21 Sep My House Flooded. What’s That About?

My house just flooded. The toilet valve popped off while I was on vacation and gushed gallons of water per minute for four days. A freak accident. An uninhabitable house, needing months of drying, remediation and reconstruction.

As someone once said, in a movie, “Well…that happened.”

Except, our minds don’t tend to leave it at that. They want to know “Why?” They want to know “why” whether or not an accurate answer is possible or helpful.

Sometimes, yes, an answer is helpful. If I experience an allergic food reaction, it’s crucial that I identify the food and avoid consuming it again.

If someone we love dies, seemingly too soon, we might not be able to stop asking why even if we know there is no reason to be found. In this case we’re not looking for the actual cause, like a car accident or smoking, but rather for some supernatural design to our loss.

But there’s a certain category of “why” I’d like to address here, that leads neither to a clear cause nor ultimate mystery. Which brings me back to the flood.

Some people would feel comfortable labeling such an accidental occurrence as a random event. If the leak happened at while I was home, that’s likely what I would have done. But the fact that the flood happened precisely when I was away, unable to address it, as I strolled on the beach obliviously, seems too eerie to
just be random.

One of my friends was interested in learning more about the flood’s purpose from a metaphysical angle. The friend asked if it was okay to consult a “psychic channel” who had been helpful previously. I said sure. The answer that came back was generic, something about clearing out the old and making space for the new.
What struck me most, though, was my reaction to the reading. I neither believed nor denied the content. Instead, I just wasn’t that interested.

This reminded me that I don’t actually look for or seek solace from a why outside myself. Whether it comes from a channel, astrology, a healer, a holy book or any other kind of divination, I don’t believe in such an answer as “the truth.” At best, such a reading of events can help me find out what actually resonates about the experience inside myself. At worst, such a reading can distract me from my own resonance or cause me to lose track of it.

When something does resonate within me, it creates a sense of meaning. Not meaning for anyone else, but personal meaning just for me. Such meaning opens me up to greater curiosity. It inspires me to greater aliveness. It’s not true in any verifiable sense, and therefore isn’t up for debate. It’s how I can take a loss, or tragedy, and make it my own. It helps me heal and grow and remain connected to who and what I love. In this way, I’ve come to see, it satisfies me so much more than any why, whether internally or externally sourced.

Such meaning also isn’t a “story,” in the way the we use that term spiritually. It’s not like “Everything happens for a reason,” or “It was a message from the universe.”

Those stories, even if self-generated, are about comforting oneself with a personalized version of why things occur. They stem from a need to believe that Spirit is directing the circumstances of our daily lives, in real time. A story such as that, while tempting when I’m short on solace, doesn’t tend to wake me up.

So all of this begs the question: What meaning do I derive from the flood? The answer is that I see it as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for me to practice presence, to live the “full catastrophe” of life one moment at a time. It’s an opportunity for me keep my mind and heart open when events are at their most frustrating and confounding. It’s an opportunity to fall short in my practice and begin again, over and over. It’s an opportunity to share the experience with all of you, in an attempt to inspire your own mind and heart to stay curious, open and connected when calamity reigns.