I just spent almost four whole days and whole nights in bed, in and out of sleep.
It was new to me to think of myself first, and of ‘duty’ second.
But I have learned, the hard way, that if I don’t take care of myself, I may be dead sooner than I’d like.
Actually it wasn’t hard to stay in bed. This was for me like a vacation. I vacated my mind. Trial death. Nice.
Until last night… that is. when my mind kicked in and instead of letting me sleep, I was writing articles in my head.
Those things I said there will never be said again: that is the nature of the mind.
With that said, there are a few things I can talk about, even though I am, mentally, not quite back to work.
One: this empty mind (for you it may show up as busy mind in your life) gives me insight into people I haven’t had before this episode of mine.
To be able to have creative, coherent thought, you need to have quiet.
Not the quiet of the empty, but the quiet of energy. Not the quiet of sleeping, but the quiet of observation, contemplation, and most importantly a sense of safety.
A fertile place for curiosity.
I was sick…
I read four books while sick. But even my reading wasn’t my usual reading… I didn’t enjoy the books as I would normally do. Some of the stuff I read was really profound… and I got, mentally, that they are profound, but I didn’t stop and take them to their natural destination, did not integrate them into my vast knowledge… I probably will, later, on, but while sick… I just read a little zombie-like.
And you live your life like this… zombie-like. Never living in the calm and fertility of that calm.
I wrote that article little before I got sick, Rock, pebble, and sand.
Looking from those distinctions: That calm, seemingly empty space I normally live and create isn’t empty.
Nature abhors vacuum.
That space is one of my rocks. Living in a space where I can create. Living on the edge, generating distinctions for transformation for humankind.
You rock may be different. But unless you have rocks that seem to be all consuming, your life will continue to be filled with sand and pebbles.
One of the conversations I repeatedly have with my students is: what are you up to? Why are you doing this work?
And they, normally, come up with pebble answers. What they say is often in no relationship with what they are really about… often what you are about is hidden from your view.
So I keep on asking the question. Occasionally I offer a rock to try on for size.
What I see for you, you may not see for yourself. Your unconscious may, but your conscious doesn’t.
Many years ago I had a friend who was a serial “No matter what I do… nothing turns out”. But that didn’t prevent her from trying. But it prevented her from putting any power into her attempts.
Complete and thorough was always missing.
She never put in the missing 20% so the thing she was attempting could fly.
I saw that for her own sake she would never do it. So I suggested that she does it for her peeps. So people can see that they can do it too.
This is one of the most inspiring things in Wallace D. Wattles’ “The Science of Getting Rich”. The context. That you getting rich shows other people that they can get rich too.
My friend died without ever becoming successful at anything. Her soul accepted my suggestion, but her conscious was more interested in the racket “No matter what I do…”
One of the things that keep us busy are the rackets. After all if you didn’t look busy, you could not claim: no matter what I do, could you?
But anything you do from the wrong mindset, for the wrong reason will never work, will never make you happy.
For decades I did everything to be seen smart. For even more decades I did everything in the hope that I was going to be famous and my parents will say: we were wrong.
Only when I wholly and fully and humbly surrendered to my rock that life started to turn around for me.
Anything I do for money… turns into shit.
The argument between my coach and myself was not superficial, it was at the heart of the matter: am I willing to do things that have no integrity for me, because they are only about being liked. We had to separate over that.
Of course he didn’t know… I guess didn’t care either. He assumed that what was in integrity for him, is in integrity for me. It wasn’t.
His rock, is more forgiving than mine… lol.
My daddy will beat up your daddy… lol.
The past 24 hours I have had a Hungarian song reverberate in my head: My daddy was a famous clown…
But if I look, my whole life, my whole rock is from another song: “I hope that my grandson will become a human being”
You get your rock from wherever you get it. If it is a real rock, it resonates with other people’s rocks, with authors, movies, movie characters, book characters, and they are all there to support you in bringing your rock to bear.
I have a small army of such people… I read one of them over the four days that I spent in bed, Stanislaw Lem. My favorite character, Pirx the cadet…
I read the book the first time back in 1971.
It seems that every boy friend had one function in my life, one function. To introduce me to books, ideas, that I wasn’t going to read on my own. And in the case of the last one: to take me to a place where life is manageable without being busy. Syracuse, NY.
What am I trying to say? You need to make life simple, or they will overtake your rocks.
Most of what you do, and especially HOW you do it now has given you a sand/pebbles life.
