Month: March 2012

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Natural Somersault Fun

Have you ever noticed your thinking going into the thought “what if I never _____?”

That state that feels like I am on a merry-go-round of doubt about not being successful, happy, accomplished, secure, satisfied.

What if I never write a book? What if I never make “x” amount of money? What if I never see Tahiti? What if I never heal this relationship with food? What if I never get married again? What if I can’t forgive someone?

The other day in my teleclass Our Wonderful Sexuality the thought we worked together was “I want them to think I’m special”.

Katie has a little story in Loving What Is, her first book, about how a child is playing on the playground doing somersaults and enjoying themselves, and then someone sees the child and claps, and people shout “wow, fantastic!”

The child then becomes more interested in doing the somersaults so that they can then attract a clapping audience. The clapping becomes more important than the original simple, blissful activity. That felt good to get attention! I want it again! I want MORE! When they think I’m special it is FABULOUS!!!!!

Of course this is not an all-or-nothing situation. Sometimes the strategy of the mind is to decide “I am NEVER going to want anyone to think I’m special. I am above and beyond all that”. In which case, when I’ve been in that mode, I’m low key, stay in the back row, and wind up not being genuinely myself either.

Have you ever heard of the game ping-pong? How about schizophrenia!?

All those things I’m worried about not happening (what if I never____?) are usually things I think that if I did them or had them, I would be happier, more peaceful, more loved, secure….I would be BETTER off than I am now.

So what’s wrong with NOW? I write it down and inquire. No book, no big bank account, never seen Tahiti, not a raw vegan (I do like burgers and french fries), divorced, mad at that person still whenever I think about them…

What is fabulous about not having any of these things? Why is this a good thing? What are the advantages?

Wow, what if none of those things really matter. This is not the “giving up” kind of not mattering where I decide I don’t care defiantly…this is really knowing it actually doesn’t matter! WOOHOO!

I notice I love to write every day, I see I have no debt and my bank account goes up and down like the tide but I’m never hungry, I start researching Tahiti on the internet, I find out I love eating seaweed, I get engaged to be married for a second time, and I remember that the person who I think I’m mad at…they are not here right now, and they are defnitely one of my biggest teachers.

Then I can just be happy, and I notice I do somersaults.

Much love, Grace

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Questioning Death

Byron Katie says that it’s not necessary to question your wonderful, happy stories. Your inspiring stories, your joyful stories. Those are working for us, we don’t worry about them. The Work is about looking at painful, stress-producing, terrible stories.

Still, one of Katie’s wonderful questions (and other philosophers and teachers as well) is “who would you be without your story?” It’s a pretty huge, wide open question. I find that both the “good” stories and the “bad” stories are becoming less easy to define the more I do The Work.

Some of the most amazing changes for me have come out of having cancer, recovering from an eating disorder, being in love and out of love, losing all my money and many of my possessions, or someone close to me to “dying”.

Last night I attended “Parent Night” for my 17 year old son’s driver’s education class. The teacher went over laws, how we parents should help with teaching our kids to drive, reminders of how the licensing system works.

And then he said “now we’re going to see a little movie about the dangers of inexperienced teens driving”.

Oh no…..I hate this story.

In the movie was film footage from a car accident where there were only teens in the car. I see the body of a boy lying face down on the street, I notice his big athletic shoulders and white t-shirt, and there is a pool of blood extending far around him as his body lies still. A fireman puts a tarp over him, the camera keeps moving. There are other bodies, too.

Today I see the movie scene again in my mind. It’s how the mind seems to work. When something is particularly troubling, it seems to repeat the image over and over again. I saw the film clip once last night and that accident scene lasted probably 2 minutes…but now I’ve shown it to myself  probably 1000 times in the last 15 hours, and I was asleep for 7 of those hours!

I even hate telling this story, I don’t want to make others sad, remind them of troubling situations, or admit that I felt like crying and sobered just by seeing that film. But I  can only be worried about telling this story IF I really think it’s TRUE that it’s a entirely tragic story.

One of the most profound experiences in human life is when people overcome very horrifying, dramatic, powerful, life-changing events. What do we mean when we say “overcome”?

For me it feels like the deepest awareness of surrender, of not having control. Difficult events happen. Things that produce profound grief, mental anguish, torment. I can’t sleep, I think about it over and over. I feel numb. Before I had the Work this repeated itself for years. I’d wonder about the meaning of life itself, how can such things happen? It is all so frightening and terrible. Death is shocking, and an accident is a tragedy.

First question: Is It True? My answer: Yes!

