“If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path.”
–Pema Chodron
I’ve found myself on a trail where I have absolutely no idea where I am in space. I’m disoriented. I’m panicking. My brain is swirling with chaos. My heart is pounding and the anxiety I am feeling is making me feel lightheaded and lost in the reality of the situation that I think I have found myself in.
The reality of the situation is that I am on the trail between Webster and Jackson, with no idea which way is home. I am anything but alone on this beautiful summer weekend day. It’s a five-mile loop hike, in one of the most popular areas to hike in Crawford Notch. If I could reign in my panic just a bit, and step outside of what I think is the reality of the situation, I would notice all of the people around me who seem to know where they are and where they are going. But I can’t. I am clinging too tightly to my need for security and routine. I am clinging too tightly to my need for solid ground.
I fight. I resist the feeling of groundlessness I am experiencing. The fear is too big, and the panic is all-consuming. I have met the edge of what I feel I can handle, and my brain is threatening to shut down. Remaining in this one spot of the trail, allowing the chaos to sink into my soul, is unthinkable. I sprint down the trail in one direction, but the panic only increases because I have no idea where I’m headed. I run back to my spot. I still can’t tolerate being in this spot, so I run in the other direction.
I have no idea whether I am running toward Jackson or Webster. I have a desperate need to understand which mountain I am headed for, despite the fact that regardless of the direction I head, I will still end up trekking back to my car. This is the beauty of a loop hike. The irony is that I feel I have lost my ground completely. Pema Chodron says that my fear is a messenger, telling me that I’m about to go into unknown territory. Currently, fear does not feel like my friend. Fear is pinning me down to the spot that I’m in. Fear is trying to convince me that I’m lost and that I am going to die here on this mountain. Fear is telling me to run in every direction. I run north – I feel fear. I run south; I find dread. I run east; I get angry. I run west; I lose hope. Each time I return to my spot on the trail, I find I cannot tolerate remaining in place while all these emotions threaten to kill me.
The Buddhist nun tells me to let fear pierce me in the heart. The Buddhist nun is whacked in the head. Allowing myself to be pierced in the heart by fear is ridiculous. But nothing else seems to be working, so I take my backpack off and sit down on a rock. I let the fear wash over me, suffocate me, and pin me down. I cry. I keep crying. I can’t stop crying. There is a Tibetan word, “ye tang che”, that means totally and completely exhausted. It is meant to describe a feeling of complete hopelessness. This hopelessness is not a term we are familiar with. Our experience tells us that hopelessness is typically something we try desperately to avoid. But Buddhism tells us that we must embrace hopelessness. Embracing hopelessness means that we no longer have the energy for holding our trip together.
“We long to have some reliable, comfortable ground under our feet, but we’ve tried a thousand ways to hide and a thousand ways to tie up all the loose ends, and the ground just keeps moving under us. At every turn we realize once again that it’s completely hopeless – we can’t get any ground underneath our feet.”
Addiction is like this. I desperately cling to something to hold onto. I cling to my routine. I cling to the hope that someday everything will finally feel like it is enough. I cling to a longing for satisfaction, for the ability to enjoy my own life as it is. I cling to pretty much anything except for the spot that I’m in. I hate the present moment, and I fear it. Addiction soothes this fear. Addiction acts as my babysitter. I use it as a way to escape my hope and fear. It alleviates the constant craving and clinging. Addiction is my best friend, my protector. Reaching for a drink, instantly grabbing for something to calm my panic, is based on the hope that I can control my suffering. In reality, abandoning this hope is the only path that can ease the suffering that I am trying to avoid through my addiction.
Being willing to give up hope that I can exterminate all feelings of fear, loss, panic, sadness and chaos allows room for courage. It takes courage to relax with the feeling of groundlessness that occurs when we abandon the hope of change. Relaxing into the present moment, despite my fear, is the only way forward. As I sit on my perch, halfway between two mountains and having no idea which mountain is which, I abandon hope. I relax into this moment of groundlessness. Suddenly, the fear isn’t the big monster that I think it is. The trauma is there. The trauma swirls all around me. It threatens to pierce my heart and pin me into the ground where I flounder like a fish out of water. I sit, and let it swirl. It doesn’t kill me. I stop resisting the fact that things end. I stop resisting the fact that everything is constantly changing. I stop resisting the urge to quell my fear of change with anything that might help. As I dissolve into this hopelessness, I feel a sense of calm. Everything changes – this is this only thing in life that is certain. Abandoning the need for everything to stay the same, is to abandon hope. So, I sit in my spot, with the knowledge that this is exactly where I am supposed to be. I am no longer lost – Webster, Jackson…either way, it doesn’t matter. The trail will bring me home.