Month: May 2012

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Oh Goodie, I’m Stuck!

Feeling stuck somewhere in your life can feel excruciating.

  • I’m stuck thinking about the same thing over and over and I wish I could forget it
  • I can’t resolve my relationship with my partner
  • I can’t accept my boss, she’s too annoying
  • My career is boring, I want to retire, but I have no other work
  • I won’t ever find a mate, I’m stuck being alone
  • I’m never going to be satisfied with my unhealthy body
  • I have to have money to be happy
  • I’m stuck being unenlightened, I’m not happy

I heard a zen koan story once that went something like this: a man is holding on to a branch of a tree which hangs over a cliff with his teeth. His hands are tied behind his back. The zen master teacher says “say the one thing that will save you”.

The man is stuck. There is no way out. He is going to die, it is just a matter of when.

The mind loves to try to figure it out and find the answer. It says “there must be another way….there must be a way out and I’m just not seeing it yet. There must be something I can do, a new technique, a special practice, there must be a clue….I’m sure that I am not actually stuck! Not really!”

The feeling that comes with these thoughts of being totally and completely stuck can be so depressing, full of despair.

Once on a meditation retreat I said to the teacher Adyashanti “I can’t stand it, I’ve tried everything” and he said “Congratulations”.

Nothing to do, nothing to find. Just stop.

So I look at my thoughts which feel the most despairing, the ones that feel trapped. I inquire if this is really bad, the way I’m presuming.

It’s terrible that I keep thinking about the same trauma or person over and over again, is that true? I wish I could forget it, is that absolutely true?

I can’t resolve it, accept it, make peace with it, whatever it is…is that really true? I don’t truly understand life, I haven’t reached enlightenment and I should. Is that really true?

I will never be happy with this stuck, repetitive thinking. I will never be peaceful in this situation. I have to get out of here.

What if I turned the thought around? “Being stuck is awesome, fantastic, brilliant, perfect”.

What are examples of this?

  • I stop pushing and demanding an answer
  • I relax in my body and welcome all my thinking
  • I say “oh goodie, I am stuck” and this feels really different
  • I feel how big the universe and reality is, so much bigger than me, and feel a trust that it knows what it’s doing
  • It’s OK not to get how to fix my predicament, I let it be here to discover what it’s here for
  • I just sit, I’m silent
  • I don’t have to be unhappy about being “stuck”

Letting go of the branch of the tree that I’m holding onto with my teeth doesn’t look bad at all when death, the inevitable, is a good thing.

Letting go and relaxing is fine when I stop believing that being stuck is terrible, dreadful and depressing.

“Unhappiness is the belief in the wrongness of being. To be unhappy is to feel that you are wrong to be who you are.” ~ Bruce Di Marsico

Whatever you are thinking, welcome it. It’s here for your inquiry.

With love, Grace

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I Can’t Stand Their Fighting!

One of the most profound areas of torture for many people is in the realm of parenting.

One of my favorite graduate school psychology professors said “the key to being successful in parenting is being willing to be hated”. 

This morning a thoughtful and brilliant client came to our session having written down all her judgments about her two daughters hitting each other, ages six and eight. There they were at the kitchen table, and one of them lunges at the other, who then punches the first in the face.

The mother, my client, then screamed.

Sometimes it may feel like the biggest emotional moments are right in the presence of our children. That has been the case for me, just like this dear client.

It’s really quite funny LATER, to look back at the scene. And looking back is a very necessary step, frame by frame, for the inquiry process. Getting curious about what bugged me most of all, why I “lost it” in that moment, why I “couldn’t take it anymore”.

Once when my children were much younger than they are now, early in inquiry, they were bickering in the back seat of the car while I was driving. I could feel the geyser of anger coming from the center of my stomach….oh no, here it is!

What are the painful thoughts in that moment? You don’t even have to be a parent really to identify these kinds of thoughts. Imagine yourself in a situation where children are yelling, fighting, hitting, calling each other names….maybe you’ve even seen that in a movie.

(Yes, I know, adults appear to do these things too).

