Month: October 2015

I love when someone writes with a request.

Could you please write a Grace Note about when you delayed getting your degree finished on time?

While everyone has a unique experience of course, it’s a deeply stressful belief that it would be terrible to not finish something of great importance On Time.

Or, ever.

Something you enrolled in and spent lots of money for.

Something that was maybe supposed to change your life, your work possibilities, your future.

I entered a two-year master’s degree program, took all the classes and all the exams, but got pregnant my second year, and postponed writing my thesis.

Writing the master’s thesis meant I needed first to complete a very big research project in culture and personal change as a part of a group or organization somewhere. Followed by writing a book about it.

Believe me, it sounded like a ton of work.

And there were a few stressful thoughts.

As the due date loomed on the distant horizon (I had three more years to finish) my mind would start cranking away at the possibilities.

I would see visions of all the arduous, dreadful work ahead.

I would say things like “it will take a year for me to finish the thesis project, I should start right now!”

But I can’t start yet, my baby is so small.

How can I be breast-feeding and going all over to graduate libraries, teaching workshops to analyze and deliver change, and write an 8 chapter thesis?

Fortunately, I also saw something that for me was very powerful, and alarming.

I saw myself five or ten years into the future without any degree at all, because I didn’t do this thesis project.

I saw what would happen if I continued to believe the thought that this work was too much for me.

It seemed like a terrible vision.

The degree had cost thousands of dollars. I had paid for half of it myself, with my in-laws generously paying for the other half. It had been a huge effort, a big decision, and I had loved tons of what I had learned.

Now there was just this one final push.

And it would be a push.

No denying it.

It involved contacting an organization with a proposal to sweep in, make a positive change through individual meetings, group sessions, retreats, coaching, expertise in behavioral science.

Then after all that was completed, I would analyze the outcome, research my theories, explain the before and after, and what happened, and write about the whole entire thing. An entire book’s worth of material.

I kept thinking it’s too much. I can’t stand it.

Then I’d see that picture in the future of having no master’s degree, after all the classes and tests and reading I had done and all that money spent and all the hours learning up to this point.

Only this one part left.

I had to do it.

What I knew to do at the time was one step, then the next.

Make a list of organizations I’d love to work with.

Call them all. Talk to the executive directors, or whomever makes the decision.

Make a contract to come in as a consultant, discover their difficult spots, and help them find solutions.

Arrange the babysitter (a sister and my mom stepped in, awesome).

Set up the training schedule. Fill in the calendar. Pump breast milk.

Arrange meetings at the organization to find out everything about it, meet with all the staff, take tons of notes.

Make the plan for “change” with the director.

Arrange three retreats (they were held at my mom’s house, she had a big enough living room).

Conduct the retreats.

Give my summary, give suggestions for upgrades and change, shake hands, say goodbye.

Write an entire thesis about what just happened over that 6 month period….the writing took another 3 months.

Bind the book, turn it in, meet with faculty to explain and defend my entire year of this project…..

…..GRADUATE.

It surprised me when I cried tears of pride and joy when I walked across the stage. My second brand new baby was just born, right after the meeting with the faculty when I handed in my bound thesis.

I walked across the stage with my baby daughter in a sling.

That was one heck of a project and a huge accomplishment for me.

If I had 100% believed that I couldn’t do it, or it was just too big of a hassle, I wouldn’t have had that amazing experience of receiving that degree with my family in the audience clapping.

When I look back at it now, it feels like I had an end result in mind, VERY determined to get there, and when I felt terrified I couldn’t finish, I kept doing the next thing, then the next thing, then the next thing.

Kinda like Matt Damon in The Martian (a movie I so enjoyed last weekend).

You solve the next problem, then the next one, then the next.

There is always only today’s problem, and you working on it.

This moment now, today.

It is not an entire year of work for me, all balled up into one terrible moment. That year of “work” had weekends, evenings, many moments with my new baby, discovering I was pregnant with my second baby (fueling the need to get this all done before the deadline even more) and lots of every day life changing diapers.

The mind will see these horrible workloads, the impossible effort.

But it wasn’t actually true.

I loved those retreats, and the meetings I had with the organization I chose to work with who accepted me, a graduate student, coming in and giving them advice (still grateful to this day for them all).

I loved the feeling of having earned every bit of that degree. I felt like I was a master of Applied Behavioral Science because it required me to do what I didn’t think I wanted to do, or what seemed “hard”.

Sometimes……it’s right to walk away from something.

But often, it’s more fun to question that it’s too hard, or not that important, or impossible.

What if Mark Watney on Mars had thought it was too hard, or impossible?

We wouldn’t have that awesome story, with the great ending.

