Month: July 2015

Answering two questions before grace note:

1) Yes, you can join Summer Camp any time, any call. We’ve only just begun. We’ve got almost-daily inquiry sessions until August 7th. Sliding scale, come to one, come to all of them–your choice. Come no matter what you can pay, really. Everyone is welcome here.

We’re questioning thoughts that drive us crazy or bring us sadness or suffering. Life-changing work.

2) Peace Talk podcast is on itunes and the episode on Competition is released….Peace Talk is a short 5-10 minute talk 3 times a week about peace, thought, reality, inquiry and grace. I’d love to hear if you’ve ever had fun with competition in your life, like the story I share in this episode 73.

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Thank goodness I stopped by the lodge where Being With Byron Katie starts on Saturday.

We were doing a quick tech check.

Just a short drive-by to make sure all the gizmos talk with one another, and we can easily connect via internet.

Internet, check.

Beautiful big screen, check.

Lovely space, check.

Actual connection to TV screen via my computer, not check.

The host gets bags of wires, cords, plug-ins from a closet.

We’re unplugging and pushing things into the side of my laptop. Nothing fits. You can see the hole sizes already, they will not be working. Male cords, female cords. Nada.

I call Apple.

Over there, my husband is working with the house-owner to hook up a test ipad for an alternative (which doesn’t work) and I am on the phone forever as the help center caller finds what kind of computer I have using the serial number, and locates a photo of the HDMI doo-hicky that needs to plug into it.

I am truly on the phone for an entire hour.

I order some kind of part, adding $18 for practically-emergency fast delivery.

My stomach growls.

The woman at the computer help center says “hey, I see your email so I looked at your website just now and I used to work at the Stress Management Center of America!” We wind up having the sweetest conversation ever about her five years in employment there, and the benefits of stress reduction.

Even though, I’m like “OK, that’s great and NOW I have to go!”

But I just can’t find a problem.

It seems like I should.

My husband and I aren’t at dinner until 9 pm, and I’m starving (I think).

But it’s fun, adventurous, and entertaining.

And we’ll have a working Big Screen with Katie on it starting on Saturday.

What could be more fun than that?

It can never be fooled into believing that there is one speck out of order.” ~ Byron Katie

My husband wrote to me yesterday from work on email.

What are you doing tomorrow?

I replied without batting an eyelid….

….one-for-one call at 8 am, Year of Inquiry group from 9-10:30 am, gym workout or bike ride 11-12:30 pm, coaching call from 1-2:30 pm, individual session 3-4 pm, Summer Camp group call 5-6:30 pm.

I then continued creating my Peace Talk podcast on Competition.

(It was about fun juicy parts of competition–and maybe not what you’d expect me to say. Let me know if competition ever works for you, I’d love to hear your stories, and you can hear one of mine on this episode).

Yeah, I guess that’s a pretty full day, I thought.

Nothing that unusual.

Tuesdays roll like that lately.

Mondays are more creative-type days. I try not to schedule too many sessions with people. Although I still had a few.

Even so, I was still working at 10:35 last night on the podcast.

Then, it occurred to me.

Tomorrow’s my wedding anniversary.

Oh!

I went and found my husband, who had been home a few hours.

“Did you ask me earlier today about my schedule tomorrow because it’s our anniversary?”

Yes. He took the day off.

Hilarious.

We laughed about my schedule, and how it never occurred to me that it was 7/7 and doing something special might be fun.

And it was over.

Now….some people might say that sounds very unromantic. But weare planning on going out for a late dinner.

The thing is, the freedom and flexibility we have with each other is incredible.

Not having expectations about what should happen, or shouldn’t happen, is the sweetest ease in relationship.

Until.

Shouldn’t he care more that I completely forgot about our anniversary? Shouldn’t he have planned on taking a day off a bit earlier, so I could clear some of my day perhaps?

Yeah.

This is a little too smooth, easy and flexible!

Ha ha, I am chuckling already….but let’s take a look at this flip-flopping mind and all it’s crazy perceptions.

Who would I be if I didn’t have the thought that anything should happen, but I let myself have fun thinking about what would be most pleasurable?

I might ask him to share breakfast and being together for 30 minutes outside at the backyard picnic table on a summer morning.

Rather than disappointment, or starting to think the day could have been planned better or improved….

….or falling into that easy position of being a helpless critical victim….I might be much more creative.

Maybe I’ll ask him on a short walk between 4 and 5 pm.

Instead of “this should be this/that” I’d imagine what sounds sweet.

I turn those flare-up thoughts all back around and return to appreciation for what is here. Easy, light, no obligation. A way of relating that is about freedom.

“What does it mean to love? It means to see a person, a thing, a situation, as it really is and not as you imagine it to be, and to give it the response it deserves. You cannot love what you do not even see. And what prevents you from seeing? Your concepts, your categories, your prejudices and projections, your needs and attachments, the labels you have drawn from your conditioning and from your experiences. Seeing is the most arduous thing a human can undertake. For it calls for a disciplined, alert mind, whereas most people would much rather lapse into mental laziness than take the trouble to see each person and thing anew in present-moment freshness.” ~ Anthony DeMello in The Way To Love pg. 138

I don’t know why and it strikes me as pretty strange….