  • They should not yell
  • It is too noisy
  • They should treat each other with respect
  • This noise has to STOP
  • There is nothing I can do
  • Here is an example of the selfishness of human nature
  • I could get hurt if I intervene
  • I’m a terrible mother/father!
  • I need to know what to do!!!!!

To work with this moment as if it has something incredible to offer, an understanding, rather than just wanting to get away from those loud, mean children, or make them stop, is an entirely different experience of this moment.

“See if you can catch yourself complaining in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness”. ~Eckhart Tolle 

Instead of feeling like a victim of these people who are fighting in my presence, I write down my beliefs. They are ones that have been passed along from generation to generation before me, what children should or should not do, how they should or should not be, and what it means that these children, who are apparently MINE (question this) are behaving this way.

What is the most frightening thing that could happen if they keep fighting?

My client answered immediately: they will hate each other always, they will refuse to return home for Thanksgiving, I will be a grandma without my daughters here together, they will not support each other when I’m gone.

Can we really know that it’s true that these hitting children are full of rage that will last for years? What if there is nothing to be afraid of? What if I am enough, I can do what needs to be done, even if I’m not sure what it is?

What if they should yell, it is not too noisy, they are naturally respectful, the noise does not have to stop. What if this is an example of the passion and love in human nature, and that I won’t get hurt if I intervene.

“In spite of the seven thousand books of expert advice, the right way to discipline a child is still a mystery to most fathers and… mothers.  Only your grandmother and Ghengis Khan know how to do it”.  ~Billy Cosby

All I can do when I feel upset with children is, go back and look again, after the emotion has passed. What do I believe about this scene, this situation? Inquire and learn. Either we believe our thoughts or we don’t. Believing them keeps the pattern running. Questioning takes the intensity right out of it.

You don’t need to know what to do. Just question your thinking.

With love, Grace

Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven In-person Workshop Saturday and Sunday

June 2-3, 2012 in Seattle, Washington

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Not Hiding My Violence And Pain

This morning I was reading from Loving What Is, Byron Katie’s book about The Work and how she discovered it. There are many dialogues of people with whom Katie did the Work in the second half of the book.

I randomly opened the pages to a man who is very angry at his uncle for advising him poorly on the stock market.

What an amazing story to question, the thought patterns which say “that person should not have told me what they told me”. Or the opposite, “they should have told me something different, something better…”

  • My friend shouldn’t have told me that insulting joke
  • My dad should have told me why he was depressed
  • The man I was dating shouldn’t have told me I wasn’t his type
  • My grandfather should have told me how to make money
  • My grandmother shouldn’t have told me she was lonely
  • My co-worker shouldn’t have told me she didn’t trust me
  • That doctor shouldn’t have told me the mole was nothing to worry about

This morning in our teleclass Horrible Food Wonderful Food a participant selected the thought to bring to inquiry “I needed her to tell me not to hide my eating”.

How amazing to get an idea of who we would be without the thought that anyone should have said something different than what they have said so far. Or that we needed them to help us. Or that they should have said more.

What if we were ourselves, following advice, not following it, hearing their words, noticing the reactions inside of us….wanting just what we wanted (like cookies) without feeling shame, guilty, desperation, anger, sadness.

I have loved doing The Work on the concept “they shouldn’t have said that!” I bring the situation I’m most upset about to mind. There the person is, speaking. Words are coming out of her mouth. Her face is red. Her eyes are squinting.

Right in that moment, I remember what felt so terrifying about her speaking, the way her face looked. I remember what I thought it meant about me or about them, or the world, that was very stressful.

  • She hates me, I hurt her, I’m bad, I should have done it differently
  • Doctors can’t be trusted, bad things can happen to me
  • I did something wrong
  • My grandmother is suffering and I can’t help her
  • My grandfather didn’t think I was good enough to make money
  • My dad doesn’t think I’m good to talk with about his inner life
  • My friend is making fun of me
  • I am unattractive, ugly

When I do The Work, I not only find acceptance of what everyone has said or not said, I also find that I can find examples of how it was an advantage for me that it went just exactly the way it went.

So the man working with Katie saw his list of demands that he wanted from his uncle, and as he looked at every demand, he discovered that he was the only one who could really give him what he needed or wanted. Not his uncle.

