Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [86]
I once worked with a large group of environmentalists. These were people who had committed their lives to saving the planet. They were living with a great deal of anxiety, even terror, they said—an enormous burden on their shoulders. But many of them had open minds and were willing to question the thoughts that were causing them so much stress. I helped them investigate thoughts such as “Something terrible is going to happen,” “I need to save the planet,” and “People should be more conscious.” They discovered how these thoughts were driving them crazy, and how the thoughts have various opposites that might be just as true or truer.
After a few hours of intensive inquiry, I asked them to imagine the worst thing that could happen: a full-scale environmental disaster that wiped out humanity. They shared their fears and gave a lot of graphic details. Then I asked them to turn the thought around, to find the thought’s exact opposite: “The best thing that could happen is a full-scale environmental disaster that wiped out humanity.” I asked them each to give me three reasons why this statement could be as true as, or truer than, the original. And these brave people really were able to go there: “It might be good for some endangered species not to have people around.” “It would be good for insects.” “We wouldn’t be pumping and mining the life blood out of the planet.” “It would be good for the rainforests.” “Who knows what intelligent species would evolve if we were gone?” And there were many more ideas like this.
Inquiry is grace. It wakes up inside you, and it’s alive, and there’s no suffering that can stand against it. It will take you over, and then it doesn’t matter what experiences life brings you, “good” or “bad.” You find yourself opening your arms to the worst that can happen, because inquiry will continue to hold you, safely, sweetly, as reality does, through it all. Even the most radical problem becomes just a sweet, natural happening, an opportunity for your own self-realization. And when others are experiencing terror, you are the embodiment of clarity and compassion. You are the living example, the match for reality.
One of the things you discover when you question your mind is that the world doesn’t need saving. It’s already saved. What a relief! The most attractive thing about the Buddha was that he saved one person: himself. That’s all he needed to save; when he saved himself, he saved the whole world. All his years of teaching—forty years of apparent compassion—were just the forward momentum of that one moment of insight.
I don’t order God around. I don’t presume to know whether life or death is better for me or for anyone I love. How can I know that? All I know is that God is everything and God is good. I call this the last story.
Reality is kind. Its nature is uninterrupted joy. When I woke up from the dream of Byron Katie, there was nothing left, and the nothing was benevolent. It’s so benevolent that it wouldn’t reappear, it wouldn’t recreate itself. The worst thing could happen, the worst imagination of horror, the whole planet could be obliterated, and it would see that as grace, it would even celebrate, it would open its arms and sing “Hallelujah!” It’s so clear, so in love with what is, that it might seem unkind, even inhuman. It cares totally, and it doesn’t care at all, not one bit, not if all living creatures in the universe were obliterated in an instant. How could it react with anything less than joy? It’s in love with what is, whatever form that may take.
As you begin to wake yourself up from your dreams of hell or purgatory, one by one by one, heaven begins to dawn on you in a way that the imagination can’t comprehend. And then, as you continue to question what you believe, you realize that heaven, too, is just a beginning. There is something better