I pause…Can I absolutely know that it’s true that the accident I viewed was 100% tragedy? Can I know that they all suffered, or the parents suffered constantly, or that those kids should have lived longer?

How do I react when I believe that this thing was such an awful story, was so terrible? When I think about it, I am overwhelmed with emotion, pain, stress, anger, grief. I think about never driving. I am actually scared, even though nothing has actually happened to me, personally.

So who would I be without the thought? This is not a form of denial, I’m not  pretending the accident didn’t happen….just questioning what would it be like if I could even just rest in the moment of not thinking of it as 100% horrific.

What kind of action do I take when I realize I’m actually entirely safe right now?

How do I live when I realize that every day, people die, some of them in car crashes, and I don’t know why, and will never know why. Some of them are teenagers. Have I noticed that people of all ages die? Have I actually noticed that EVERYONE dies? I am arguing with Reality by saying “that shouldn’t happen”.

“When you argue with Reality, you lose…” suggests Katie.

Tears come, and I feel grateful for being alive right now. Grateful for all the amazing people who arrive at accidents and help clean them up. Grateful that I’ve seen my children live, so far, all the way to teenagers. Grateful that now, my son is going on this adventure in life where he is learning to move his body from point A to point B in a really amazing thing called a car.

Who would we be without the thought that death is terrible and frightening?

Much love, Grace

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Admit What You Think About Angelina Jolie

Today I read an article about how many people reacted to Angelina Jolie’s apparently very skinny shape at the Oscars. The article was suggesting that people shouldn’t tweet things like “Dear Angelina Jolie….eat something.”

I remember my starvation days well. It’s true that if anyone said to me “eat something” it would have made ZERO difference in my behavior at the time. I would have written them off as being crass, ignorant, and rude. How dare they say that to me!

Everyone was suspect, everyone was either against me, unaware, too nosey, pushy, judgmental, uncaring, or needy. They did not understand. I was in control, and not eating was practically the only place I felt any personal control over my life.

The amount of energy it took to deny my own hunger and eat so little left almost no mental or emotional space to do anything but focus on NOT eating. Interacting with others was something I wanted to spend very little time doing, it was pretty scary for me. I was too afraid of people. I was too afraid of telling the truth!

I didn’t want to hear the truth from other people either. It felt too crushing.

Now, I have such gratitude for the people who spoke up and said something during the years I was “anorexic” and starving all the time.

I will never forget a fellow student in college who also ran cross-country on the team. I have no idea what her name was, and can hardly remember what she looked like. But one day at a meet she said to me “Have you ever been anorexic?” and as I looked at her in stunned silence (no one was supposed to ever mention this out loud) another team mate said “Don’t ask her that, jeez!”

I never said a word. But I remember it now, 30 years later. I KNEW at the moment that young woman spoke that she was noticing how thin I was and watching the way I rarely ate and worked out a lot in my running.

I was seen. I had a love-hate relationship with being seen. I couldn’t pretend I was invisible and slowly wasting away into nothing when that woman spoke up. I was noticed.

Around the same time when visiting home, my father came to me with a small plate of sliced fresh pears. He said “won’t you please eat something, sweetheart?” He had no idea how to be with his daughter who was so thin, he was sad and scared. I said “No!” and left the room. But I knew he cared and I knew he was seeing me.

Byron Katie suggests that anything said to her is something she needed to hear in that moment. If it’s said loudly, she needed to hear it loud.

When I was at the School for The Work once, a man stood and talked about himself being sexually inappropriate with a child once many years before. He said how ashamed he was and how afraid he was of others’ judging him for being so awful. Another man in the same room, filled with several hundred people, shouted at him and stormed out of the room, slamming the door so loudly behind him that the walls shook.

 Katie then said something like “there goes one person who doesn’t like hearing what you are saying and may be judging you for being awful.”But that was one person, the rest stayed in the room.

The experience I have with the Work now is that my past actually feels different than it once did. I am now grateful for those people who spoke up and said something….even if I scoffed at it at the time. It was part of  what I needed to hear, right at that moment, just in that particular way.

If you notice judgments rise about Angelina Jolie, write them all down.

See what you think is “wrong” with her and her body. Go ahead and write it! Watch your mind fill with what it means that she has that body looking that particular way.

When you do The Work, your own answers may surprise you. One of my favorite exercises in the Horrible Food Wonderful Food teleclass or weekend workshop is judging those other people out there with their fat or thin bodies. Let’s get the judgments out on the table, because only then can they be set free and seen, sometimes even with gratitude.

Much love, Grace