Cut your heart out without anesthesia

The other day the Year of Inquiry group had a powerful investigation of primary love relationships.

The kind where people choose to commit, marry, move in together, share resources.

The initial idea offered up for inquiry, so very stressful:

Relationships hurt.

I love the way Big General Ideas can lead to powerful deep contemplation on your own personal belief-system.

That’s why I always have a “topic” in Year of Inquiry.

Because, if you’re not sure where to begin around what bothers you i in your life, you can often find Big General Situations you find distressing, uncomfortable, or horrifying.

They’re happening right now, in the news, right?

So the other day, we were looking at relationships in general.

Have you ever thought “this relationship is so painful”.

About ANY relationship you’ve had in your life?

You’d almost be strange if you didn’t have that thought.

The mind LOVES generalizations.

It loves to have one experience….THAT relationship….and begin to find proof of all the other relationships that also hurt.

Like Romeo and Juliet for example. They sure were screwed up in a tragedy of errors, weren’t they?

(See how we can get started on that story over there, not the one right here, in our own heart?)

Thoughts will start floating through, or zapping at you like lightening bolts.

• All love relationships suck.
• Love stories are all fairy tales.
• Those who get married never stay together (and people should stay together).
• All teenagers are hard to live with.
• In-laws are torturous.
• Mothers are HUGELY stressful. They influence us so greatly. So do dad’s (if they were around….they should have been by the way).
• Friends betray you. Or don’t have enough time. Can only do so much.
• Bosses are so often difficult, and co-workers, because you HAVE to deal with them daily in order to go to your job, which you depend on to survive.
• Siblings compete with you. They’ll ditch you in a second.

I could go on.

Do you see how everything I just wrote, having to do with relating to others, has a big wide grand all-time statement in it about life with other people?

Mind loves this kind of general prejudice.

Here’s what I’ve noticed within myself:

Something happens where I felt pain. My heart broke. I felt grief, agony, sadness, loss. I felt frustration, anger. Maybe I couldn’t ask for what I wanted, or get it. Maybe I felt the desperation of someone I cared about going downhill, fast. Maybe I couldn’t get my basic needs met, for example, as a kid…..or right now, in my current life.

But then my mind tries to gather it all together and make a conclusion.

My thinking (always a few beats AFTER the experience has already happened) makes an observation, then holds it up against other situations that are almost exactly the same (or close) and says….

….You need to stay away from “x” (person’s name).

Then just to be safe, the mind also says to not only stay away from that person who hurt you, but also ALL OTHER PEOPLE LIKE them.

So you can be prepared.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being prepared….but you already ARE prepared, and you didn’t even ask for it.

It just happened that way.

You experienced what you did, by humans bumping up into each other, and you got prepared by being thrown in the pool. Your heart was broken. The people who reared you were in huge pain and suffering and knew no other way themselves.

Your thoughts will say….

Must. Be. Very. Careful.

And then if you even smell a whiff of that “kind” of person again, you’re outta here!

That “kind of person” who hurt you in the past, this is what they are like and I know it:

They have no regard for others…..yeah, that’s right! They vote Republican. Or Democrat. They have long hair. They smoke. They go to that kind of place on Sundays. They live in this kind of area. They dress in those kinds of clothes. They go to this kind of school. They say these kinds of words.

But the thing is….

….if you keep your thoughts hugely general like this, you won’t really ever get to the inner inquiry. Or it will be trickier potentially.

Nothing’s impossible, but you may want to follow the simple directions and slow what you’re picturing way, way, way down and look at just one thing that’s frightening you very closely.

So you ponder what troubles you about humanity, about human relationships.

So you derail the GENERAL category movement that the mind loves so much.

“The mind loves general…it doesn’t have to land.” ~ Byron Katie at 2008 – 2009 New Year’s Cleanse.

So consider as you narrow down your list of proof for why those relationships hurt….

….the relationships who have hurt YOU.

Just you.

Those are the ones you want to focus on.

If you have someone in your life who is suffering, and it makes you super crazy nervous because it seems like they’re going down in flames….

….where have YOU gone down in flames?

What makes you so nervous about that person being that way?

What are you trying to avoid?

What is it you never want to go through again?

That friend who is going through divorce? Why does it really bother you? What’s the worst that could happen…..for YOU?

Or that brother who is in a new relationship that in your opinion is lousy?

Why? What’s the actual problem, for you personally?

Picture your worst case scenario.

Picture it, for your own sake.

Get specific.

This is YOUR life and YOUR inquiry we’re talking about, not someone else’s.

Instead of generalizing all over the canyons and valleys and spouting off what would be best for other people, notice what fear is sparked inside of you, what you’re afraid of, when you see something you fear.

Then….you’re on to your own story.

Which is the one that counts.

Today, as you consider what you don’t like about other peoples’ experience out there…..

…..let yourself see why not.

Then you can really truly inquire in a way that makes a difference, for you.

And when you do THAT….

….wow.

Look out.

“At first, inquiry may seem more than you can handle; you may feel as if it is cutting your heart open without anesthesia….You are still identifying as a you, and you begin to see that you yourself are all the people you found unkind, brutal, stupid, crazy, greedy, despicable, and this is so painful that sometimes you don’t think you can bear it. As it keeps inquiring, the mind continues to understand that it is its only enemy and that the world is entirely its projection, that it is alone, that there is no other, and that this is absolute.” ~ Byron Katie in 1000 Names for Joy pg. 233