I give myself the gift of the turnaround “I need to tell myself not to hide my eating“. I need to tell myself it is OK to be me, not hiding my behavior, my thinking, my feelings.

I tell people about my story of being bulimic for ten years, going on these episodes of crazed eating so much food it was amazing I could hold it, and then forcing myself to vomit. That I was borderline anorexic for two years, controlling every bite that went in my mouth (which was very little) and deciding I would simply never respond to hunger, ever.

I tell people of my terrible violent relationship with food and eating and how that is now over. I tell people that I eat whatever I want now, whenever I want to eat it. Sometimes I have a moment where I think I ate too much but it’s rare, sometimes I have a moment where I think I’m too hungry and “I can’t stand it” but it’s rare. Sometimes I look at my darling fiance’s bottle of coke and I think “he shouldn’t drink that” but then I laugh.

I know what to do the minute I feel anxiety or pain or discouragement of any kind. I see what it is I am believing, first, and then take it to inquiry.

“There is no such thing as verbal abuse. There’s only someone telling me a truth that I don’t want to hear. If I were really able to hear my accuser, I would find my freedom…..If your uncle says something that hurts, he’s just revealed what you haven’t wanted to look at yet.” ~ Byron Katie

Our mothers and fathers and all the people around us with their explanations and ideas about food, or stock tips, all these people with their intense feelings and words…maybe they are God in disguise. Giving us everything we need or don’t need for our freedom.

With love, Grace

Sign up for The Work With Grace in Seattle on June 2-3

The Hidden Gift in ANY Relationship

June 27 – July 1 in the glorious Breitenbush Hotsprings Resort in Oregon! Please register at www.breitenbush.com.

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Mothers And Forgiveness

Today I have been thinking (again) about Mothers and Forgiveness.

I used to be frustrated with the idea of forgiveness. It seemed like forgiving meant saying it was OK that bad, mean, awful things happened and I should grin and bear it. Or I should rise above that and be a better person.

Forgiving was a sort of dangerous concept. If I “forgave” then I would be setting myself up for getting hurt again. I might get crucified…like Jesus.

No, forgiveness was not going to be for me. I’d rather resent, protect, make sure I could defend myself, and stay away forever from the source of the pain….whoever it was. It was better knowing exactly who the enemy was. And it wasn’t me!

And while we’re at it, I must NEVER FORGET what happened. I would never get fooled again into being the victim.

Of course, we’ll overlook the fact that I have to be vigilant, careful, nervous, anxious, sad, enraged or distrustful every time I think about the “perpetrator”.

The last and 8th session of Turning Relationship Hell to Heaven just occurred yesterday (and won’t start again until July). Each and every class is like a treasure box, all the participants doing the most amazing, thoughtful work from their own sweet, amazing lives.

The power of the group working together is so incredible!

It’s a microcosm of the deepest support in life, all of us journeying together, walking along the path towards a Beautiful Mystery. We all give each other ideas, where if we were stuck in our own mind we might not be able to see our stressful thoughts clearly.

So there we are are in the teleclass and many of us thinking about one person who has really bugged us, someone who has dished out a lot of pain and aggravation, someone who has been absolutely hurtful.

I love how Katie mentions that during her first years of inquiry, she worked so often on her mother. These are the thoughts Katie writes about in A Thousand Names For Joy:

  • My mother doesn’t love me
  • She loves my sister and brother more than me
  • She should invite me to family gatherings
  • If I tell the truth about what happened, she’ll deny it and no one will believe me

I can add these from my own list:

  • My mother is too angry
  • My mother is too cheerful
  • My mother gets hurt too easily
  • My mother is too critical

Katie says that she would write down her thought, as we do in the Work, one at a time. This is so, so, so, so important.

One thought at a time.

My mind is so busy, fast, and interested in proving that the other person over there (my mother) is inadequate that I can hardly take half a breath before finding 20 examples of proof at how imperfect that person has been. Images come screeching in for attention.

The mind is very chaotic. Katie suggests “you can’t stop mental chaos, however motivated you are. But if you identify one piece of chaos and stabilize it, then the whole world begins to make sense”. 

