A big insect in my car (and Pema and Tim) help me slow down and shine light on my response process

Flashlight, Lizi Boyd. A brilliant exploration of night, nature, and art. 

I’m driving at night near a large red and black mangrove forest. My window is half-down to take in one of my favorite smells: low tide. 

(Not everyone perceives low tide positively. Some people think it stinks.

Since there’s little oxygen available in the mangrove forest’s mucky silt mud, mangroves breathe with the help of special bacteria that live in their soils. This partnership produces sulfur-smelling gas, which makes some people think that mangroves are polluted. They aren’t. That smell is an indication the mangrove neighborhood is healthy.)

That low tide smell reminds me that everything is working the way it should.

I smile. I’m content and calm as I drive.

With the help of an almost fully waxed moon, I notice something moving on my dashboard. For the teeniest second that shape is merely form.

I look back to the road and back down to the form. 

It’s a large insect! I feel a tinge of fear and my heartbeat escalates.

I gaze again and begin to wonder about the name of this insect. A beetle? Cockroach? Maybe it’s a Dobsonfly. Or, is it a large spider?

My mind races with these thoughts.

Oh, that’s right! Earlier today I visited a nursery and filled my car with butterfly plants. Or perhaps a mangrove bug crawled into my car when I was at my sister's house. What kind of bugs live in mangroves? Now, where is that insect? There! What if it crawls on me? Bites? Jumps on my face and crawls into my mouth? (I know, what?) Whoa, I’m distracted. I might hit a car. Pull over. There’s nowhere to pull over. Where is that bug now? If I pull over, how will I find it? If I find it, how will I get it out of the car? (Killing isn’t an option for me.)

And just as the non-killing thought whirls by, my wheels run up on a curb. With luck I do not hit a yellow speed-bump sign warning me to slow for the traffic light.

That near-miss startles and scares me.

In the midst of insect + accident fear, a throaty chuckle arises because that sign I nearly hit is telling me to slow down. Driving home safely depends on slowing my car and my thoughts about this insect that I’ve made into a behemoth.

I stop at the light and use the pause to help myself.

The idea to help myself comes because I’m studying the process of the skandhas to gain insight about how I respond to life and I've just completed an online retreat. (This is the book I’m reading.) I'm exploring the distinction between how I experience things based on feelings, labels, and stories I make up about the world and how things truly are. (I’m aware that this is a challenging-to-understand philosophical wonderment.)  

This is what I'm learning—when I’m unaware, I quickly escalate and enormously elaborate what happens to me. 

In just a few feelings I can narrate hallucinatory scenarios that right this minute I know are dependent upon my perception and imagination. I also know that ignorance loves speed because speediness creates an illusion that what’s happening is permanent. Fixed. Solid. True with no reasonable doubt.

I don’t want to rush. I’ve had several reminders lately that I move too fast, respond too quick.

I don’t want to do that.

I don’t want to create the next epic movie script!

I don’t want to be rigidly black and white in how I look at things and get stuck in mangrove-mud-stickiness about being right and believing how I see things is the only way.

Because, honestly, I feel pretty miserable and tiny when I look at life from one view. I am determined to open myself to a more dynamic relationship between myself and others. Between myself and the world.

Between myself and an insect.

So here’s what I noticed during the red light:

I’m all worked up and wondering how, in milliseconds, I go from seeing an interesting form on the dashboard to an anxious, solid certainty that I’m in the presence of a scary, biting insect. Wait, it’s worse. I think it’s a poisonous insect. An enemy. A bad creature.

But then I remember, “Are you willing to take another view?”

(I can ask myself that question because I recall an exercise teacher Tim Olmsted facilitated in a recent retreat to explore the response process. Now, in my insect upset, I can connect with what I learned. Parts of it, anyway.) 

I can almost hear Tim asking, "In another experience, have you had a different view about a large insect?" 

Why yes, I think to myself. 

I remember observing with curiosity a large shape crawling about the garden. I don’t pull away. I lean in to get a closer look. I notice it is an insect, only this time I see it as a beautiful, delicate creature happily navigating leaf-shaded soil under the blue porterweed. 

Another question: "Can an insect’s touch be harmless?" 

I think about how I don’t want the insect in the car crawling on me, but what if this insect’s touch is as gentle as the monarch that landed on my arm last week? Can I open to imagining that this wandering insect in my car feels as tender on my skin as that butterfly?

"How about the “enemy” label?" Can I open to perceive this insect as friendly? What about the role of an insect in the cycle of life? Or what about other creatures who depend on this insect? If they had the capability, what story might they tell?

There. 

Just inviting in a little doubt about my original view causes a shift in my thinking. I noticed that my feelings about the insect changed. I take a deep breath and relax. I chill out. No need to pull over. There’s room in the car for both of us.

I see right then and there that I free myself from believing the scariness my mind created. I’m not ready to name the insect and call it a pet, but this is progress.

Here’s the big-aha-and-now-I-get-it gift.

This insect shows me that I’m the creator of perceptions of my experience and because I am the creator, I have freedom.

I have freedom!

I change my ride home from anxious to calm.

Whether I'm upset by an insect, person, or situation, I have the freedom to look again and take another view. If I can open to this insect as a fellow sentient being and calm down my projections, maybe I can do this in all my relationships. 

