If the Holy Spirit were to talk to us in a language that we really understood, he might use road signs. We hop in the car, our eyes shoot outwards from our inner world, and we see something going on out there. We pass a first road sign, it flashes by us: “!!!!”.
Without warning we hear ourselves saying… “Shit! Look at that! Honey, did you see what that car just did? He cut that guy right off, he could’ve caused a serious accident. I can’t believe it.” Then as the car bumps along, “The town council said they were going to have the road fixed by spring – they call this fixed?!” And finally a few minutes later at the supermarket, “That guy just took my space, did you see him. I mean, he could see I was heading there. Do you think he gave a damn?”
Our breath is short, we’ve totally lost our peace of mind. And then we remember to check out what’s going on inside. ”Ohhh, yeah… I don’t feel good anymore. Hmm. Maybe it’s not the outside that’s the problem. Ok, so what’s really going on here?”
As we cruise around looking for another park space, we pass another road sign, this one put there by Jesus: “??”
And the whole problem could be summarized like this…
The ego’s post: “!!!!!!”.
The Holy Spirit’s response post to us: “??”
So !!!!!! becomes simply ??
To the ego, something happened. Something dramatic, even catastrophic, has occurred. Every day I go about and see a string of things that make me feel like something important is going on, something critical is happening. Something to judge, something that is affecting me and causing me to lose my inner peace. I must pay attention to it. My inner world is shouting: “!!!!” and holding its breath, or cutting it short.
And then I see I don’t feel peaceful anymore. This morning I found myself saying, faced with (just one more) unpeaceful thought, “Right, what do I want? I know this feels exciting. I could really take a position on this issue (the environment, national politics, my mother-in-law, the crumbs around the toaster). I can say something is right in this, and wrong in that. This was good, that’s pretty bad. Good and bad, right and wrong. Comfortable, unhappy. And on and on. And on… and on.”
I looked over my shoulder and there was this, well, presence there, this peaceful perspective that looked back at me and offered one singular point of view on all this: “What problem? It’s all okay, everything true and real is still intact. Reality is well and whole. Oneness is still true. Love is still just a breath away, if you want It.” What we think is so dramatic and requires judgment inevitably is not so. It is something else.
Phew! Er, no, that’d be just, “Phew…”
Good post Bernard. If we could only remember more frequently:”What problem?” we will shorten our path a lot, but the guilt is so immense and consequently our resistance is so enormous that we can only make little steps. So…I liked a lot your metaphor about road signs. Sometimes I am very visual and remember !!!! ego, ???? HS, it´s going to help a lot.
Lots of hugs and love, Lisi