A lesson from Dune

It takes a strong act of faith. When the feelings seem unbearable, and something inside is screaming to run away….what does it take to stay with the feeling, and allow it?

In the sci-fi best seller Dune, a 10 year old boy is tested to see if he is worthy of training in the magical arts. They insert his hand into a hi-tech box, and tell him if he withdraws his hand before the test is over, the poisoned thorn at his neck will puncture his vein and he will die. As the test begins he feels his hand is being incinerated. It takes every ounce of will power he possesses to keep his hand in the box, feeling it’s being burned to a cinder, yet knowing if he withdraws it he will die. When the test ends and he withdraws his hand, he expects to see it charred to a cinder. Yet, the hand is unharmed – the box simply generated sensation.

This seems to be the spiritual process – to go beyond the mind. When everything in the mind is screaming ‘danger!’, and it seems there could be some sort of death or other huge fear – there’s something else that can say ‘it’s OK. This is an illusion. If you jump off this cliff you will land safe and sound – perhaps more ‘you’ than you were before.
It seems to take a strong act of faith to go into one’s greatest fears, believing them to be smoke and mirrors.

I’ve proven I can accept ‘what is’ for a while. I can be brave and have breakthroughs for a time. Sometimes hours, and on a bigger scale weeks and months. And then a point comes when inside I run like a scared rabbit and resist – also known as freaking out. At this point my mind is coming up with all sorts of problems and reasons and worries. It says “this has gone on too long; I’m not making progress; it will be like this forever; it’s not healthy to feel this; something is broken and needs to be fixed; this is too much to handle.” At this point I desperately want to check out – and take a pill to numb the process.

Last night I had a friend there to point out there WAS progress, even though I couldn’t see it. A few hours of panic and I was assuming everything was futile. But he pointed out that the periods of time where I was grounded and accepting were increasing in length. The periods of time where I was panicking and resisting were shorter in length. The number of experiences I had of accepting the sensations, and the durations of that acceptance, were increasing. The intensity of sensation/feeling I could handle was also increasing.

When the panicked mind wants to take over, when it seems your hand is being charred to a cinder, faith, and friends, help.