Sometimes you just want to put the flag in the ground at the top of the mountain.

You want to do it. You want to achieve it. You want to stay alive.

There is absolutely no guarantee, and no way to tell if you’ll ever make it. It might even seem quite UN-likely.

Without the belief that it’s impossible, though…..you do what you are able, today, and go to sleep and start again tomorrow.

Each day sweet.

Each day unfolding as it does. No way to tell what will occur, when it will happen, if it will happen the way you want (it probably won’t).

The truth is, I never had one single Too Hard day in all that time of completing that major life project called finishing a master’s degree On Time, just before Deadline.

I love that I did it. I did it because I knew to do it, for myself.

Really, it couldn’t have gone any other way.

I’m not sure I had anything to do with it, I just followed the simple directions.

“Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.” ~ Tao Te Ching #9

“If I don’t know why not, I do it. And I don’t know a lot about why not.” ~ Byron Katie

In our Year of Inquiry group yesterday, we got to look at a terribly painful belief that’s sort of strange to question.

Because it seems like a fact.

He killed the elephant.

I find it profound to contemplate.

How do you react when you believe it happened?

When you think the thought “that person killed something or someone else”…..

…..what goes through your heart and body?

What other thoughts do you have?

In our inquiry group, we noticed how the mind races for some possible answer that would make it manageable, rather than full of pain.

It tries to fill in the story, understand desperately. Maybe there was a reason….

Inside, in your body, the despair and hopelessness….or rage….is firing big energy outward at those who kill.

More thoughts about the wrongness of humanity, or the strangeness and sickness, or the bizarre world, and life and death, and creatures and people.

The pain erupts and it’s immense.

But who would you be without the thought “he killed the elephant”?

I sat internally with this as the beautiful inquirers also wondered what this would be like, who they would be without this troubling thought?

I thought about how I’ve had the belief “cancer killed my father” and had the very same reaction of confusion, terror, despair, and wanting to shout “WHY?!” at the sky.

Who would I be without that belief?

I’m not denying death has happened. I’m not saying this thing called “killing” isn’t accurate.

But without the belief, my mind expands somehow.

I see an image, a picture of a man and a massive remarkable animal. I’m aware the man will one day also die. I’m aware the animal was here temporarily so death would happen no matter what. I’m aware I will die and move to whatever happens without form.

Someone said in our group, that without her thought “he killed the elephant” she looked. She held that picture, without filling the room and her body and the world with condemning thoughts.

I had the feeling of wanting to understand more closely what happens with the one who is doing the killing. What’s going on there? Why would that be the way that person doing this act called killing would move?

This is what scientists and physicians and researchers are asking cancer.

What are you? Why are you here? What makes you tick?

Without the terror, these questions can be explored.

Turning the thought around to the opposite: He did not kill the elephant. The elephant killed him. I killed him. I killed the elephant. I killed myself.

I know these are very odd to write, but that’s the point of inquiry.

You don’t have to find anything interesting there. You can keep your thought of the horror of killing.

My heart still breaks with learning of killing, but without being eternally against it, my heart expands in this breaking.

I see the life and death of all things, and of humans doing the best they can with what they know.

I can find examples of these turnarounds.

The elephant lives, more than ever. It’s all over the internet. It was brought to my attention through this inquiry group. It lives in my mind and thoughts. People are caring about what happens. People are moved and passionate about life and death of animals, and people, and themselves.

In my thinking about cancer, or anything that kills, I kill my love, my joy, my spontaneity. I kill my own happiness. I kill the time I have left here, which is quite temporary.

“‘I should’, ‘I shouldn’t’, ‘you should’, ‘you shouldn’t’, ‘I want’, ‘I need’–these unquestioned thoughts distort the appearance of the good that is as common as grass. When you believe them, you make your mind small, and small-mindedness doesn’t allow you to see why the loss of legs is good, why blindness is good, sickness, hunger, death, a village wiped out, the whole apparent world of suffering. You stay unaware of the good that is all around you, you block out the elation you’d feel when you finally recognized it. Whatever you think, reality is the natural way of it. It won’t blend to your ideas of what it should be, and it won’t wait for your consent. It will remain just as it is, pure goodness, whether or not you understand.” ~ Byron Katie in 1000 Names For Joy

Co-facilitated group with Grace Bell and Anil Coumar begins this evening in Seattle (Ravenna) exploring the experience of cancer using The Work of Byron Katie.

This group is for anyone who has suffered with a stressful thought about having cancer in the past, or present. If you are in remission, or if you are in treatment now, you are welcome to join this group.

Hit reply if you’re interested, or share this with someone you know.