One thought at a time.

Some participants in the class still felt like the person they brought to our 8 weeks together was not their best friend. Maybe not even close.

I say, don’t try to make them be your best friend, your favorite human, the mother you always thought you wanted. Just keep noticing what your mind says that feels painful.

That’s all that is necessary. One thought at a time.

Don’t worry about whether you find the most painful thought to inquire about, or the “best” thought to question. Just watch what you are thinking, the mind will bring it to you. Write down only one. It doesn’t matter if it’s completely silly sounding, like “my mother shouldn’t have looked away”.

Just let your mind answer the questions; Is it true? Are you 100% sure? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without that thought? What is the opposite?

Forgiveness will just come along, and exactly the right time, it the most perfect way.

“Inquiry changes the world faster than you can imagine….” ~Byron Katie.  

With love, Grace

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I Love A Good Story

Understanding the concept of what it means to have a “story” and what it means to be without this story is an awareness that all alone can change a person’s perspective.

I love a good story! I like happy endings! I listen with baited-breath to a story with suspense, failure, success, laughing, crying….It’s fabulous!

The difference between having a story and not having one may seem too strange and frightening to imagine. If I really question all the facts, if I really ask myself what is true and what isn’t true….what if I am Nothing? What if I really know nothing absolutely?

So many stories pile up over time. We fall into a certain demographic category: I am tall, blue-eyed, light skin, dual British and US citizen, 2 kids, divorced, engaged to be married mid-life, blah blah blah. Not that any of it is boring really….but it is the story of someone on the planet, unique but not so unique. Mediocre. Middle of the curve. Nothing special. Regular human.

Then we have stories that are our personalities, how we respond to things, how we tend to behave. I am introverted, shy, VERY funny, dry sense of humor, playful, analytical, dramatic.

People love taking tests around these kinds of tendencies: the enneagram, the Myers-Briggs, the Five Factor. It’s fun to categorize the stories, and people have found it helpful for creating intimacy as people talk about how they react to life.

And, we could question every answer, every story.

Then there are life-event stories. The things that happened to us along the way. Our parents, our bosses, our teachers. Big changes…”good” ones, “bad” ones.

How did we learn it all? It’s like we enter the planet, as infants, and then something happens with consciousness expanding. Memory. Emotions. We enter the Soup of This Story of Planet Earth and Me. And often its the story of a being a victim of something…whether it’s a parent, a natural disaster, a disease, mean nasty people.

I love this quote by Dave Barry “I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories. 

Ha ha!

Here come the stories as they begin during first memories:

  • Mom is crying and it means that I need to help her
  • Aunt is bitter and has a mean face and it means she’ll hurt me
  • He died and now all the grown ups are desperate
  • Dad shouts to be quiet and I made the noise, I upset him
  • Sister gives me the evil eye and it terrifies me that she doesn’t love me
  • Grandma claps when I dance and I start trying to dance better
  • Grandpa tells me he is proud of me and now I know I should want his pride
  • There is something wrong with me
  • I am too needy
  • I can get hurt

It seems like life becomes a long, long story of one thing happening after another.

The Work is so simple, and by asking the four simple questions, it makes the notion of having a really good story that explains everything very doubtful.

“Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it… it’s just easier if you do.” ~Byron Katie

Can you think what it would be like, right now just for today, if you didn’t have the thought that something happened TO you, but instead that it happened FOR you?

What is an advantage of that thing happening that you thought happened to you? This is not saying “oh fabulous, I can’t wait until someone close to me dies again”. That might be a little over the top.

But it is saying “I’m open”. Maybe I don’t know the end of the story yet. Maybe it’s not 100% true that this has been ALL terrible. I’m open. I can find good things that came from it. Maybe I can relax and enjoy the ride, in the midst of it all.

“As soon as the mind pulls out an agenda and decides what needs to change, that’s unreality. Life doesn’t need to decide who’s right and who’s wrong. Life doesn’t need to know the “right” way to go because it’s going there anyway.” ~Adyashanti

With love, Grace

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Being Who You Are Is Enough

A few days ago in our teleclass “Money, Work and Business” we questioned the belief “I have to do what they say”. 

