I must have been about ten when I thought my mother was dead. I had no evidence. None. There was no reason for the fear. It was just a thought that popped into my brain. I was home alone on a school day, pretending to be sick. My brother and sister were at school and my dad was at the Pentagon where he worked with punch cards and computers the size of refrigerators. And so my imagination selected the sharpest knife possible and deftly slid it into my soft, defenseless heart.
My mom was out shopping and she was gone too long and so the most horrible thought I could imagine wormed its way into my brain and I instantly believed it. I bought it so quickly I don’t recall having a choice. I found I had no defense. No rational argument saved me. I could not stop thinking that she was a corpse and I would never see her sweet light again. I was mortified. I was utterly destroyed and I could not stop crying and pacing around our small, suburban home. It was 1966 and I was convinced a horrible death had suddenly visited my happy life like a descending shadow of darkness and completely decimated it like a vomiting flame-thrower, rendering all joy to dust, all hope to ash and sorrow.
Anxiety gripped me like a fist and I could barely breathe as I finally took vigil at our front window, staring out across our small green lawn at the dead, empty street, waiting for her precious car to arrive. If she lived, if she breathed, if she continued to exist in mortal form and could still function and drive, I knew where she would first be visible. And so I sat for what seemed like hours, waiting, barely blinking, willing her to magically appear, begging God and Jesus and all His holy angels to save me – please save me – from this cruel and crazy horror show in my mind.
When she finally turned the corner from Hillcrest Drive, past the stop sign onto Orleans Circle, I took a permanent photograph with my mind’s eye that I can still see even now, my mom’s brunette head inside the pale green bubble that was our Volkswagen, an angel of salvation that rescued me from my self-inflicted hell. It’s a picture of pure love that let me live again.
Jim Carrey gave a phenomenal commencement speech this past summer at Maharishi University that profoundly captured the essence of what I believe to be most true about our brief existence here, how we battle against fear with sacred weapons of faith and love.
He said, “Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you.” He said the most important thing is to let “each other know we’re here.” We are here to remind “each other that we are part of a larger self.”
There is a huge difference between a dog that is going to eat you in your mind and an actual dog that is going to eat you. That may sound like no big deal, but many never learn that distinction and they spend a great deal of their lives living in fight or flight response.
“Fear is going to be a player in your life, but you get to decide how much. You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts; worrying about the pathway to the future, but all there will ever be is what’s happening here, and the decisions we make in this moment, which are based in either love or fear.
“So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect, so we never dare to ask the universe for it.
“I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.
“As someone who has done what you are about to go and do, I can tell you from experience, the effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is.
“Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.
“You can join the game, fight the wars, play with form all you want, but to find real peace, you have to let the armor go. Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don’t let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory.
“Ultimately, we’re not the avatars we create. We’re not the pictures on the film stock. We are the light that shines through. All else is just smoke and mirrors. Distracting, but not truly compelling.
“I’ve often said that I wished people could realize all their dreams of wealth and fame so they could see that it’s not where you’re going to find your sense of completion. Like many of you, I was concerned about going out into the world and doing something bigger than myself, until someone smarter than myself made me realize that there is nothing bigger than myself.
“My soul is not contained within the limits of my body. My body is contained within the limitlessness of my soul — one unified field of nothing dancing for no particular reason, except maybe to comfort and entertain itself. As that shift happens in you, you won’t be feeling the world, you’ll be felt by it — you will be embraced by it.
“The imagination is always manufacturing scenarios — both good and bad — and the ego tries to keep you trapped in the multiplex of the mind. Our eyes are not (just) viewers; they’re also projectors that are running a second story over the picture that we see in front of us all the time. Fear is writing that script and the working title is, ‘I’ll never be enough.’
“This is the voice of the ego. If you listen to it, there will always be someone who is doing better than you. No matter what you gain, ego will not let you rest. It will tell you that you cannot stop until you’ve left an indelible mark on the earth, until you’ve achieved immortality. How tricky is this ego that it would tempt us with the promise of something we already possess?
“As far as I can tell, (the secret of life is) about letting the universe know what you want and working toward it while letting go of how it comes to pass.
“Your job is not to figure out how it’s going to happen for you, but to open the door in your head and when the door opens in real life, just walk through it. Don’t worry if you miss your cue because there are always doors opening.
“I’m just making a conscious choice to perceive challenges as something beneficial so that I can deal with them in the most productive way.
“Take a chance on faith — not religion, but faith. Not hope, but faith. I don’t believe in hope. Hope is a beggar. Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.
“You are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world and after you walk through those doors today, you will only ever have two choices: love or fear. Choose love, and don’t ever let fear turn you against your playful heart.”
Merry Christmas everyone from myself to yourself and may we all realize it is the same self.
Doug Craig graduated from college in Ohio with a journalism degree and got married during the Carter administration. He graduated from graduate school with a doctorate in Psychology, got divorced, moved to Redding, re-married and started his private practice during the Reagan administration. He had his kids during the first Bush administration. Since then he has done nothing noteworthy besides write a little poetry, survive a motorcycle crash, buy and sell an electric car, raise his kids, manage to stay married and maintain his practice for almost 25 years. He believes in magic and is a Sacramento Kings fan.
