You think too much, Mary Ann.

I cling to that description of me. Others hung it on me, but I’ve bought into it big time. I’ve also bought into the notion that “thinking too much” is a bad thing and that it’s of the many things about myself I must fix. Besides having a tendency to drive some people away, my seeking explanation can be awfully exhausting. Fruitlessly, I bang my head against the Wall of Knowledge, looking for The Answers. I’ve tried to stop thinking too much. I haven’t been very successful.

I can’t remember the chapter in which Kornfield quoted the Zen proverb: “If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.” But I got bugged by that proverb because it seemed to be telling me to “just stop thinking about it” — all the “its” I think about, just stop. You think “too” much, Mary Ann.

And that’s why I’m intrigued by L’s post. I can be relentlessly driven to understand, to find reasons and explanations, to know. I’m not sure that I can ever be still and satisfied with unexplained mysteries, either.  Like hey, here’s something that requires explanation: what is the point of my intelligence if my ability to make sense of my experience doesn’t matter? Why would our ability to sense patterns and relationships evolve into a skill well beyond what we need to (physically) survive if we weren’t meant to use it?

But lately I believe I have started a  new relationship with this all thinking I do.

I realize it’s not the quest for explanation that I must address.  It’s not the ” not knowing” that’s actually causing me to suffer.  It’s the driven and desperate quality of my quest that’s the problem.

Why am I so frantic about it? Therapy has helped me to see it has something to do with a need to feel safe. Could be that the desperateness is not really propelling me toward understanding? Perhaps I am using this desperate quest to run away from something that scares me and feels unsafe. Perhaps it’s not that I really want knowledge at all, perhaps it’s really that I am avoiding something—like boatloads of grief and sadness, maybe?

(I have seen the fleet, and it is mine.)

I haven’t figured it all out. But recently it has been more fruitful for me be curious about the driven and desperate quality of my quest rather than go on the quest itself. I’m examining it closely and peeking under it to see what it has been covering up. It’s spidery and creepy under there, but I think it’s really where I need to go.

Whether I understand or not: “things are just as they are.” I can’t change any circumstance present or past. But I can change my relationship to things “as they are.”  Changing my relationship is an inward journey, not an outward one. It’s a heart case, not a head one. I can see that now, even though I can’t always act on it.  When I can relax into the not knowing, feelings of deep grief and sadness flow over me. Sometimes I think I will drown in their waves.  But when I can relax into those feelings,  welcome them, and not judge them or myself, I feel relief.  This relaxing and doing nothing except to note what’s bubbling up and feel it fully is counter to all my programming.  I am a very old dog learning new tricks, and these tricks don’t come easily, not at all.

But I practice, and I sense my heart growing lighter and a glimmer of an unfamiliar, but oh so welcome, peace.