If I can work with this small discomfort, can I work with deeper discomforts? I think so.

I’m beginning to see the world differently.

NOTES
My insights are inspired by the teachings of Pema Chodron and Tim Olmsted. From a retreat in May 2015.

Spontaneity (and goosebumps) during an Omega Institute retreat with Pema Chödrön

An image from Is Nothing Something by Thich Nhat Hanh, author, and Jessica McClure, illustrator. It's a book of kids' questions and zen answers. I chose this image because it tenderly reflects the grace of a tender teacher connection.

Through my monitor, she looks me straight in the eye and calls my name.

Who? Pema. That’s who. Pema Chödrön.

I wasn’t even going to ask a question. But I did. I wanted to feel connected with her, my beloved teacher and look, lucky me.

So Pema looks through my screen and says, “Susan….

Susan…people say that if I look straight into the camera, you’ll feel the connection…so Susan….”

Oh, I feel it. I hear her call my name and feel my heart beat faster.

Okay, wait. Back up.

Why is Pema calling my name?

Pema Chödrön presented a three-day retreat at Omega Institute called Touching the Present: Exploring the Nature of Self (May 2015). I registered to attend in person, but it is sold out. So I chose the next best thing. I joined thousands of others and attended online. After Pema teaches, she invites questions. People line up at a microphone to share a personal struggle within the context of the lesson. A lot of people are in line. Getting to the front of the queue is rare.

My question is asked by an Omega moderator. He says, “I have two questions. Do you want the easy or hard one first?”

Pema says, “The hard one.” (Of course.)

That turns out to be mine. (Oh.)

I haven’t asked a question at any retreat I’ve attended online or in-person. This one came spontaneously. I wrote it to help clarify and personalize her teachings. I had no expectation it would be answered.

My question: “Will you talk about illness as not me and instead as part of a creative process?”

Then the moderator adds the other sentences I wrote as context.

“I have incurable cancer. This workshop invites an investigation of illness as both me and not me. I want to view illness as a river, constantly moving and changing, with anything possible. I want to love this illness that teaches me openness and shows me that I am not what or who I think I am.” 

I’m curious about why I asked that question. I don’t now think of myself as having cancer, though sometimes fear or unpleasant memories return. I’m really asking how to process any serious difficulty, especially the biggies like illness, aging, and dying.

Pema says, “It sounds like you know an awful lot already. At least conceptually you understand what we’ve been teaching and the direction you want to go.”

(Admission: I know a teeny, tiny bit. I'm stable, not in pain, and still giving up the idea of "me" as some fixed thing, like cancer.)

The conceptual understanding she refers to is in her lesson about the skandhas—aspects and functions of the body (form) and mind (feeling, perception, labels, mental formations, and consciousness). Pema's lesson investigates what it means to be human and live with presence, and the skandhas study helps us explore emotional reactivity. (I'm reading this book to gain an understanding of the retreat teachings.)

So, okay, I kind of understand the concept.

I want active, practical application to learn how to live the hardened, tight breath that comes when I'm afraid. 

Pema continues:

“So the instruction is mostly to take to heart and apply [what you learn here] over and over, moment-by-moment, when you get afraid and when your thinking mind begins to create unpleasant scenarios. Just keep coming back again and again to your body and mind as a direct experience. If you can, experience your illness at the level of your sixth consciousness [mind], which is to say, with an innocent awareness that does not escalate or elaborate.

[Admission: "Experience with an innocent awareness that doesn't escalate?" Okay, my head gets it. Now if my head would hold hands with my heart.]

Sogyal Rinpoche [author of the book, The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying] says an interesting thing. When you relate to your sense perceptions at the 6^th consciousness, it creates a little gap, and that little gap makes a significant difference in how you’re going to perceive your world.”

There’s that gap again.

Pema continues, “So what I take from Sogyal Rinpoche’s story is even if it’s just a moment of fresh take—an egoless take on your illness free of storyline, the physical discomfort, and the gut reaction, whatever it might be, just relate to it at the first level over and over again.”

The first level she refers to is a body as form.

This is such a challenging practice, and her next words remind me of that. “Usually, you’re not at a place where you can stay there yet.”

YET. That is one of my new favorite words.

The place I’m not at yet is open spaciousness. Well, actually I am open to spaciousness for the first seconds when I fall into my comfy bed at night and sometimes in meditation. I completely relax and let go.

(Just for now, I imagine doing that. Susan, fall with a deep breath onto your bed or into your favorite chair. Soften. Breathe easy. Hang loose.)

So, I do know this spaciousness. 

I just don’t yet know the full potential of that expansive space when I’m in mental or physical pain. When pain shows up, the tendency is to tighten, not open. I want to feel a fall-into-my-bed fresh sense when it shows up.

I'm curious about my response process to the effects of chemotherapy and 3 years of monoclonal antibody therapy. I want to be able to embrace mental or physical pain without escalating my feelings or elaborating on what is happening. What do I mean by elaborate? An elaboration is when I label what's happening as good or bad, ugly, unfair, character-building, etc., or spin a story based on my ever-changing perceptions. 

Pema ends with, “Sogyal says that just creating that little pause, the little gap, makes a significant difference in how you perceive your illness.”

I’m exploring that.

Image: Pema, a precious presence. Andrea Roth, photographer. From the Pema Chodron Foundation website.