Pema Chodron: “Everything that shows up in your life is a vehicle for awakening. From this point of view, awakening is right at your fingertips continually.”
As most of you know by now, I was raised in a Southern Baptist church in Athens, Georgia and then in a United Methodist church in Durham, North Carolina. Our family immersed itself in not just Sunday morning services, but also in Sunday School, choir practice, youth groups, and Bible studies. When I was just 4 years old, I apparently baptized all my friends’ baby dolls and stuffed animals out in the front yard of my family home. And in my teens, I was asked to lead sermons on many of our Youth Sundays.
This was the life I was raised in, and I never questioned it. Why would I? I didn’t question my name or my home address or who my parents were. We’re not taught to question what is added to us after our birth. Everything from our name to our hundreds of added identities are just who we are. At least that is the case until something comes along and wakes us up.
My first taste of awakening happened on the escalator in Dillards Department store in Cary Towne Center. It was early 2019. I was in the throes of a really intense hives flare as well as a pretty dramatic facial swelling. As was the case in those days, my symptoms were accompanied by (what I called) gun-to-the-head terror, urgency, and hopelessness.
Taylor, my middle daughter needed a dress for a school dance, so we ventured to Dillards—even though my mind screamed that it wasn’t “safe.” After all, the voice in my head was convinced that I looked like something out of a horror movie—something that would scare small children if they caught a glimpse of me.
As we rode up the escalator to the second floor of the department store, something inside of me suddenly felt broken beyond repair. For a brief moment, I felt like I would collapse and perhaps die on the escalator. This made no logical sense, of course. No one dies from hives or from terror.
But then, out of absolutely nowhere, something quite inexplicable happened. I found myself holding out my right hand and I immediately felt the presence of something I cannot describe holding my hand with love. I felt this presence saying—without words—“This is not what you think it is, sweet girl. This is your greatest portal. Stop trying to escape this. Please trust it. Please Just trust.”
In that moment, I was overcome with a peace that my religious upbringing could only call the peace that passes all understanding. Some call it Peace with a capital P.
TRUE peace that has nothing to do with human circumstances.
I was overcome by total surrender to my physical symptoms. In that moment, they were no longer a problem to solve—they were a portal to something greater than what my mind had the capacity to understand. My fierce attempt to escape my physical circumstances ceased and my urgent attempts to control life melted away.
As I stepped off the escalator, the phrase, “This is not my home” filled my entire being. I had heard this song lyric from Laura Story’s album a hundred times, but it had never settled into my belly. Until that moment.
That blissful, indescribable peace lasted a few days. And oddly enough, all of my chronic symptoms vanished completely for that period of time. Again, none of this made any logical sense.
When the experience of that Peace with a capital P faded away, my symptoms returned with same intensity as before, but something within me was fundamentally changed.
Today, as you know, I see everything about religion through a very different lens. But, I have to say that one of the many aspects of my upbringing in the church that I am so deeply grateful for is this: being immersed in and surrounded by people who fervently believe in what cannot be seen or explained. This simple immersion helped me stay open to the fact that there is a Truth (with a capital T) that is beyond words, concepts, or intellectual understanding. There is something that precedes thought. There is something that is pristine—free from labels and judgments—that simply IS.
And from an early age, I had a deep sense that whatever that ISNESS is, it is inherently good, kind, and loving. There is no logical way to explain this. It is a knowing in the belly. It is a direct experience when thought is not taking center stage. Even the words “good, kind, and loving” diminish the profoundness of this knowing. But they are the only words I can use to point to it.
In the months following the Dillards escalator miracle, that phrase, “This is not my home” kept bubbling up again and again. I didn’t try to analyze it or figure out what it meant. I just knew that every time my symptoms flared and my mind raced with urgent thoughts, that phrase would bring me such incredible peace. This is not my home. Something in that phrase cut through the illusion of urgency. It no longer made sense…even though my mind still tried its very best to tell urgent stories with compelling evidence. This is not my home.
It wasn’t long after that when I began opening to the idea that the symptoms themselves were doing some kind of miraculous work—something to do with helping me wake up even more deeply to who and what I am beyond a body. As a result, I organically and without effort began meeting my symptom flares with more curiosity and less judgment.
There were, of course, moments of terror, hopelessness, and urgency. But even those were seen through a very different lens. Urgency was there to let me know that all thought content in that moment was contaminated, and it was best to stay completely out of thinking. Nothing that is said through the lens of urgency can be taken seriously, no matter how much evidence there is. Hopelessness was there to wake me up from the deeply-held belief that I was somehow separate from Life itself; somehow vulnerable and weak. Terror was there as an ally to show me where there was still a clinging to something that is, by its nature, ephemeral and fleeting. It was a reminder of my true and stable essence.
I recently listened to an enchanting woman share the details of her husband’s death. She described her experience with words that reinforced my deep understanding that this—this ISNESS—is, in her own words, “blissful, beautiful, and alive.” She describes this essence that we are as the same essence that EVERYTHING is. It is the basis of our true nature.
We are the aliveness, the animating force that gives rise to this character; that gives rise to this seeing, tasting, touching, smelling, and hearing. The body itself has no capacity for these things without the aliveness that is our true nature. And that true nature is not born and it does not die. Only the body—the costume, as I like to call it, goes. But the body is no more my home than my 2015 Silver Volvo is.
What is so fascinating to me is that, in the absence of a belief in urgency, the proverbial water flows freely through the garden hose again. When it no longer makes any sense to cling so tightly to the outcomes of this body, Life tends to flow more freely. Urgency is no longer taken as truth. And now that I have seen this for myself hundreds of times, it’s so clear that in the absence of urgency, doctors can be called. Medicines can be taken. Treatment can be completed. Boundaries can be set. All actions are taken from a place of trust, a place of peace.
We remember who and what we are, and the whole system settles.
The mind continues its narrative of urgency, fear, hopelessness, but it makes no sense to buy into those narratives.
This is not our home. And once that is seen—no, once it is FELT in the belly—we immerse in this thing called “Lila”—this divine play of Life. We play our character with wild abandon—with nothing to lose.
After all, it’s all Lila. It’s all Life. Some might say it’s all unconditional love (which I sometimes also call unconditional YES.) It is all Love/Life/Yes arising as this moment. As fear. As sadness. As grief. As anger. As me. As you.
What if this is not your home? And what if—in really seeing that—you can play fully in every aspect of what Life brings your way…