As many of you know, my work is informed by a fervent desire to delve into the root causes of anxiety and OCD. My book, The Wisdom of Anxiety, explored many of the roots and messages embedded in anxiety and intrusive thoughts, but there are more. There is always more, for we know we still have not cracked the code of OCD. At midnight a few weeks ago, these words came through. Perhaps they will land for you and put one more piece of the puzzle into place.
***
The fabric starts out whole.
The wholeness of childhood. The perfection of innocence, even amidst imperfection.
Then separation. Then change. Then loss.
An awareness that separation is possible.
With each loss, the fabric tears.
Each day passed. Each year lost. An age that you will never be again.
The furniture rearranged. Mommy’s hair worn differently.
Too much change.
Too much separateness.
An awareness that childhood ends.
A shattering.of innocence. We grow up.
The fabric tears more. It’s becoming tattered, fragmented.
Where is the wholeness – the uninterrupted place – the complete – the perfect?
It’s falling apart and I must fix it. I must keep the family together. Keep everyone safe and alive and together. It’s my job.
***
I am forgetting the place of wholeness and perfection,
the wide swath of cloth that I once lived in.
It’s further and further away.
Something is always missing now. Something is always imperfect.
It’s too much to bear. I have to find a way to fix the brokenness, to complete what is incomplete.
The note on the piano… not right. The letters… not right. My thoughts… not right. My hands… not right. My sexuality… not right. My relationship… not right.
But these things – I can fix. I have control again. I can try to create the perfection, the rightness, the completeness again. This is the only way I know how.
***
But I want to tell you something: there is a place where everything is just right, where you are connected to everything and everything is connected to you.
Nothing is separate and you can’t be separated.
There is a place where everything is whole and you are a part of the whole.
There is a home beyond your physical home. Big home. True home. Where you are rooted like a tree connected to all things, secure in your place of belonging. The tree of life.
You will not find this place by checking the stoves or the locks or your feelings, not by closing the door just right or getting your thoughts just right.
You’re trying to find completion in the only way you know how, but it will never work.
And there is a better way.
***
I don’t know what that way is for you. It probably has something to do with facing the fear of death, of humiliation (which is a social death).
On the other side of that fear is the wholeness you seek where everything clicks into place and you feel fulfilled and peaceful.
This is a spiritual quest: to complete what is incomplete, to fill in what is missing.
On this plane, there will always be something incomplete and missing.
But there is another place, another reality that co-exists with this one, where everything is okay and perfection exists.
***
OCD says: Something isn’t right. Something is missing. Something is incomplete.
And OCD is correct: there are a lot of things that aren’t right, that are missing, that are incomplete in this world.
Anxiety says: I am not okay because I’m not safe.
And, in one way, anxiety is right: as long as we are in bodies on this planet, we’re not completely safe.
But… there is a place underneath and between and above everything where it’s all okay.
There is an unbroken cloth that weaves through our existence.
We all have our own ways of accessing this place of wholeness, of inviolable belonging, of safety, and remembering:
The place where we know:
“I am held in a great web of love. I am connected to everything.”
What are your ways of returning to this original knowing?
How do you find your way back home – to big home?
When are you most in a flow that taps you in to the timeless place where everything is connected and you are connected to everything?
I would love to hear in the comments.