I pretty much believed this since about age five. With school, parents, authority. It is not an uncommon belief.

Even if it’s not that stressful, like you are clearly not being FORCED to do something, one participant still found the thought present as she believed she had to do what the experts say in order to become successful online.

Think about what you think you HAVE to do today in order to get what you want.

  • I have to pick up the repaired television
  • I have to write out my marketing plan
  • I have to work on my curriculum for the new workshop
  • I have to spend more time on Facebook
  • I have to schedule time for training/learning new things about business
  • I have to get more money
  • I have to call the dishwasher repair shop
  • I have to weed the dandelions out of my yard
  • I have to call that person back

I remember writing down the belief “I have to PUSH to be successful”. This could apply in so many areas: training for an athletic event, running your own business, talking to your kids about cleaning their rooms, talking to your kids about their homework, planning a wedding, getting a good deal, meditating every day to reach enlightenment, going to therapy, getting a degree, reading spiritual books, enrolling in programs to change your behavior.

The fourth question in The Work is “who would you be without the thought?” So who would I be without the thought that I HAVE to do it? Anything troubling you’d like to go over first?

Oh no! I might lie down on the grass outside in the sun, like a cat, and do NOTHING!! NADA!!  EVER!!!

I need to push myself because otherwise, I’m a no-good, lazy, do-nothing, rude, selfish, unorganized, unsuccessful bump on a log. Achieving nothing. A failure. And I’ll never get anywhere.

Are you sure?

If you were walking along a beautiful pathway, and you saw a person or an animal ahead lying on the ground with a broken leg….would you do nothing?

If you lay down on the couch and decided to stay there until you felt like getting up without the thought that you SHOULD get up….would you stay there forever?

If you noticed that you wanted something, like food, heat, rest, conversation, touch, laughter, money….are you sure that you have to push yourself to receive these things? Could you be OK with the wanting? Could you still be happy?

Maybe being yourself, your own amazing, unique, wonderful self, is all you need to do. No extra pushing required. Just noticing that you do things for the joy of it or because you naturally do it, without thinking.

As Katie says, “drop the maybe“.

Just the other day I received an email from a woman who has been a client for one-on-one sessions and also a participant in one of my teleclasses a year ago. She has been amazingly courageous and continued to question her beliefs about money and her business, and other difficulties in her life in the past.

This kind woman said in her email that she had now joined a group where she was giving 10% of her income to organizations or people who fed her spiritually.

She sent me a donation to continue my writings.

Tears welled up in me in gratitude. Once again, this is an example of the turnaround from when I first started that inquiry five years ago. “I do NOT need to push myself, I need to be easy and gentle with myself.”

“I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I’ve become. If I had, I’d have done it a lot earlier.” ~ Oprah Winfrey

With love, Grace

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I Hate Not Knowing

Carl Jung said “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”

I like to tell the story that when I first bought Byron Katie’s book Loving What Is I kept it on my bedside table for about six months. Without opening it.

You mean I have to read it?!

In some ways, I already questioned absolutely EVERYTHING about life. Why do bad things happen? Why do good things happen? How come some people are super successful financially and others are not? What’s the deal with humanity…we all seem like such a mixture of love and hate, war and peace? Who am I anyway? What will it be like to die? Who or what is God? What is life for? And while we’re at it, where can I get some relief from all this thinking? Jeez!

If I took even one second and looked deeper than the surface with all these fast-moving questions, then I saw that I was NOT HAPPY with the fact that I didn’t know the answers.

My conclusion: it is NOT FUN to think about these big questions. They have no ultimate answer…and it all seems like a big mess of chaos. I used to say “it’s a cesspool here”.

Quick, where’s the fun? Let’s go THAT way! QUICK!!!!

Notice the “emergency” feeling to this energy. Fear is present. This was not “wow, what a fun looking place this earth is, let’s see what’s going on and find the fun!” It was more like “Get me outta here!” I came to know this cycle as “addiction”. Unfortunately, it also isn’t fun. Bummer.

I love the quote by Aldous Huxley “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.”

