If you do “x”, then you will feel BETTER.
How many people have said this, to other people, throughout the ages?
I heard this in my life starting very young. Family, friends, TV, church, movies. You don’t feel good? Do This. Think This. Say This. Be Like This. Feel This. Follow This.
When I was young, one of the biggest things I heard adults talking about with suggestions, plans and ideas about how to feel better was with food. They weren’t necessarily talking with me at all…they were talking amongst themselves. Or talking out loud in the kitchen.
All these moments of communication, that we can’t even remember specifically, enter our little minds as children and we take bits and pieces in and start to build a world, a story.
I heard adults talking, I saw that they were unhappy, and I too was unhappy.
The Work itself is one of the offerings I have found in my life that suggests that I will feel better if I do it.
But that is not necessarily the case.
Byron Katie says that she began to do The Work for the love of truth, not in order to feel better or different. She saw that when she believed her own thinking patterns, her thoughts and ideas, she suffered, and when she questioned them she did not.
When I first learned about The Work I got the book Loving What Is and read it. I was incredibly moved by the stories and the ideas.
Then I set the book down and went about my life. It was in no way incorporated into my daily experience. In fact, even asking myself the first question “is it true?” was something I didn’t quite “get”.
I didn’t think I myself could actually answer that question. And I didn’t LIKE that I couldn’t answer that question. I was a ball of uncertainty.
Something inside me, actually, could see quite well that what I thought for most of every day was NOT true. I wasn’t sure about anything! Total uncertainty, completely unstable, worried, hand-wringing, nervous, anticipating discomfort.
But it never occurred to me that it could be a relief to not know. That if I found something was not true, it could be the position of letting go, dropping the shoulders, and not worrying so much.
OH! I can’t know that what I am thinking is actually TRUE! That’s the way of it. It’s not BAD that I don’t know whether something is true or not.
The way of it is, apparently, that we can’t be certain of anything. The way of it, it seems, is that when we think someone is being rude, mean, evil, scary….or when we think an event is terrible….we don’t really know.
When I first REALLY started doing The Work I actually allowed myself to answer the question “is it true?” with quietness and openness. Not fear of realizing that it probably was not true, that I couldn’t actually know anything for sure.
The question about whether something I was thinking was true or not used to disturb me, I discovered.
Now, I could just wait after the first question and see how strong the feeling was to believe or not believe something. Not be so terrified of the answer.
Spend some time today (or with the rest of your life) with the question Is It True?
There are so many thoughts streaming through consciousness, it’s incredible. Byron Katie says to start with the thoughts that are painful to be thinking.
The pain of thinking these difficult thoughts is what moves, in me at least, the interest in doing The Work. I found I DID want to feel better. I was willing to do almost anything in order to feel better.
What I found was that doing The Work was a much deeper, more living, rich, powerful solution to my problem of always feeling anxious. It was not a quick fix or temporary solution. It would take me into a new place to wonder about and ask about. It was not going to give light, feel-better-immediately answers either.
“The Work is about discovering what is true from the deepest part of yourself….there are no right or wrong answers to these questions….This can be very unsettling, because you’re entering the unknown….All I can tell you about this realm is that what lives beneath the nightmare is a good thing. Do you really want to know the truth?”~Byron Katie
Start with only one issue or person or situation that bothers you today. It can be that thing someone said, or that idea you had that was uncomfortable.
I now have discovered that there is no temporary way to feel better, not really. And the Work doesn’t always “make” me feel better. But I am so amazed by entering the mysterious world of the unknown, of surrendering to What Is, and this is such a beautiful relief, that I can’t stop doing The Work.
It took me suffering to the point of suicidal thinking, desperately seeking answers in the world to life, reading the book Loving What Is twice and then going to The School for The Work to actually answer the question “is it true?” without freaking out.
Maybe you could do it today, without all that extra resistance.
Love, Grace
P.S. One of the best ways to stick with the questions when your mind wants to drop them and go on to Something Better is to do The Work with a group in a class. Teleclasses all will start in January.