On a recent morning radio show, Cheri said, “We believe it’s the content, but actually it’s the karma.”
With the now not-so-recent sheltering-in-place order, I am receiving the gift of getting to experience this truth in a new way. Everyone in my office, except me, is working at home. I am still maintaining my normal routine of (gratefully) getting ready for and walking to work. This has assisted me in shedding more light on a karmic process that anyone who has practiced with me for any period of time already knows: I go fast. I was somehow operating under the false belief that I needed to hurry to get ready to go to work so I wouldn’t be late (because, you know, other people would notice.) But even with no one else coming into the office, I was still hurrying. As it turns out, it of course has NOTHING to do with my coworkers and what they might think of my being late (which I rarely am). As another saying in our practice goes: It’s an inside job. It is a karmic process that, if I am not paying attention, controls me.
I have worked with going fast for a very long time. As part of the Zen Coaching program, I realized I needed to up my game and set timers every 15 minutes, once I arrived at work, to remind myself to stay present and not get consumed in a task (a familiar karmic process for an Enneatype 3).
Going fast had been framed as a “work issue,” a content issue, rather than a karmic issue, so I was dutifully working on my work habits. It reminds me of what it says in one of our books about making really good time going in the wrong direction.
So now, a whole new world has opened up to me: I get to pay very close attention to the time between waking up and arriving at work and look to see how I can slow down and be more present in that process.
So very grateful for practice.
In gasshō,
Ann