….but my usual first knee-jerk reaction (like when the doctor hits your knee to see if you have a spontaneous reflex) to the idea of sitting quietly by myself, all alone, is….

.…nnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Kick back and enjoy my own company?

Say nothing, hear nothing, have no conversations with others?

Hold still? Simply relax? Stare out the window?

Isn’t that kind of boring?

Or worse…..

…..isn’t it maddening?

When I first sat still in a meditation retreat, I thought I’d strangle something.

Visions went through my head of standing on my meditation chair and yelling.

“What’s going on here, people?!!! Why are you here?!!”

Then I wanted to leave.

Then I raised my hand to be called on, to go to the microphone and SPEAK.

Part of my motive in raising my hand was to converse, liven things up, and see if there was a way to manage my apparent nervousness about silence and being on my own.

I couldn’t sleep well, I felt like pacing.

Now, when I look back on that experience many years ago, I crack up.

There’s a Monty Python skit (an English comedy troupe who had a British TV show, followed by several movies, in the 1970s) where someone is punished for bad behavior.

They have to sit in the Comfy Chair.

“No! Not the Comfy Chair!!!” (click to see the skit).

For me, it was the same.

I didn’t know that the silence, quiet, simpleness and beauty of resting would be the most incredible experience eventually, and all I was ever really looking for.

Comfort with my own mind, body, perceptions, life.

I wanted comfort, and thought I didn’t have it.

Because my mind raced so wildly, with so many stressful thoughts, that it wasn’t all that fun to sit still.

I’d start thinking.

I’d think dreadful, horrifying, sad, or destructive thoughts. I only needed a few minutes to get going on something that produced stress in my body, or a broken heart.

And I couldn’t stop it!

The best way I found to slow down the mind, relax, and discover balance and the beauty of silence and my own company….

….was to give my mind a project.

Investigating the Truth.

Questioning reality.

Now THAT, dear friends, was a worthy and awe-inspiring project. My mind LOVED projects.

It LOVED problems. Because it wants to SOLVE problems.

Now….

….if I had needed to do this all alone in a vacuum, guess what likely would have happened?

We don’t know for sure.

But I might have taken myself out. Bullet to the head.

I am very stubborn though (it comes in handy sometimes), and an equal part of me was determined to find peace without destruction.

So while this sounds quite dramatic, it wasn’t true.

I’m still here.

Other People kept showing me a kinder reality. They did things like offer meditation retreats, write books, share themselves and their stories of freedom. They gave me hugs, and gave me criticism.

I learned so much from other people. I learned I was definitely in NO WAY doing this life on my own.

(It sounds funny to me now, because I perceive now that there is absolutely nothing that I do on my own. Ever.)

What I continue to find to this very day….

….is that connecting with others….

….whether one other human being, or ten others, or an entire stadium full of humans….

….multiplies my enlightenment exponentially.

Like the beautiful biblical saying “where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I with them….”

Where me and others are gathered with the intention to understand, come to rest, uncover truth and love, Reality is there with us. Love is there with us. Awareness is there with us.

So for me, yesterday morning was a most beautiful energy as almost 20 people gathered together on the phone (some people used skype) to be there, planting themselves into the still space of inquiry.

I love who shows up and the energy of each and every person, even if they choose to listen only and follow along.

We investigated two very stressful beliefs: a) they should clean up, and b) someone might break in.

How marvelous to take a deep look at these two experiences in life.

I could find instantly how I have had the thought that someone should clean up their mess, whether their internal mess or their actual physical mess.

Guess who should really clean up the mess?

And then the fabulous and worrisome common belief that someone might break into my home, steal or vandalize things, and I would feel loss.

Who would I be without THIS stressful thought?

So much freer. I might even find advantages to having things stolen, taken away, ripped off….

….and let go of the attachment and grabbiness of believing I won’t be able to replace it, I won’t be safe, or that my happiness depends on keeping my stuff.

Thank you to everyone who came to do The Work with me yesterday.

If you’re ready to continue, to plug away at thoughts one by one, practicing every day or every week (with a few Saturday breaks) for five whole weeks….

….you are welcome to join us.

I call it Summer Camp for The Mind because your mind gets to go to camp, and play in this “project” called believing-in-suffering, and practicing-how-to-un-do it.

My favorite!

You can really join any time. Check the schedule and see if it works for you to come on board at the appointed time(s) and allow yourself to sit in inquiry.

You can speak up, or follow along quietly with the group.

No calls are recorded, so you can freely listen, freely share, and whatever’s on the call stays on the call.

Here are the exact times for every day of the week for Summer Camp, and you can read more about how teleconferences work and what it’s like right HERE.

Oh, and it’s sliding scale registration.

I’ll be with you every step of the way, and anyone who has questions, gets confused, is nervous, or wants extra help….

….I am here to serve to dissolve stressful thinking, and bring forward a sweet, happy, kind and joyful life.

Thank you for joining me to do it. You are not alone.

At least this is the story that keeps on showing up in my life, and I like this story….

….so I’ll keep it.

“Nothing terrible has ever happened except in our thinking. Reality is always good, even in situations that seem like nightmares. The story we tell is the only nightmare that we have lived. When I say that he worst that can happen is a belief, I am being literal. The worst that can happen to you is your uninvestigated belief system.”~Byron Katie in Loving What Is pg. 228