About five years ago I was at a retreat in the mountains. 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, together,” I said.
“Oh!” he said, “Breathing, what a great idea. I forgot about breathing.”
We breathed, and I allowed myself to become fully present for him, even though I had no idea what was going on. I could feel his fear, his distress, and I felt my own willingness to just be there with him exactly as I was. I could see things start to shift around in his body and mind.
And 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 have a strong sense at this time that many of us are being carried forward, in a flow of evolutionary energy, into a much bigger view of who we are, and what is possible. The small cocoons we have been hiding in are breaking open. We start to see that what we are struggling with is not just ours- we participate in a stream of universal human conditioning. It’s one life.
When we are able to connect with a genuine, living sense of interconnection, the whole context of our life changes. Whatever we are experiencing, moment to moment, is no longer the entire focus of our attention. This a great relief, a liberation, and a joy. Self preoccupation is a heavy burden, and it feels so good to lay it down, to enter into a much wider river.
It’s incredible what can happen when we take responsibility for our lives, for our conditioning, without any blame or guilt. When we come out of hiding, and allow the magnitude of the support-- the kindness and the wisdom that is available to be received. When the walls come down, we find ourselves in a whole new life. This is possible for all of us. It is always being offered.
Most of us have been trained to live with a strong and deeply ingrained sense of separation. We live our lives in isolation, and we put parts of ourselves away--we ask these parts of our own being to live in isolation too.
Until the moment when we are able to feel the cost of this, the price we have paid. This can be a difficult moment, a painful moment, and also a moment of profound grace. Because we are finally ready for something different. We are open to another possibility.
The guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.
The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
There is so much life, so much light,
when I sit firmly in that world. (Kabir)
If you can connect with what I am saying here, if you are inspired, if you feel the presence of this possibility, please consider taking the next step, so that what you have read here has a chance to come alive in you.
The 5 day Mutual Evolution retreat starts on July 29. ‘Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together’
