Just what is it that kicks in, when panic doesn’t? When something happens, as it did for me this morning, which might warrant slight panic, there’s a choice and it isn’t Do I panic or Do I not? Nor is it a matter of maintaining a cool calm exterior while running around inwardly screaming! The best I can say is that there are split second flashes of recognition of what’s happened, and what’s happening, and what’s to do next. Somehow there is, in these moments, enough backbone left, (the ability to keep body and mind cooperating), to respond to the flow of recognitions with confidence.
This is how it happened: I was out in Hexham with an American visitor this morning on route to deliver her to the railway station. Her luggage had been left in the monastery car while we had lunch together. At the end of the meal, preferring not to fumble for the key at the car door, I reached for it while she went to the loo. No key! Four pockets, one purse, a bag – all searched at least twice – still no key! And so the story unfolded, very quickly with very quick thinking. Thankfully my companion, who I’d only just met, seemed collected and confident, which helped.
Mentally clicking through my options I first found a cell phone signal outside of Boots the Chemist and called the local police to report lost property. Could you just pop into the Chemists to see if a key has been handed in? I asked my companion and off she went. It was a long shot however we had been in Boots before lunch. The police call was a protracted one, your name?, your name again is…? And while in the midst of the call, you guessed, the key appeared having been handed in at the shop. Signing off with the police with the good news I remarked Ah, the universe is cooperating today, and we proceeded to the car and the railway station.
By ‘the universe cooperating’ I’m not talking about magical thinking or such like. More that I was acknowledging, with gratitude, the roots of confidence. This evening I’d talk about the roots as that which one says Yes! to. A Yes response deep within, a reflexive yes, when no or I can’t or panic would be the habitual response to such circumstances.
Tonight, and it is getting late, I’d say the root of confidence is without limit. We just need to muster the where-with-all to allow confidence, on this level to kick in.
We talk about being still within conditions. It is easy to equate still with static when in practice it is a flowing still. At least that’s how it seems to me.
