Posted: 06 Jun 2007 08:38 PM CDT
While working on my upcoming book Fearless it occurred to me that I have only been in the presence of one fearless human being in my life. That was at the School for the Work taught by Byron Katie, and Katie's presence took my breath away day after day. She never wavered or faltered or lost serenity or her amazing, quiet humorous energy. She was fearless.
This is why I think we like Jack Reacher so much in the novels by the brilliant Lee Child. Reacher approximates being fearless. Fearless in the face of all kinds of danger and unnecessary evil. Recently Kathy and I went to hear Lee Child speak about the new Jack Reacher novel, Bad Luck and Trouble. Child was witty and bright as usual. And it was obvious that he loves Reacher --- the archetypal hero modeled after Lancelot and The Lone Ranger --- as much as we do.
So as I worked more deeply into my book on the nature of fear (and how to live without it) I called Katie at her home to ask her a few questions. I told her that my experience at her school was the turning point for me on the issue of fear, and would also be the centerpiece of my book. (You can find out about Katie and her school at www.thework.com.)
We talked for a long time about the mind's need to judge and label everything. How on one end of mind's polarity is the "I know" mind. It thinks it knows danger when it sees it. On the other end is absolute heart and wisdom --- the "I don't know" mind. It loves what is and sees no danger. In the middle of that pole is the fulcrum of "the work" --- a wonderful process for joining the two and dissolving all stressful thought.
I told Katie that she reminded me of Ramana Maharshi who advised that people use "inquiry" to achieve enlightenment --- merely ask yourself "Who am I?" enough times and you'll never need to meditate because life itself will be your ongoing meditation.
Katie agreed that that was useful direction, but said the four questions of The Work was more "user-friendly" for us. It allows the ego to participate in interviewing itself. In a way, it tricks the "I know" mind into participating in its own undoing. I said it was like getting an egomaniacal lawyer to argue the opposite of his own case. Just to show you he can do it.
"Yes!" Katie said, "Because in the end there is no case."
I asked her if she would help me with a particular phobia I had and she gently led me though the subset elements of the four questions that would best apply.
Previous to Katie and the work I had believed that some fear was beyond thought. That the deepest fears simply arise. From my cells?
"Cells are just a thought," said Katie.
Then from where? Because phobic fear can strike you in the stomach faster than you can think. Or so it seems.
"But you thought before. Before that feeling. Back in your history. Or you couldn't be afraid. Be with it and go back to your earliest thoughts," she said.
And so I did. And so I have found them and so I have been doing the work on those thoughts. Amazing.
Amazing grace. I remember in the school --- the great Undoing as it was called --- when we all joined hands and sang "Amazing Grace" ..... we sang along with the wonderful Arlo Guthrie version of that song.
So what happens when the "I know" mind dissolves into wisdom and heart and spirit and there is no more need to label or judge?
"It's.....humorous..." said Katie. "That's the only word I can think of at the moment. Humorous."
So I thanked Katie for her time. She thanked me for writing the book, and for the previous writing I'd done. It was nothing. Literally nothing! A void, at best. One creates a void.
And so, and because, like Meister Eckhart said, "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy and peace. To be stripped, poor, to have nothing, to be empty --- this transforms nature; the void causes water to climb mountains and performs many other marvels of which we would not now speak."
Humorous! Dr. Ludiker, my favorite comedian, is here: www.fredknipe.com and almost too hilarious for words. Go there. But don't go there with a hot cup of coffee in your hands or you will scald yourself and then you will sue me. Fred Knipe is also a wonderful writer of songs and poetry. Here is a poem he sent me yesterday that he wrote for Al Gore...it sums all this up rather nicely:
What can kill you matters little.
What can spoil living matters.
What spoils living is too much attention
to what can kill you.
Comments