Sooner or later, you HAVE to question your thinking….or not. But it will be much easier if you do. It will change all your stressful feelings. Your fear will dissolve.

I had a wonderful therapist once who described that the learning process for life lessons and awareness could be of varying “burn” levels. You could get sunburned, and learn to question your thinking afterward….or you could get a first degree burn, and work with that….or you could get a second, third, or fourth degree burn…and then really have to look and put aside all other interests, since there you are with a huge “burn”. Life will give you what you need.

The good news is that it really doesn’t have to “burn” physically at all. I notice that this is the case when I do The Work. I sit down with one concept, situation, experience that is painful….no matter what degree…and I look again and again at what is happening in my darkest thoughts. I get these terrible, nasty, mean, horror-movie thoughts out on paper.

Now after doing The Work for awhile, I notice a question like I had when I was a child (like I’m sure you have had as well) and I feel differently inside. It’s like my heart is excited and open to whatever is possible.

Why do bad things happen, or good things happen? Well, I’m not even sure which ones are “bad” or “good” anymore. I realize everyone is succeeding in just the right way, right on time. Humanity is a great, wild, beautiful, mysterious collective of war and peace, all of it possible, all of it changing and moving. Who knows?

Who am I? I mean really? What is life for? Who or what is God? What is death? Now I can ask these and not be frustrated. I used to be MAD and SCARED at these questions. Because the answer was “I don’t know!” and I didn’t like not knowing things! AND I’m pretty sure the answer is frightening.

What if today it was fine to not know what you are doing, who you are, and what your life is for. What if you didn’t think you were a failure or bad for yourself? What if it was OK to be peaceful right now?

What if you just notice what you feel drawn to do, what you feel compelled towards, what you notice you want? What if you are the most amazing, wise, wonderful friend you could ever have….to yourself?

“People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it”.~ Anthony De Mello

By unraveling the thinking behind painful feelings, you get to see yourself without those feelings. Who you really are….pure love.

With love, Grace

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Being Willing To Lose Everything

When I was separated from my former husband 7 years ago, I had a lot of “work” to do. The Work! I had so many terrifying thoughts rise out of me, I didn’t even know they had been there.

It was within that time of separation that not only was all my money leaving my bank account to pay for food and shelter, I also got a cancer tumor on my leg, and I lost my job.

Sometimes the panic would feel like I was stepping out of a space ship….into black, empty, endless space, miles from any human person, waiting for the oxygen tank to run out of batteries.

The strange thing is that with The Work, I could see that I was having a nightmarish hurricane of beliefs. Part of me could actually see that what I believed was effecting everything. Even though I felt terror, I knew there was another side to this story. I knew to do The Work, with no expectation of any outcome.

I knew it was possible to have all these things exist and STILL BE AT PEACE; cancer, job loss, money almost gone, losing my house, losing my possessions.

One of my greatest terrors was of having no money left, of losing my house. This was very possible.

I did The Work on being Sure it would Awful to lose everything, including my house.

I began to find evidence for how if this happened, it would not be all bad. I found genuine examples of how losing my house and money would bring beauty, adventure, love, connection. I saw how I did not need my house. I did not need money.

What I did not know yet, was that as I sat still and became willing to find examples of the turnarounds to my painful thinking, life would reveal the evidence of a friendly universe that was beyond friendly…that there would be turnarounds that were ones I couldn’t have imagined.

So there I was on a cold dark January and I saw my bank account had something like $16 dollars left. Enough for a few groceries today and putting a little gas into my gas tank. And I had a bill for the January mortgage to my house that said I owed $2,300 dollars on January 15th.

I had already borrowed money from my sister and used my credit card to pay the past three months of mortgage payments. I was going into debt now. I had visions of being on the Titanic. This was going down.

All I knew to do was The Work. And be genuine. Talk with people. Call people up. Speak up, continue to ask people about jobs they knew about, continue to tell people in my life the truth, and then let go with acceptance.

I really knew I would be safe. I really knew that if I started the foreclosure process, then I would be OK and I would move out into my mother’s house and then Something Else would happen. This was about loving myself. This was about experiencing peace and happiness…..no matter what.

