There's A Snake In The Grass

Written by Amira Maxwell || August 18th, 2021.

We get out of our car and walk towards the entrance to the path of liberation. We’ve read 49 spiritual books and burned 72 sticks of incense to prepare for this wonderful moment. A stranger walks past us as they leave the path heading toward their car. They tell us there’s a snake on the path, so we should be careful. We don’t see it yet but, as we walk with hesitation and paranoia, we sense that something scary is in our presence and in our way. We focus on our physical and mental discomfort, but there are even larger spiritual impacts of the snake.

We have just enough vision to keep inching forward on the path. Deep down, we’re needing confirmation that we’re safe along the way, and that nothing will make us take off in a different direction, ruining our ~cool~ demeanor. We’re one minute into the path, and we’ve already decided that the stranger’s fear is also our own, and that whatever shakiness happens within us is because of the snake. But that’s okay— this is something to work with, as long as we can clearly see what’s happening.

This is why we need the right awareness, and to more than intellectually and vaguely understand spiritual strength and practices. When we’re in real life, having direct experience, we want to be able to quickly name and effectively work with the details of our experience. We want our calmness touch the person leaving the trail so that they don’t even feel the need to warn us of anything. We want the snake to feel our preparedness and to make itself disappear.

The snake jumps out. We scream and run to the left, to the right, backwards, maybe forwards. I guess running forwards is best, but I’m curious about the energy that fuels the running— the reactive state of the fear.

We can minimize the discouraging impact that our reactions have on our mental and physical bodies. We can do this by seeing things clearly and exactly as they truly are.

More on this next week.