I hope that everyone enjoyed the snow this week. As I began writing this post, I had intended to only write a short anecdote about my adventures in the inclement weather, but I got on a roll and before I knew it, I had several paragraphs about psychology and spirituality. I considered breaking them up into two different posts, but I sort of like them together. I welcome the opinions of any readers about whether they belong together or should be separated.
I met with one of my mentors in Chapel Hill early this week, and in anticipation of this meeting, I had prepared a couple of topics that I was struggling with: impatience, anxiety, and maintaining positive energy while interacting with people who are exuding negative energy. It was a great conversation, one that left me feeling peaceful, empowered and centered. As it turns out (and of which I was certainly aware on a subconscious level), all three issues are linked to one particular fear: I can not allow myself to fully trust the waking up process.
My ego will not easily let go of the fears that this process is complete bullshit. It causes impatience because internally I want to prove my ego wrong! "Why isn't the process going any faster?! Could the ego be correct: none of this real? Am I just delusional?" The anxiety comes when I do actually experience a revelation. The ego says, "That's not really real! Now you're just one step closer to the loony bin!" or sometimes, "Beware that if you continue with these shenanigans, you will grow too powerful, and power has never brought anything except destruction and despair." All false beliefs I know. Both impatience and anxiety are two very important reasons that I am so often affected by other people's negative energy. I am very sensitive to the energies of others, and I'll absorb it like a sponge. Why? Because I am still learning to be centered in my own reality and existence. The complex dynamics of interactions with others, compounded by the fact that most people are completely unaware as to how their energies effect other people, triggers my anxiety and impatience, and I suddenly find myself not so strong and centered. In some of the worst circumstances, I might completely lose my footing and temporarily forget everything I have learned, sucked into short sighted realities and adopting programming that has no business in my psyche.
Earlier in my life I would turn my nose up at the prospect of fate and cosmic powers involved in my destiny. I didn't want to believe that there were forces beyond my understanding and control. I wanted to believe that reality was cut and dry: if it couldn't be perceived or explained using five senses, it was simply my imagination, or a fantasy invented by someone mentally disturbed, or by religion as means to control the masses, etc.
And then I woke up. I discovered that there are indeed greater forces in the world that operate outside of my normal, three dimensional perception (that realization in and of itself is long story). An extremist to the end I temporarily adopted the opposite perspective, that the process of figuring out who I am and my purpose required relinquishing a great deal of control over my own life. Let the universe take charge and blow me towards my destiny and the heart of my desires! This new perspective was profoundly helpful for learning to live in the moment, breaking away from routines and clearing out old programming. But it didn't take long to realize that if I simply let the universe blow me along I was relinquishing my free will and giving over my power to a force that may not have in mind the interests of my true self. I could go on and on about the concept of human beings giving their power away and enslaving themselves energetically to other people, ideas or authorities, but if I do that in this post, most of you will give up reading before you ever get to the anecdote. So lets move on.
Back to the conversation with my mentor. My struggle with trusting the process is rooted in a lack of balance. Forge my own path or trust the universe? The answer: take no experience for granted, but use my own discernment to choose each course of action. My mentor offered this piece of wisdom: "Every encounter, every interaction, every experience is significant. Everything that happens to you is an opportunity to find guidance on your path." With that clear and positive perspective, I went on to have a lovely evening and spent some time reading "The Celestine Prophesies" by James Redfield before I fell asleep. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it based on it's concepts and ideas. Truthfully the story is unbelievable and the writing is not so great, but the ideas woven in about the evolutionary direction of mankind resonated with me deeply. The wisdom the book contains fits nicely with the ideas of my other favorite spiritually inspired authors like Paulo Coelho and Carlos Castaneda. If you have read "The Celestine Prophesies," you might understand how some of the ideas conveyed in the book correspond with the topics I wanted to discuss with my mentor. I found the parallels between the ideas in the book and the clear messages I received in our conversation to be mind-numbingly coincidental... ironic since the my mentor's advice and the book both clearly stated that all coincidences are significant.
So I woke up the following morning refreshed, invigorated and ready to apply everything I had learned the day before. My plan was to drive to King, NC and spend a few days at my dad's house. However, consistent with other weather related events this January, North Carolina received a pretty substantial amount of snow. My little light weight truck is hardly the ideal vehicle for this sort of weather, and rather than risk a long drive through the winding, snowy roads of the rural Winston Salem township, I opted to take refuge at my mother's in Johnston County. To get to the community of Archer Lodge from Durham, one must drive only three main roads: I-540 E, I-64 E, and Smithfield Road. I had no trouble at all on the highways, but Smithfield road was covered with at least two inches of dirty snow, ice and slush. Alert and tense, I slowly rolled down the snow covered road. As I passed a gas station on the left, I had a sudden urge to pull in and collect myself before continuing. But there was a steady flow of slow moving traffic on both sides of the treacherous rode, and I quickly decided that pulling off was a fair more hazardous course of action than continuing on. Approximately two minutes later, I was accelerating in order to pick up some momentum to climb a hill, when I lost control of the back end of the truck and slid rather gracefully into the ditch across the road. Thankfully traffic had thinned out and I wasn't even remotely close to putting anyone else in danger. Also fortunately, I was traveling at a mere 20 miles per hour, so the trip into the ditch was rather anticlimactic. The entire experience occurred so quickly and so gently that as soon as I came to a complete stop, my only reaction was to sigh deeply and mutter, "Well, shit."
