced the closedness, the shut down of my spirit often on a daily basis. When I was open, the universe opened up to me. I was filled with joy! I felt incredible gratitude and light and peace. And it was as if the universe saw that and just gave me whatever I needed, whether I thought about it or not.
I also saw the "danger of the mind", as Singer calls it, when I let my mind and emotions control me. In one instance in particular, a kindly, yet forceful personality wrapped in the aspect of an elderly nun offered to give me and my dog a ride down the road, if I could just wait a day or two while she finished up her lecture series she was sharing with the cloistered nuns at the convent where I was staying. I agreed. I needed a couple of days' rest anyway.
A couple of days later, her driver (a woman from the area where the nun was headquartered) begrudgingly agreed to take me and my dog with them to Reims and the great cathedral there. The woman driver's palpable resentment of me soured my perspective. I was already feeling vulnerable.
My hormones were out of wack and I was even more emotional than ever. I was on the verge of tears constantly. For anyone who knows me, that is a super rare occurrence. I rarely cry. I blamed my hormones. In my mind, I felt resentful of the woman driver who resented me for some unknown reason. The nun had convinced the woman and husband to let me spend the night with them for one night. The husband was kind and immediately fell in love with my dog, Sam.
As agreed, the nun took us on a tour of the cathedral of Reims where she was actually a bit of a celebrity and authority on iconoclastic art. But my mind was disturbed. I could not appreciate what an incredible gift this was. I felt miserable! I felt sorry for myself. I felt rejected and alone. I let my feelings and negative thoughts ruin the entire trip! The husband could not have been more compassionate. The nun, direct as she was, had kindly offered me a ride and a lecture tour of the cathedral and had even found me a bed in a safe home. They even took me out to dinner.
The woman driver resentfully took me to her home. She seemed jealous of husband's attention to me...though really it was directed at my adorable dog. The next morning, she yelled at me to get moving as her daughter would be coming to take me back to the via francigena trail. I was packed, ready to go. But everything I did or did not do irritated her and she let me know it. And I let her negative reactions dictate my negative reactions...
I could recount many, many times when I was in a different state of mind, just happy to be alive, when I was open to the universe, and everything I needed was literally given to me by strangers. I didn't even have to ask. If I thought "I need water. I'll stop in the next town and purchase some", ten minutes later a stranger would be waiting in the street saying, "Oh, I heard a pilgrim was coming. I have two very large, cold bottles of water for you. Would you like some? Oh, you have a dog. Here, have some dog food for your puppy." I was overjoyed, of course.
I share the stories of being both open and closed, not because the open, positive state got me what I wanted while the negative state did not. I could try to recreate that feeling of openness. Many times as humans this is exactly what we do. We think if only I recreate the externals then I will feel open again. If that were the case, I would think that going on pilgrimage is what I need to do in order to be open, that is, if I only remember the positive side of the pilgrimage trek. And to be sure, my positive experiences seem to far outweigh all the hardships, the struggle, the negative moments. It would be easy to remember only the open state and all the good things that seemed to come from that and declare, "Aha! I have discovered that the formula for true spiritual growth is to go on pilgrimage!" Indeed, when I recount the stories of my transformational pilgrimage trek, I always remember the good times. I remember the feeling of wide-openness of my spirit. The wonder, the curiosity, the awe, the pure, ecstatic joy at life. I could try to make it prescriptive for everyone else and say "In order to unlock your spirit, you must go on pilgrimage! The key to openness is to do what I have done." And indeed, several of the pilgrims I met along the way had decided that this was their formula for happiness.
But I mention the closed incident with the nun and the driver because I recognize now how much I robbed myself in those two days together. The universe was open to me. Strangers were literally giving me everything I needed, food, shelter, human kindness, and so much more in the riches of the information which this art historian was imparting to me. But my mind was in such turmoil. My emotions were controlling me. I was blind. I could not see the beauty of life unfolding before me. The universe was open to me, but I was closed! I had shut down, closed myself off from seeing this incredible joy and opportunity to engage. I said earlier that "the woman driver's palpable resentment of me soured my perspective". This was not true. I soured my perspective! I let my mind and emotions distract me, the real me, the spirit me. I let the disturbance of my thoughts and feelings of self-pity rob me of a beautiful chance to shine in the universe, to celebrate the riches of the gracious nun sharing her knowledge with me. I missed the opportunity to listen to that poor angry woman, to really see her. I had messed up her plans, whatever they may have been. I had intruded on her time with the nun. Not only that, but the nun had convinced her to take me, a stranger and her dog, into her home. The point is that I had allowed all this disturbance to reek havoc with my thoughts and emotions and denied my spirit the opportunity to thrive in curiosity and joy and abundance. I was closed. And it took a good day more for me to free myself from the incessant chatter of my mind and breathe and open up again.
So the point of my latest experiment, the 21-Day Openness Experiment, is not so much trying to recreate the externals in which I felt open to the universe...no, that is another distraction from spirit. The key is to stop closing. And that is something internal. I'm practicing letting go of judgments of myself and others. I'm practicing letting go of expectations. I'm practicing letting go of my lists of what I think I need or want or don't want to be fulfilled. I'm embracing the process, like that 1100 mile trek. It took many baby steps and missteps and getting lost at times and the kindness of strangers to reach Rome. It will take time to learn this new practice and to let the real me shine, to simply be the I am that I am.
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