I get a lot of emails these days.
(Don’t we all).
And I’ve received many lately from people with powerful concerns about the implications of Loving What Is.
Especially when we hear about terrible suffering.
What if “what is”…..
…..is absolutely horribly devastating?
Maybe it’s in the past and not happening now, but you clearly have the memories. They still haunt you.
When you see the visions of what occurred, you want to run for your life! You want to stop thinking about them. You feel nauseated.
As I began to do The Work after I first read Byron Katie’s book Loving What Is, I really sensed the power of self-inquiry. I knew I was perceiving many situations as stressful, to say the least.
I got that this work is about the relief I could experience by realizing I don’t always know what’s 100% true. Hardly ever.
But I saw some circumstances in the world as so brutal and awful it was hard to even think about them at all. No one could ever “love what is” in those situations….ever, ever.
Right?
Even to think someone could, I had the thought that person was nuts. In denial. Wrong. Lacking compassion.
But as I practiced The Work over time, I grew aware that I put some events and situations in a special category.
The category of SICK, BAD, FOREVER WRONG.
Those things we won’t touch.
Sometimes, it’s not possible to love what is. Not for those terrible things, it just isn’t.
But one day, for some strange reason, after doing The Work for awhile on people who I found annoying, and situations I found personally difficult…..
…..I wanted to investigate on a grander scale.
Something inside me knew that if I refused to ever look at these destructive situations, these frightening events, the things I heard about happening to other people that made me feel horror…..
…..I would never truly “get” entirely “loving what is”.
Last weekend Byron Katie was in Seattle, as many of you know, and she spent the day with 750 people, including me.
An incredibly brave woman went up to the stage and sat with Katie in front of all the people in the room and read her worksheet, and then did her work, on surviving sexual violence and abuse during childhood.
After her session with Katie was over, someone stood up in the balcony and shouted, “I can’t take this! It is so wrong! There are some things that are simply unforgivable!”
This equally courageous woman in the balcony had a microphone handed to her, and she shared with us all how she was shaking and feeling horrified.
How it could ever be OK for someone to go through the abusive experience the woman on stage had just described? She was almost in tears.
I think she spoke for many people right there in the room.
She spoke for many people in the world.
She spoke for me, exactly as I had seen it ten years ago while I contemplated all the terrible things humans do to one another. The violence, war, hatred, prejudice, abuse, condemnation, bombs, beatings, rape.
It’s happening right now in the world, in many places.
How could this be acceptable, this story we just heard of dark, dreadful abuse perpetrated by an adult against a child?
How could we be open to loving what is, are you f&%ing kidding me??!
But watch what the mind is doing.
It’s screaming No, No, No, No, No!
It is so terrified, it curls up in a little ball and wants to disappear. It rages against what is.
We think “loving what is” means we are totally OK with what happened.
But that’s not what Byron Katie or The Work is suggesting.
Ever.
What I’ve found by questioning my thinking and my troubling stories to be, is a doorway into Peace Beyond Beliefs.
I don’t have to defend, I don’t have to “know” what’s right or wrong.
I already know what feels right or wrong, it’s in my very being at the core. I feel the love that is holy, untouched, beautiful and available to everyone. I feel the hatred and tightness and terror the mind can conjure up, the desperation and emptiness.
As I looked in my own life at these difficult situations experienced by humanity, I’ve seen that the perpetrators are also suffering every single time there is abuse and violence.
The haters are not having a good time. The haters are not excited and happy about life. They do not feel a trust of the world and reality.
They also feel small, unimportant, powerless, left behind, hurt, forgotten, damaged, desperate.
Byron Katie famously suggests “defense is the first act of war.”
I looked.
What I see is when I hate someone, or I hate a situation….I hate God, I hate Reality, I hate my circumstances, I hate Those People, I hate All This.
Is this hatred…..all that is, in these horrible situations?
Is it the Truth?
I’m not saying the terrible thing didn’t happen.
I’m just saying I noticed in this mental world of duality, the mind put those experiences and situations and people in the category of WRONG. They were in the category of un-save-able. They were in the category of evil and hell.
How do you react when there’s a dark place in the universe you need to stay away from? That place you KNOW is bad, wrong, sick, evil and terrible?
I spend time making sure I’m defended against “it”.
I’m relying on my own personal thinking to warn me. I’m trusting a small little corner of thought, not the big grand picture. I’m forgetting about love. I’m unaware of the power of forgiveness, compassion, acceptance and rebirth to be possible IN ALL THINGS.
How do you react when you think love can’t help THAT situation (the evil one)?
Horrified. Terrified. Acquiring weapons and arms and building up a fortress of defense. Protecting myself.
Acting like I know better than God.
I know what’s wrong….and God made a mistake by “allowing” this terrible thing to happen.
Who would you be without the belief that you know best? Better than Reality or God or Life?
All I know is, I find a sense of bizarre rest within, where I don’t know why or wherefore or what or how these events and circumstances exist in the human condition…..
…..and I see the suffering very acutely…..
…..but I feel how I am safe right now, I am surrendered to What Is in this moment, I am already accepting what is.
I don’t want to put anyone to death or force anyone into hell.
That’s not my job.
Even if my mind has taken that on, as if it IS my job.
Without the belief that I can’t overcome what appears awful, I actually turn and face the perpetrator. I stay in the room. I become fearless. I wait.
I surrender.
I let Life (God) handle the overwhelming situation.
Meanwhile, I begin to find actual rebirth that comes out of the ashes of violence.
I learn about all the awesome things that come out of terrible things…..
…..and what people discover when they question their need to dictate what is evil and what is not.
“A teacher of fear can’t bring peace on Earth. We have been trying to do it that way for thousands of years. The person who turns inner violence around, the person who finds peace inside and lives it, is the one who teaches what true peace is.” ~ Byron Katie
Let peace begin with me.
That way, I know it will happen.
I don’t have to wait anymore.
You can love what is.
Look around you.
Even though terrible things happened….are they happening right now?
Except for your thinking, it’s over.
Stop being the perpetrator of your own suffering.
Question it.
“Who would you rather be–Jesus, who knew who he really was and recognized deep acceptance in his own experience, or his torturers, ignorant of their true nature, totally identified as false images, and deeply at war with themselves? Who would you rather be, the perpetrator or the victim? And who is the real victim–the one who hurts others because of deeply unaccepted pain or the one who experiences pain but knows who he really is within that experience? Who is truly hurt here?” ~ Jeff Foster in The Deepest Acceptance
Much love,
Grace
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