In the past, my initial reaction to a situation like this would have likely started a dramatic inner dialog that may have gone something like this: "Well, now look what's happened, you idiot! Your dumbass didn't have any business driving around in conditions like this! What the hell did you think would happen? Why didn't you turn into the gas station when you had the chance? When you fuck up, you go all the way, don't you?!" Instead, this is how the inner dialog played out: "Well, shit. The truck is in the ditch. I'm okay? I'm okay! Nothing is hurt. I can calm down, there is no need to go into survival mode [this is a conscious trigger than I use to counteract anxiety: if I can reassure my body that I am not in a survival situation, and that there's no need for my brain to dump into my body the hormonal cocktail that it would need for a fight or flight situation, I can keep a better control on my anxiety levels; quite a cool thing]. My truck is in the ditch. Why am I having this experience?" And then a seed of doubt: "You should have pulled into the gas station when you had the chance!" But then a thought of clarity, "No, this was an accident, but not a mistake. If I'd tried to pull into the gas station, I might have hit someone else instead. Or likely I would have ended up in the ditch anyway." Satisfied that this was nothing to beat myself up over, I allowed my normal, problem-solving operating system to take over: "Now what?" I didn't have to wait long.
I had barely had an opportunity to call my mother who lives about five miles from my crash site, and to think through the possibility of walking back to the gas station, when a kind face appeared from a passing truck. "You need help, bro?" said a serious, Latino fellow. I was embarrassed to say the least, but, still on a spiritual high from the day before, I was open to all kinds of possibilities. I explained my situation: "I'm pretty stuck man. I have someone coming to pick me up, so I think I'm just gonna leave her here..."
In a friendly, but very "alpha-male" kind of way, he proceeded to explain to me that if my truck bed was properly weighted, how I might avoid such an accident in the future. It took everything I had in me to avoid becoming defensive: "I know, yes, you're right, I see that now, smile and nod, thank you so much, where did you come from, you wise gentleman..."
A moment later, another gentleman, a legitimate Johnston County good ole boy, arrived on the scene in heavy duty truck. "Are we out having some fun today or what?!" This guy was full of enthusiasm, and gave off very positive vibes.
"I'm having SOME kind of fun!" I responded with as much enthusiasm I as I could muster. Holy shit! I went into the ditch, and within just a few minutes, there were not one, but TWO guys graciously helping me out...in a place that I consider No Man's Land... The implications were strong, and I did not ignore them. "Want me to drag you out?" says the friendly redneck. Well, shit, why the hell not, I thought. "Why the hell not," I heard myself say. The following half hour can only be described as hilarious.
After the first ten minutes of trying to pull the truck from the ditch with out any success, I was ready to give up, collect my stuff and walk to the gas station to wait for Mom. "I don't know, man..." I said. "I don't think she's coming out."
"We're going to get her out of there," the good ole boy said confidently. "Positive thinking! Visualize it! We can do this!" Taken aback by his positivity and confidence, I involuntarily laughed. "Well, I certainly can't argue with that," I said softly to myself with a grin, and jumped back into the truck to give it another go.
In the end, the guy dragged my truck over one hundred feet through the ditch to a place where the terrain flattened out and I was able to gently drive in reverse back onto the road. "I can't thank you guys enough," I sincerely told them as I shook their hands and tried to energetically convey all the gratitude I felt for their unconditional kindness. "No problem!" said the cheerful good ole boy. "That was so much fun! That's the first time I've ever pulled somebody out of the ditch! You have yourself a great day!"
An hour later I was safely at my mother's house, contemplating the meaning of the experience I had just had. Was it a test to see if I could stay centered and in control when faced with an embarrassing dilemma? Or an opportunity to show myself that I do possess the necessary tools to handle these types of situations with grace and positivity? Was the universe trying to show me that my judgmental attitude towards Johnston County and its inhabitants is unfounded and petty? Was the message about "positive thinking," as my redneck savior verbally suggested? Or was the experience even about me? Could it have been that the experience was more significant for the guys that helped me out? In the end I had to admit that any specific reasons for the experience eluded me, but that if I can learn to trust the process, I may one day understand.
Later that afternoon I texted Sarah and Rachel to give them a short recap of what had happened. Sarah and I exchange books regularly, so I also wanted to give her my review of "The Celestine Prophesies." Her response? "I just bought that book yesterday!" Well, shit. Of course you did. :)
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