When chaos happens do you get frustrated, even angry? I know I can although I am getting better at walking away.
Yesterday I was trying to organise to get Neige (my blind horse) into the barn to get something to eat. She is at the bottom of the herd ranking and sometimes she just seems to get pushed away from shelter and food by the other members of the herd. But the more I tried to sort this out the more chaos seemed to reign. I was just getting frustrated and angrier at the other horses so in the end I left it and walked away. Because my energy was at this high level of annoyance Neige wasn’t coming anywhere near me anyway…too scary. I knew it wasn’t aimed at her but she didn’t!
So why was I frustrated and angry? As is my way I decided to analyse this feeling more. I started down the road of my energy. I can’t feel two things at once. Nobody can. I can’t have these feelings of anger going on and expect any animal to want to be around me. That was the first easy lesson. If I am frustrated with the herd that means all of them. If I am happy around them that is also shared by all of them. It works both ways..
Are the herd trying to teach me something? When things like this happen they usually are. I had a thought that maybe I need to change how I give Neige what she needs. But the immediate thought after that was ..the herd will just learn that solution as well and chaos will happen again. Also what came into my thoughts was ‘ What she needs?’ Do I know what she needs better than they do? Or am I creating chaos for them when I think I know what she needs and they don’t? Stay with me here – when I let my thoughts wander they do go off on various tangents! Is this less about a solution for Neige or more about letting go of wanting things neat and tidy and in control and managed? When I have a plan and it runs to chaos I tend towards anger rather than acceptance. A lot of us probably do. By leaving it and walking away last night I accepted the chaos and let go of the plan.
The word chaos has been coming into my awareness often recently and maybe this little incident is getting me to focus on it, on the chaos. What is chaos? When chaos reigns is it the solution, the answer to the question? Can the question only be resolved in chaos? Do we create questions or situations where only chaos can be the answer? This makes sense to me.
Chaos becomes the answer and this gives us something to focus our anger and frustration on, instead of taking a step back and understanding that our anger or frustration is based on an illusion, because the control we desired was an illusion in the first place.
So, when I desire 4 horses to not to want to come into a barn where there is nice hay, and I desire them to let the bottom of the herd, Neige, to come into the barn and get the food first, this goes against the natural order of things, and can only create chaos. Because the herd doesn’t respond as I wish, I could create more control until I get what I want, but this would only be fleeting, and the next time I do it chaos would come back.
So when chaos reigns I am asking the question wrong. Anger and frustration just add to the chaos. Trying to control the chaos just creates a different chaos. So what am I learning here?
Chaos is a way of seeing the illusion of what I am trying to achieve. If there is chaos, stop. Go back to the beginning. Understand that what I may want to achieve is likely an illusion of control. Don’t spiral into the illusion. If I spiral into the illusion I only create more chaos. (The butterfly flap turns into a tornado). Stand back, allow the chaos to settle, and sense the answer. It may not be what you thought you wanted, but it will be the right answer.
