Steering Into The Skid
An Essay on Being In The World, Choosing What IS
A Possibility for Freedom, Vitality and Peace of Mind
Even when there is a diagnosis of maybe having Cancer!
"Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."
I graduated from The Landmark Forum in 1997. The difference this has made in my life is, well, immeasurable.
In my early adult life I was a professional racing driver with the reputation of being "world class". Then, being forced to retire in 1968 due to injurues sustained in a high speed crash, I became deeply resigned and depressed. It seemed my life was over.
Then in 1978 I took 'est', the predecessor program to The Landmark Forum. It startled me! Later that year I had the good fortune to meet est founder Werner Erhard, and ended up working with him on his staff for several months, as one of his "coaches" in the project "Breakthrough racing".
This essay is a sharing inspired by these relationships and the transformation that I live into as a direct result of these awesome seminars:
Consider the possibility that who you are, who human beings are, who ALL human beings are, is the Space IN which life happens. The ever changing life of humans, BEING, is an arising-occurring. Very like the movie on the blank screen. What we don't notice, for the most part, is the screen, the white space in which the movie called life appears, filled with sound and fury etc. In this analogy the screen represents your being, your humanness. Being, just that, clear and vacant, space, like the screen is just the white empty screen. No screen, no movie! The screen is the absolutely necessary condition for any movie. Turn on a movie projector into a night sky. No movie! Cannot have the movie with no screen. Cannot have life happening without the backdrop of your true nature of clear empty being.
So I propose that who you and I are is akin to the movie screen, who you are, who I am, who humans, being, are, is the SPACE in which the roller-coaster of life happening happens. Being enraptured, "caught up", in the "picture show" (which is what movies were called back when they first appeared) seems to obscure or hide the screen. But seeing that the screen is self-evident and the necessary condition or context for the show might startle us into seeing that there is only the screen in essence. No screen no movie. No being no life.
All that said, let's look at how life occurs for us like a mesmerization when we ignore the screen and focus on the character appearing on the screen ("me").
As a racing driver, I learned that the way to keep the car under control if the tires broke loose and the car started to slide or skid was to steer INTO the skid, not try to resist it or stop it by putting on the brakes which exacerbates the skid. Putting on the brakes in a skid, i.e. resisting the skid, while "intuitive", will nearly always lead to disaster. In this analogy, steering into the skid means allowing what is happening, accepting it, steering into it not trying to fix it by putting on the brakes. Counter-intuitively, when life's happening is somehow contrary to preferences, to our notions of the way it "should be", to accept actively i.e. CHOOSE it exactly as it is and as it is not allows for a "controlled slide" and any race car driver will tell you that this is the way to go fast ... in a controlled slide, with power full on, steering with the gas pedal.
My friend Werner Erhard once said, "Life is a ripoff when you expect to get what you want. Life works when you choose what you got. Actually what you got is what you chose. To move on, choose it."
The possibility on electing to be with, to accept, to choose what is, is uniquely a human possibility, being a functioning with true freedom and natural power. The power of being. Werner Erhard also said, "Happiness is a function of choosing what is". So maybe, just maybe, the possibility of being happy, free and at peace consists in noticing that we are the screen, not the movie, AND steering into life i.e. choosing what appears on the screen. For example: In the "movie of 'me", recently finding out this body might have cancer, and choosing "Okay, might be cancer". Being with the symptoms, which may or may not be from cancer or some other condition like serious Esophageal Reflux Disease. The body has meds for that. And we'll see what happens, how the move plays out.
Meanwhile, who I am being is the screen. Free, clear and at peace...
If the movie plays out as "this body DOES have cancer" than the possibility of steering into to skid ... choosing what is is, I have cancer", leaves "me" free and happy, at peace with what is as it is. And knowing full well, I am not the cancer or the body that has cancer. I am the screen!
We cannot "choose" to have things be any different than the way they are, can we? Have a look! So perhaps the real possibility of freedom in being, likes humans being, lives in choosing what is, as it is and as it is not.
Works for me! That means, no suffering; rather, being at peace with what is as it is.
And before some wiseass says, "who would choose" and "how does 'one' choose if there really is no one" let me add, choosing is an action of being, a tautological act of declaring. In short, as long as there is a human essence, a sense of being in the world, that being can choose by choosing that it is possible to choose. Nothing complex about this. You don't know how to walk yet walking happens. You don't need to "know how" like be able to "explain" ... you just walk. Like that, you don't have to know how to choose. You just choose ... because you can.
Never Lift!
Cheers,
Charlie
0 comments:
Post a Comment