Walking with Tigers

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. –A Course in Miracles

From Plato’s theory of shadows to the present day, we are intrigued with the idea that what we spend most of our time reacting to as “reality” is not true reality. For example, the idea that we are separate from one another is born of fear rather than truth. When we wake up from our illusion, we realize that there is nothing to fear because we are all united at our deepest energetic (soul) level. And everything is perfect.

I wrote before of falling off a ladder while cleaning the roof of my cabin (Falling into Now). When I felt the ladder begin to slip, I panicked, desperately clawing at the shingles for something to grab onto. I was terrified. But the instant I knew I was going to fall, that there was nothing I could do to stop it, I let go. I released the fear. Or rather it released me, since I clearly was not doing it deliberately. (At this point, I was not doing anything deliberately.) I was immediately filled with a sense of blissful well-being. Blissful doesn’t even begin to describe it. I don’t know words in any language to describe it. It was like being cradled in the arms of angels. Rapture. Perfection.

I was conscious as I tumbled. I felt my body bounce off the ladder on the way down. I felt my back hit the edge of the deck, and then I flipped off the deck to the ground below and slid to a stop. But all the way down, I was absolutely certain that everything was exactly the way it should be. I knew that my body might be hurt. I expected that at the least something would be broken. Maybe I would be paralyzed or even die. No problem. I knew in my deepest awareness that no matter what happened, no matter how it might seem on the “outside,” no matter whether my “normal” awareness could understand, everything was perfect just the way it was.

In her book Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach says, “Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is. A moment of Radical Acceptance is a moment of genuine freedom.” That’s how I felt when I was falling. Genuinely free.

I look back at that experience as a gift of grace because I did not consciously or deliberately “accept” any of it. What happened is a mystery to my rational mind. But the gift remains because I can remember it. And remembering it reminds me in moments of fear and stress that my efforts to control what I can’t control lead only to suffering. It reminds me that there is a perfection beyond what I experience in my day to day challenges. And it reminds me to be grateful that for a few moments I lived it.

He who knows how to live can walk abroad
Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger.
He will not be wounded in battle.
For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn,
Tigers no place to use their claws,
And weapons no place to pierce.
Why is this so?
Because he has no place for death to enter.
–Tao Te Ching