I recently experienced a set of recurring dreams or a series of thoughts being processed just prior to rising in the morning. These thoughts as I journal upon waking, swirl and remain in my idle moments, my unconscious activities (walking, cooking, eating, driving) and I am occupied by this set of questions about an issue related to the outcome at work.
The fear as I journaled wasn't about the outcome of the project at work, but that I would be overly burdened or highly involved post-project to pick up the pieces. And I felt unsettled, I felt disturbed.
My immediate response was to visualise being with Peace. We walked together in measured pace, mindful to each inhale and exhale. Slowly and steadily I felt calmer, yet the feeling of Unsettled lingered on, like a Siamese twin merged into my lower back. I was also curiously aware that this was also the backache I experience when I'm visited by a feeling of desolation - fear, stress, anxiety, confusiom etc.
I broke the silence, as we came to a halt. "How do I be at peace with this situation?" I asked. I was genuinely hopeful that there would be an end result, a eureka-like awareness which would bless me with the answer to my future. I was really asking myself, what should I do after my project fails and my boss ropes me in to more commitment to sort out the aftermath? How would that affect my family, my decision to transition to a part-time arrangement and to focus on my mission of bringing forth my light to this world?
I also began to realise almost as soon as I imagined it, that I had already railroaded Peace into accepting a future I clearly feared and had assumed would happen as reality. I was also not asking How do I be at peace.
This was the momentary awareness that Rumi wrote in The Guest House poem and Peace caught on to my contemplative stance.
He replied, "Being mindfully present helps bring in Curiosity." He went on to explain that being present is not suppressing feelings (of fear of the unknown in this case), but of acceptance of any and all eventual outcomes whichever takes form in time to come.
He next asked, "What is this feeling of being disturbed?"
I focused my attention back to my back, and immediately felt the backache released. In this head space where time stood still, I expressed my desire to take a rest, a good one. Not just about working part time while investing my effort in mission work. This was a season to honor deep rest and recovery. That was the wisdom behind my fear.
The fear and self imagined future reality was just an abstract expression of my desire. As though Disturbed was not only my conjoined twin, but a truly talented Picasso, manifesting in warped desolate thoughts to help signal in me a sense of urgency to recognize this desire.
On reflecting upon this journal entry, my answer to how to be at peace is simply to embrace the feeling keeping me from being at peace, then inviting a sense of wonder and curiosity to my mind's Guest House.
May your inner Wisdom shine bright in the darkness, and peace to people of goodwill.
December 12, 2021
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