It has been said that the reason we don’t recognize God is because God comes to us disguised as our self. At the Los Angeles “Putting it into Practice” (PIP) weekend, I had an experience that I think is worth telling.
We were testing about correcting our behavior. The question that I recall is, “How do I know when I’ve made a mistake?” Mostly I forget the receiving I have in “the room”, both the questions and answers, soon afterwards. This happened again.
A few days later, I was talking to my wife Helena on the phone and she said something that started to upset me. I think she was disagreeing with something I said. I felt a rapid series of emotions; fear in my heart, a sinking feeling in my gut, and a general feeling of being frustrated, agitated and unsettled throughout my body.
This all happened in a fraction of a second, but this time I was watching it.
So, I didn’t react to these unpleasant feelings, our conversation didn’t go south and there was no argument. I got something better than, “How do I know when I’ve made a mistake?” I got, “How do I know when I am about to make a mistake?”
This same awareness is beginning to seep into other areas of my life when my knee is inclined to jerk. When I read an email that is saying something that I don’t like, I am beginning to be aware of the feelings of dislike and a little warning voice says “Wait until this changes before acting”.
So here’s a personal thank you to Matthew Cooke and all the others who created the weekend and made it valuable by being there. To follow up, we are planning to set up PIP weekends in other CA centers. Would you like your center to host one?
This poem by Emily Dickinson that expresses a spirit of Springtime that I feel flowing here in California:
from THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON: READING EDITION, edited by Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998, 1999