Karl DireskeHow do you learn to respond within mystery? You can start by changing your perspective of mystery itself. If you are not practiced in response, you will most likely be in reaction. Think of a dance. Are you awkward when you dance or can you feel the rhythm and the flow of the movement? What would it be like to dance with mystery?
Those of you who are students of wildernessFusion know the saying, “There is an image at play if you are in reaction or blame.” What is an image? It is when you internalize an external that becomes a fixed point over time. You can practice stating an image by using the following simple structure: “if this, then that.” For example, “If I speak up for myself, then I will be rejected.” This can sometimes be true, but contextually it is not always true. The problem with images is that we have empowered them with events that prove them to be true. Can you see how images will easily send you into reaction?
Learning to respond is a lot of work. First, you have to admit to yourself that there is a fixed point or image at play. Then you have to witness yourself reacting from the image and learn to slow everything down. When you find yourself moving from reaction or blame, you can pause and make a different choice. The repetitiveness required to retrain yourself to respond in those moments loses most who attempt this. Awareness is a lot of hard work. It does not help that when any of us are stressed, our images seem to resurface as if we have done none of the work to silence them. Can you catch yourself in the moment and notice that you are reacting or blaming? Simply noticing changes everything.
If learning to respond takes a lot of practice, how can you ever do it within the framework of mystery, the ultimate stressor? What if you found mystery exciting? Not knowing what will happen next is actually normal. Can you trust that mystery will catch your desires by the tail and change them into something much different than you expected? It is in this space between our desires and how they manifest that we can learn not only to like mystery but to become mystery itself.
What if the world you lived in had mystery around each bend? What if you looked forward to the gifts that creation seems to put in the perfect place and at perfect intervals? This perspective can be a dramatic shift. I promise you that if you believe mystery is outside of yourself, you will never learn to become part of the dance.
Ready to take a few small steps to embrace and become mystery?
What are you waiting for?
