Like many who travel to India, Carolyn was on a mission to serve. In her case women and children in orphanages and ashrams. During her trip she chose to rub shoulders with day to day life and much of what she experienced shocked her system. Yet, as a result, she discovered pieces about herself she didn’t even know she was missing.
As Carolyn began to tell her adventure in one of my Let Go Let Love groups a hush descended. There’s something compelling about true stories because deep down we know that one way or another we’re living the same story.
7 Hours Up
One of the ashrams on Carolyn’s itinerary was 7 hours’ drive up a narrow mountain road by car. Longer by mule.
The memory still fresh in her mind, with a nervous giggle, she described how the road was alive not just with other travelers but with falling rocks and boulders. Landslides were a common occurrence. In numerous places it was obvious that the road had recently disappeared under rubble bringing cars to a standstill.
Eye Opening
Carolyn lost count of the number of times she saw people appearing on the remote mountain side moving the rubble piece by piece. The locals labored without complaining or protesting, without fuss or drama, making no objections. They demonstrated total willingness and acceptance. Rocks were simply rolled aside or reassigned to fortify the mountain until the next earth movement.
She witnessed how solid and seemingly impassable obstacles became opportunities for simply stopping, letting go of any timetable for reaching a destination, and being willing to see what needed to be done to allow the flow of life to continue.
When Good or Bad Are Not The Point
Have you ever had the experience where something inside of you or in your outer world seems impossible to shift? Perhaps in your health, work or relationships. And have you noticed how your everyday mind gets preoccupied with assessing the situation, creating a commentary that this is good or this is bad? Yadda, yadda, yaddah. Notice too, that this tends to put you in a spin. Perhaps even creates a headache.
To be fair, your everyday mind is designed to compare, contrast and categorize things. It does this to help you navigate through your day. You want to know which way to turn at the intersection to get to the supermarket. Just as you want to know how to flip a switch to turn the lights on.
Imagine what driving onto the freeway would be like if you and your fellow drivers didn’t know the highway code and lacked the ability to judge distance. Not a happy scene. So the capacity of your everyday mind to assess and distinguish is useful. And yet, it has its limits.
Putting Your Everyday Mind In It’s Place
Try as it might, your everyday mind is not equipped to see through boulders. It may see how to get around them, over them or under them, but not through them. Only your Heart sees through what appears to be solid and immovable.
Without the clear seeing of your Heart your everyday mind will resort to problem solving. It’ll look at what you’ve done in the past to solve the situation and suggest you do that again. Despite that fact that what you’ve done in the past has only been a temporary solution else this issue wouldn’t be happening again.
Or it’ll look for a new ‘fix it’ solution, something better than before. And yet this only gives the problem fresh status and validity and you might end up spending time, money and energy on yet another class, remedy or program that doesn’t stick.
When this happens it’s time to put your everyday mind in its place.
The Solution Is A Solvent
What impressed Carolyn most about her mountain journey was the attitude of total acceptance the locals adopted each time there was a landslide. So pervasive was this response that as she absorbed her experience it began to dawn on her that everything in life, including the most solid and seemingly permanent object, is temporary.
Here’s the teaching; an attitude of non-judgment puts your everyday mind on the side bench and allows your Heart to shine it’s light on situations. The consciousness of your Heart is strong enough to see all the way through what appears to be real. What the mind sees as an obstacle the light of your Heart has the power to dissolve so that you’re free to see your way afresh. With practice you can come to trust your Heart to show you what’s possible no matter how strongly your mind concludes otherwise.
Mission accomplished
A week or so later, her heart tender with fresh visceral understanding of living in a non-judgmental way, Carolyn encountered a young Indian shopkeeper with warm kind eyes.
Not being able to speak the local language Carolyn was nevertheless aware that she and the woman were communicating in the language that crosses all barriers, the language of an open heart.
The two stood facing in pure simple recognition of each other’s heart. The woman then took hold of Carolyn’s hands and said ‘I love you’. Carolyn instantly knew the young woman was a mirror. She realized that what she and all human beings are searching for is unconditional love. Not love as some kind of approval for actions taken or not taken. But pure unfiltered Love that cannot fail to flow when judgment dissolves.
