This poem, my 18th hybridanelle, began to manifest in mind about three weeks ago as I walked through the Montgomery Woods near Ukiah with a friend, utterly panic-stricken and overwhelmed by an irruption of fragile emotions. I had at this point been experiencing varying degrees of the same for about a week and a half.
There comes a point with extreme anxiety—panic—where life not only feels and seems unfaceable, but on all applicable fronts is unfaceable. The only way through this sort of thing is to resolve, or have resolved beforehand, to live through it, no matter the torment. And since I had made a deal with myself as a fourteen-year-old, after my first NDE from a car accident (see my first trisect, “E merge nce”, for a poem inspired by this experience), not ever to submit to death while in a non-peaceful state, I was grimly determined to ride it out despite some serious impulses to do otherwise.
When the car hit me as a fourteen year old, I was in a state of extreme mental, spiritual, and emotional unrest, and the horror of this state “carried over” in such a way as to become tremendously amplified in the absence of spiritual impedance, my body. And on returning to my body, I understood that I can never go like that. My life has been about cultivating peace of mind to the best of my ability ever since.
Up to that point in the Montgomery Woods, I had been trying out various mantras to fend off the anxiety. Each of them would provide me with some level of distraction from my panic and emotional distress, but none offered any sense of comfort, reprieve, or peace from this turmoil. I told my friend who walked with me that my prayer-mantras were only providing some limited distraction, and that it seemed impossible find something that would overcome the sheer strength of my anxiety and doubt, my tendency to perseverate and fret. And then I asked him if he had any ideas on what I should ask god for in my prayers that might provide this offset.
He then told me that I was going about it all wrong; that I was going to god with my hand out like a beggar on the sidewalk. As he said this I already began to realize my mistake, but he continued. He went on to point out that the various religions of our Western societies have produced a race of people who go to god with a shopping list, and who become very resentful of god when certain items on this list aren’t granted. This could only be called ego-based prayer, and this is exactly what I was doing. So he aptly made it clear that I was asking the wrong question, and for the wrong person—myself.
And it’s funny, since I have been a member of twelve step programs most of my life you would think that I would already know that the most peace comes not from trying to manipulate god toward my own will, but in humbly seeking out god’s will for me, along with the willingness and strength to carry it out. Whenever I’ve done this, I’ve been led right, toward personal freedom and peace of mind, and in a way that magically contributed to a few other lives around me, oddly enough. Whenever I’ve done otherwise I’ve slyly managed to land myself in a brand-spanking new life tragedy that ultimately ends up sucking time and energy—peace of mind—out of my own life and the lives of those who care about me.
Once this understanding comes, it’s kind of a no-brainer—Just a matter of coming into contact with this understanding and internalizing it… Yet again.
Surrender