On January 14th I went to my dance class, where I was trading my entrance fee for sweeping the floors and helping with clean up. I knew that dancing made me very happy, and being with community was joyful and loving. I knew to go, to put it simply.

At the end of the evening, someone said “We have something for Grace”. We gathered in our usual big circle to share and close the dance. I was presented with an envelope and took it, mystified. It was very close to my birthday, was this a gift?

I opened the envelope and saw bills and bills, $100s and $20s and $1s and $10s. There was enough money to pay my mortgage that was due the next day, and pay for my light and heat until the end of the month.

This was a donation to help me pay for another month of expenses, when I had nothing left.

My heart burst open and I cried and could not speak, and I saw this was a turnaround beyond any one I could have imagined.

“I can’t do it” had been my belief. I can’t get the money, I can’t make it with the expenses I have, I can’t manage to pay for my house, I am losing everything, I am starting foreclosure….

These thoughts had become “I don’t need to be the one to do it!” I can receive the money, I can make it (with or without a house or money), I can manage to pay for my house, I am not losing anything…

And now here was the most amazing example of a turnaround. My heart soared as I felt the gratitude and appreciation. I did my part, I did The Work, I looked at my own fears, and I let go, willing to lose my house and everything.

“You may be afraid to go deeper into The Work because you think that it’s going to cost you something valuable. My experience is the opposite: without a story, life only gets richer…..I’m free to walk in the world without fear….with arms and heart wide open.” ~ Byron Katie

With love and gratitude, Grace

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That Bad Stuff Is Actually Good

Boy howdy, I think I’M TOO TIRED!

Is it really true? Well, my eyes feel sandy, my mind is wandering, I like the idea of lying down in the sun and taking a snooze, I didn’t sleep well between 2 am and 6 am, or at least it seemed like I was tossing and turning and thinking, kind of like a twilight zone.

Too tired for what? It turns out I’m NOT too tired to sit here and type. I’m NOT too tired to be awake all day.

Once at a weekend workshop with Byron Katie on Relationships, I had a terrible time sleeping. In fact, after my first School for The Work, which was possibly the most profound workshop I had ever participated in in my life, I woke up every night at 3:00 am for almost a year.

My mind was so full of thoughts breaking apart that I had always believed as Absolutely True, that I was in a state of heightened awareness. It seemed my mind let itself rest for just a bit and then turned itself on again to start sorting things out, at 3:00 am when it was very quiet.

One thing that helped me was Katie’s words to sleepless participants “How do you know you’re supposed to be awake? You are.”

What could I do when I was awake? The Work. I could ask myself “what am I awake for?” and find out the answers, without getting frustrated that it would be better to be asleep.

Today in Our Wonderful Sexuality teleclass a participant brought to Inquiry a concept that seemed just an expression of a fact; “she can’t do that”.

Like the way a person with no arms can’t play tennis or row a boat. The way my father is no longer alive in a body. The way I am not a teenager now, or the way when I jump off a diving board, I fall into the water. These are simply true it seems.

These can be really fascinating to question all on their own…there are such interesting exceptions. But one place I love to go with questioning this kind of concept that seems true, but still stressful, is to look at the feeling I have behind it.

So the way the stressful belief goes on paper is “she can’t do that, and that is BAD”.

  • my father died and it is terrible
  • I got cancer, and it was horrifying
  • a dear friend of mine is in the hospital, and it’s depressing
  • all my money was gone, and it was excruciating
  • I fell and injured my knee, and it was painful
  • Everyone gets older, and it’s awful
  • My husband left me, and it was torture

Who would you be without the thought that any of these are really BAD?

I love asking myself, what is actually bad about this thing I’m calling bad? I mean, what is really bad about getting cancer, my father dying, getting divorced, hurting my knee, getting older, losing all my money, or knowing my friend is in the hospital?

We think that this thing is bad because with it (or without it) we will suffer, we will be unhappy. And we learned somewhere along the way that it’s bad, too.

If I don’t sleep now, I will be very unhappy later, I will suffer. No question, I’m positive, I don’t even think about finding what’s funny, good, entertaining, interesting about this sleepless state.

