I spent five days in August at a retreat in the mountains. Our theme was Everything Changes. We engaged in a number of different contemplations, meditations and inquiries. One of my favorite questions was, “Do I really know that I will not die today?” As you can imagine, to sit alone and really open to such questions can be deeply challenging.
One night I was sitting beside a young man about 30 years old. I was right in the middle of a very difficult experience, when I heard him softly say ‘Help’. Immediately a strong sense rose up in me that I was in no position to help anyone. It was one of those moments that you’d like to wriggle right out of, if you could. I sat there, wishing that I was in a more balanced and grounded state, and hoping that I had not really heard what I had heard.
It was very quiet. And then it came again, just a soft voice, out of the darkness: “Help.” I realized there was no getting out of this one. My mind was telling me that I could not do anything for this person beside me. I was not feeling well at all. I didn’t know what to do, so I sat there and allowed myself not to know. It was not easy to allow that, even though it was the plain and simple truth of my experience. And then, right in the same moment that my mind was saying, “I can’t do this,” I felt another kind of energy move me toward him, quite effortlessly.
I leaned over, and asked him what was happening.
He said, “I am very frightened.”
“Let’s breathe for a minute,” I said.
“Oh!” he said, “Breathing, what a great idea. I forgot about breathing.”
We breathed, and I could see things start to shift around in his body and mind.
I was noticing something interesting: the moment I allowed that energy to move me, my entire experience shifted. I felt calm, balanced and present, without any idea of how that had happened.
I continued speaking with this man for quite a while, until he was okay on his own. When I sat down again in silence, I found myself wondering about what had happened. What was that simple, effortless flow of energy that seemed to have an intelligence and power of its own?
After sitting with this question for a while, the answer came to me: “It was the movement of love.” That was surprising. This experience was something quite different from how I usually understand love.
It reminds me of something I saw many years ago on a Joseph Campbell video. There was a true story, with film footage and an interview, about a young policeman out on his beat in the Welsh countryside. He got a call in his car, and just made it to a bridge over a mountain chasm with a river at the bottom. Hanging from the bridge was a teenager quite intent on jumping off the bridge and ending his life. This young policeman had no time to call for back-up. He leapt out of his car and hurled himself onto that bridge, where the young man was hanging by a couple of fingers. He managed to get hold of the young man, nearly falling off the bridge many times in the process. Once he had him in his grasp, he was not able to pull him back up, so they both had to hang there, suspended over the roaring water far below, until help came.
When the whole thing was over, they gave the policeman a medal. It turned out he had a beautiful wife and two young children he loved dearly. In the interview he was accepting the medal in front of a crowd and a television crew.
“Please tell us,” asked the reporter, “what was it that motivated you to risk your life for a total stranger, and possibly leave your whole family husbandless and fatherless? What a brave and selfless act this was.”
“No,” said the young policeman. “I’ve tried to explain this before—it wasn’t courage, it wasn’t self-sacrifice, it was love.”
“Do you mean?” asked the reporter, “that you felt an overwhelming emotion and it just swept away all your fear?”
“Not at all” came the reply. “It wasn’t a feeling. That’s what I realized that day. Love is not a feeling. It’s a deep knowing that we are all completely interconnected. There was no decision for me, that day on the bridge. Every cell in my body knew that I could no more let that young boy die than my own son. I knew if I held back in any way in my attempts to save his life, that my own life would be meaningless from that moment on, because it’s the same life. We forget it a lot of the time, and then life gives us something to help us remember.”
I send this lifeletter out with a great deal of gratitude for all the opportunities we are given to respond to life from the heart, not because we think we should, but just because there are moments in which the movement of love cannot be refused.
Happy Fall,
Shayla
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