In nature, hurricanes occur when walls of thunderstorms are driven up the center, producing a vortex -- an "eye" -- where, while everything else is total turmoil in and around it, there is complete silence and stillness in the center.
Now, let's bring ourselves into this for a moment. Have you ever been a hurricane? You know what that means. You're driving down the street and see an old Ford Fairlane. The second you see it, it reminds you of your school friend who had one, and that it was faster than everybody else's car. His name pops up in your mind. The minute his name pops up, a train of associations follows, and you remember how you once lied to him, or you sold him out so you wouldn't be disliked by some group of friends. It all happens, just like that!
Just ever so slowly, it starts to wind up, and the next thing you know, you are caught up in a vortex of thoughts and feelings produced by a single impression that you weren't present to, and in the absence of your presence, you became the pawn of all of these powers that are now so disturbed and seeking a resolution to themselves that you don't know what thought to grab onto!
Now you are flooded with all kinds of anxiety over feelings of things not being complete... even though your friend died seven years ago. And in an attempt to resolve the past, you think about what you didn't do, or could have, or should have done. And as you think about that, you think about what you've become, and as you think about what you've become, you think about what you have to get in order to be in command of yourself so that you never do that again.
Are you in command of yourself in that moment? No matter how firmly entrenched in the idea that you have to do something, is it you who commands, or is it an "I" in that moment being commanded by a series of associations that started with a single thought, a single impression that you had no awareness of when it came?
Is that not a series of associations that begin to swirl and swirl and swirl, producing thunderstorms? Because the more intense they get, the greater the disturbance. Now there are lightning bolts and loud crashing going on, and you're thinking to yourself, "Get me out of the storm!"... as if it's your storm. It isn't your storm! It seems to be your storm because you are identified with the first thought that pops out of this unconscious self, and you then follow it all the way around as it whips through you, trying to bring you to a place where you can finally be back in command.
Here's the exercise: You must become -- not the eye, but the I of the "hurry-cane." You worry about something, and you don't even know how deep that worry goes until a certain set of associations begins to ramp up, and the next thing you know, you're a wreck -- filled with tension. Why? Because the associations speed up, and as they speed up, the pressure increases. As the pressure increases, so must you produce a conclusion to free you of the fear, the thing you're worried about. So, become the I of the "worry-cane."
There isn't a situation in your life where you can't begin to understand that the only way in which there can be command over a condition, cannot come from being identified with something that is pressing you to control something that you never started to begin with -- save by an unconscious series of associations. And if it starts by unconscious association, then the only way in which it is brought to a quietude is by consciously recognizing how that condition came to be. And there is only one way to do that. You have to be the I of the storm.
You have to recognize the moment when the impression brings the reaction. And if you can't recognize that now (because it takes time), the day will come. The day will come when not a single act of unconscious resistance will surface in you that, in its appearance, doesn't immediately cause you to instantly recognize that you are not anchored in the I of this "hurry-cane" or this "worry-cane." You know that anger can start and gradually lead you to a host of conditions that destroy you. You were carried there by being unconsciously identified with a single association that turned into a hurricane of thoughts and feelings. And once you're caught in that pressurized system, there's no seeming answer other than to do what? Try to get out of it. But the real answer is to do the opposite. Don't step out of the "hurry-cane" or the "worry-cane." Step into it.
Presently what we call conclusions to our problems are basically this: We're spun and spun and spun, and at some point, we're thrown out of the associations into a decision (that they came up with) that we think will serve us. So we answer and act from that conclusion, which becomes the seed of the next hurricane because it didn't complete the nature that came into existence in that moment for the higher purpose of allowing us to understand the possibility of real self-command.
Here is one thing you'll find if you attempt this exercise. You won't believe it, but you will see that you actually want the familiar pain of being thrown around! You don't want the pain of seeing all the pain. You want the familiar pain of being able to come to a conclusion and having that strong sense of yourself -- that opinion of "I'm not adequate," or "I'm super-adequate, and nobody understands." You can be any one of a thousand different "I's" produced by unconscious association. But you don't want that moment in which you see that none of those identities whirling around you is I, because you can't identify who the Real I is in the center of the storm.
You can't know that Real I. You can only be it. It's a phenomenon beyond comprehension that there is something inside of us that would rather be tossed and turned and then blame and burn than it is to be quiet and still and to start living from a part of ourselves that connects us to authentic command.
So see what you come up with in your inner work. I use the term "hurry-cane," or "worry-cane," but every one of us is a certain type. For instance, do you live from an "opinion-cane"? A "defenda-cane"? Every one of those negative states is the by-product of us unconsciously handing away command. The clearer that becomes, the more we will be willing to enter into this I of the hurricane, the part of us that recognizes the associations and the reactions that are producing the storm. And if we stay in the middle and don't feed the storm, the storm passes.
