Some years back I attended The School for The Work of Byron Katie. When I got home, a therapist friend asked me how I was doing. I told him that mainly I was aware of a hum.
It was a good hum. A hum of simple beingness, and I told him that when I was in touch with the hum, being and wellbeing were one and the same.
My therapist friend didn’t seem to trust the hum. He seemed to think that there might be feelings or stories behind or under the hum that should be investigated. He belonged, as I did for so many years, to the school of working on yourself.
But the hum is not a screen that covers up feelings and stories. It’s an awareness of wellbeing that is simpler and deeper than any story we tell ourselves. It’s an experience of wellbeing that is non-negotiable, no matter what ups and downs we experience on the surface of our minds.
The hum doesn’t deny or prevent any part of human experience. You can know the hum and have a really crappy day. You can know the hum and temporarily get caught up in the belief that your wellbeing rises and falls with circumstances and events outside of you.
You can know the hum and still have days when the hum itself seems to recede so far into the background that you wonder if you were making it up. Or, which is more my experience, you question your right to experience the hum given your seeming inability to hold onto it.
But knowing and trusting the hum doesn’t make us spiritualized machines. And this is important. Because it is human nature to experience higher and lower states of consciousness, to have clearer and murkier thinking, better and worse moods. That is not something we need to change or fix.
There’s no need to hold onto the hum, because it never goes away. And because there’s no need to hold onto it, there’s no penalty for losing contact.
This week I invite you to notice that you don’t have to feel the hum to trust it or to benefit from grace. You can have ups and downs, even dramatic ones, and still be eligible for wisdom and insight.
Trust the hum.
Photo by Macomb Paynes via Flickr