Beginners to experienced in The Work all are welcome.

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Caring about other people is a really good thing.

Right?

But what about when it’s stressful?

Because it can be very stressful. Very, very stressful.

And when something is stressful, it’s worthy of inquiry.

I’ll give you an example of caring about someone being very stressful.

Let’s say you’re a parent, and you find out your kid is at the emergency room during a school skiing trip.

(Not that I would know anything about this in 2006 when my son broke his arm and I was 10 hours away).

It’s doesn’t matter how old the kid is (they can be truly any age) you want to drop everything and race to the hospital.

Maybe your heart is beating, you’re freaked out if you run into heavy traffic, you feel enormous anxiety and pictures run through your head about what just happened.

Or what about if your spouse or partner is upset about their job?

They call you and say “I just got fired.”

You ask if they’re OK, you’re shocked, you’re wondering what will happen now, and you feel like leaving your own job so you can go hang out with them.

Things happen with people all the time. It’s the way of life.

When you know and love these people, you might feel a surge of suffering, sadness, anxiety or terror….

….even though it’s not you who is actually suffering.

Except, how quickly it happens that you are.

What are your thoughts?

Often, the mind jumps to images and projections of what this situation means.

It doesn’t even have to be a sudden occurrence, like the accident or job change I just described.

It can be watching someone you love slowly become more and more depressed, or addicted, or angry.

• I’ll lose them
• there is something wrong with them (or me)
• if they are hurting, I must hurt too
• I have to be strong, positive, get them to feel better
• they can’t die/lose/fail

I am against this!!!!

But who would you be without the belief that this other person you love, admire, care about can’t hurt or suffer or die, without YOU also suffering, hurting or dying?

I once had a very dear friend who tried to kill himself.

Every time I thought of him, I felt a stab of pain in my stomach.

I would think “I can’t handle it, if he dies.”

Really?

Is that actually true?

After encountering Byron Katie and The Work and entering the world of inquiry and questioning my arguments with what appeared to be real….

….I did an exercise that Katie talks about in her powerful bookLoving What Is.

What’s the worst that could happen, in your life?

In this case, the worst I could ever imagine happening was my children dying in a car crash.

Just having it wisp through my mind as an idea made me scared.

But I wanted to know the truth.

I wanted to find out what it might be like to wonder about death, and children, or my friends, or a lover, or a sister or parent.

I wanted to inquire into this belief about living and dying and simply investigate as best I could.

Who would I be without the belief that if the terrible thing happens, I couldn’t go on?

Who would I be without the belief that I couldn’t handle it, they couldn’t handle it, that it wasn’t handle-able?

I had to admit, because it was right in front of my face in life, that people I loved sometimes got hurt physically, or emotionally.

I had to admit, also right in front of me, that adult parents sometimes lost their children.

Children die, friends die, parents die, partners die.

Who am I without the belief that this should not be so, when I’m looking at life and the world and the obvious thing is that people come and go, in these forms called bodies, at all times and at all ages?

When I wondered about this honestly, I found I wasn’t even sure who I would be without the thought.

But this was different than being with the thought that I was against other people leaving, or dying, or suffering.

It didn’t mean I had to like it, or be thrilled about it.

But it was so much easier to breathe, to have that possibility that someone else getting hurt physically or emotionally had a path, a direction, a way about it that I did not have to control or run (I couldn’t anyway).

What a relief.

Turning the thoughts around:

• I’ll never lose them, I’ll gain them (if they die, or leave)
• there is something right with them (or me)
• if they are hurting, I do not have to also hurt
• I do not have to be any emotion but what is real for me, I do not have to get them to feel better
• they are free to die/lose/fail

I know it’s a little much to think “this is wonderful” about kids dying in a car crash.

Like I said, this is not about being completely in denial or something.

In fact, this is about becoming sane, and coming out of denial, for me.

To even be able to find benefits for the shifting and changing of life, in bodies….

….this is truly amazing to find.

After I inquired about that worst case scenario, I felt uncertain and slightly confused.

I also had a glimmer of awareness about no longer caring, or worrying, in the suffering way I always had.

“A death accomplishes what ordinary life could never do, letting you experience what is beyond identification: the bodiless self, mind infinitely free…….Sweetheart, we ALL have that place. We can all find it, if we look deeply enough, no matter how much pain we’re in. It doesn’t matter–that place is always there…..Until we know that death is as good as life, and that it always comes at just the right time, we’re going to take on the role of God without the awareness of it, and it’s always going to hurt.” ~ Byron Katie

Without any belief that people shouldn’t suffer, when they do….

….I sit with them without panic or agony.

I watch their suffering change, without my help.

The way of it.