What if we turn it around? What if the very thing we think is bad is actually a good thing? How about entertaining that possibility? What could be an example?

I am not too tired, I got cancer and it was so good how many people helped me, I lost all my money and it was fabulous to realize I didn’t need it, I injured my knee and it was fascinating to see modern technology at work in the operating room, my husband left me and now I am the most independent, empowered woman I’ve ever been, my father died and I realize he is so in my heart I can still talk with him every day….

“The absolute truth is simple. There is no such thing as unhappiness. People have believed there was. You have been one of those people.”~Bruce Di Marsico

All those things I thought were the worst, they weren’t. Life keeps getting better and better, past, present and future.

With love, Grace

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You Are So Selfish!

If someone calls you “Selfish” it seems they don’t mean it well, and we don’t like hearing it. “Selfish” is not a good thing to be.

I remember the first time I was called “Selfish”. My mother said it to me.

I don’t remember what I was doing, or what I said, but I was overwhelmed with the thought that she just called me Selfish and this was very bad. I would do anything, it felt like, NOT to be that. I should have been thinking of her.

Jane Austen wrote “Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure”.  

The dictionary defines “selfish” as lacking consideration for others, concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.

The very definition has stressful underlying beliefs…we have to believe that being concerned with our own pleasure or profit actually makes us lack consideration for others. And that this is terrible, bad, wrong!

We also have to assume, if there is such a thing as being Selfish, that it is something you can just wind up being, by accident, unless you are diligent and you focus on other people. You need to watch yourself carefully, and keep yourself from doing things just for YOU, just because you like it. You need to think of others first.

Byron Katie wrote in one of her newsletters in 2009 this passage:

“Love is self-absorbed and leaves no room for any other. Love is the affect of self-consuming, the consumed. There’s not a molecule separate, outside of itself. In the apparent world of duality, it can be seen as a you and a me, but in reality there is only one. And even that isn’t true. I call it the last story, the one in the moment. The voice I love from within is what I’m married to. All marriage is a metaphor for that marriage.”

Katie has another saying that I’ve also heard elsewhere “You are the one you have been waiting for!” 

Once I was very angry with a good friend, a man I was dating. In my mind I had the thought “He is sooooo selfish!”

I knew what to do. Investigate my thinking. Because the very thought filled me with frustration, hate, rage and sleeplessness.

Who would I be without the thought that he was selfish? Watching a man who appeared anxious, demanding, watching someone yell out for what they wanted. There was passion! And fear, confusion, worry. He was believing lots of painful thoughts, he was trying hard, he was trying to find balance, he was afraid of suffering, afraid of not getting what he wanted.

The Turnaround is of course “He is not selfish”. How was this true?

He brought gifts to his mother, he invited me to do things with him, he was willing to trust me and other humans even though he was so afraid of them, he didn’t keep secrets, he spoke exactly what was on his mind (even if it was harsh or unpopular), he saw the value in questioning his thinking, he told jokes, he laughed, he could have one conversation for hours with me or someone else, he worked so he could earn a lot of money and pay his way, he paid for other peoples’ meals, he asked questions, he was completely transparent and real so that I could see where I wasn’t interested in him as a partner.

He was super generous, actually, in just being himself. I learned more from him than I had from many others throughout my life about honesty, feeling “criticized”, finding freedom in allowing others to be exactly as they are. He was so free!

What if we are here only to be ourselves? What if that is truly all we can do?

“To love is to be happy and do what you want, whatever you want. Be with. don’t be with. Smile; don’t smile. Be loving; don’t be loving. Give or say whatever you want; take or ask for whatever you want. Do you own thing. If the one you love gets unhappy, don’t believe you are not loving them enough for them to be happy. Their happiness does not depend on you. If you find you want them to be happy, it is because you want it; not because you must be a loving person to prove to them or you that you can love. You are loving if you are happy!” ~Bruce di Marsico

There is no danger in being selfish. Be who you are. You are Love. Your nature is peace, joy and happiness. Mothers say things at just the right moment for our awareness…and how amazing to question anything that hurts.

With love, Grace