How do we respond to a world that seems out of control? The world seems that way because it is out of control -- the sun rises whether we want it to or not, the toaster breaks, someone cuts you off on your way to work. We've never had control. We have the illusion of control when things go the way we think they should. And when they don't, we say we've lost control, and we long for some sort of enlightened state beyond all this, where we imagine we'll have control again. But what we really want is peace. We think that by having control or becoming "enlightened" (and no one knows what that means) we'll find peace.
Before I woke up to reality in 1986, I had a symbol for that: my children's socks. Every morning they would be on the floor, and every morning I would have the thought, "My children should pick up their socks." It was my religion. You could say that my world was accelerating out of control--in my mind there were socks everywhere. And I would be filled with rage and depression because I believed that these socks didn't belong on the floor (even though, morning after morning, that's where they were) and that it was my children's job to pick them up (even though, morning after morning, they didn't). I use the symbol of socks, but you might find that for you the same thoughts apply to the environment or politics or money. We think that these things should be different than they are right now, and we suffer because we believe our thoughts.
At forty-three, after ten years of deep depression and despair, my real life began. What I came to see was that my suffering wasn't a result of not having control; it was a result of arguing with reality. I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn't believe them, I didn't suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always. When you question your mind for the love of truth, your life always becomes happier and kinder.
Inquiry helps the suffering mind move out of its arguments with reality. It helps us move into alignment with constant change. After all, the change is happening anyway, whether we like it or not. Everything changes, it seems. But when we're attached to our thoughts about how that change should look, being out of control feels uncomfortable.
Through inquiry, we enter the area where we do have control: our thinking. We question our thoughts about the ways in which the world seems to have gone crazy, for example. And we come to see that the craziness was never in the world, but in us. The world is a projection of our own thinking. When we understand our thinking, we understand the world, and we come to love it. In that, there's peace. Who would I be without the thought that the world needs improving? Happy where I am right now: the woman sitting on a chair in the sunlight. Pretty simple.
My children pick up their socks now, they tell me. They understand now; they love me without condition, because when I became quiet they could hear themselves. Everything I undo, they have to undo; they are me, living out what I believed. The apparent world is like an echo. The echo went out from me for forty-three years, and now it's coming back. It's all like a breath, like a lake when you toss a pebble in, the ripples going out all those years and now they're coming back. I undid the turmoil, and my children are losing it also. They're losing their attachment to so many of the concepts I taught them; they're becoming quiet. And that's what The Work does for everyone. That's what I mean by coming back into itself.
The apparent craziness of the world, like everything else, is a gift that we can use to set our minds free. Any stressful thought that you have about the planet, for example, shows you where you are stuck, where your energy is being exhausted in not fully meeting life as it is, without conditions. You can't free yourself by finding a so-called "enlightened" state outside your own mind. When you question what you believe, you eventually come to see that you are the enlightenment you've been seeking. Until you can love what is--everything, including the apparent violence and craziness--you're separate from the world, and you'll see it as dangerous and frightening. I invite everyone to put these fearful thoughts on paper, question them, and set themselves free. When mind is not at war with itself, there's no separation in it. I'm 72 years old and unlimited. If I had a name, it would be Service. If I had a name, it would be Gratitude.
You may find that you don't need to navigate a future at all -- that what appears now is all you've got, and even this is always immediately gone. And when you've stopped making war with reality, you are what changes, totally without control. That state of constant change is creation without limits -- efficient, free, and beautiful beyond description.