A Grace Notes reader emailed me the other day with a fantastic question.
“I also want to ask you about the phrase “who would you be without that thought?”….I’m glad you didn’t use that here. I struggle with that phrase as it seems too philosophical for me to grasp, manage, decipher. Please help me with that phrase. It gets me stuck every time….it feels too big, too much….BE. It can easier grasp what would I think, feel, believe….Any ideas here? LOL.”
I so love her honesty and request for sincere help.
I have to admit….
….I’ve had the same kind of confusion about answering that fourth question in The Work.
What do you mean “who would you BE????!!!”
Dang.
I’d be someone else! Not me!
But after years of working with this thought, I’ve got some *awesome* suggestions, some of which might help you enter the space of this question.
First, the answer to this question in some situations does feel as far away as the other side of the Grand Canyon.
If I’m really upset, if I’m troubled and angry and terrified….
….it’s hard to even imagine being without my stressful thoughts.
They’re all screaming full blast at me, I can hardly hear anything else.
You know what I’m talkin’ about, right?
But I love that in this moment now, when I’m doing The Work and wondering about my reaction and my suffering…..
…..I am remembering a situation from the past.
In the very moment that I’m remembering, I’m quite safe.
Look around.
Just notice first, you are very safe when you have memories. It’s safe to remember this situation, because it’s over.
These pictures in your head, of the way that person behaved or what they said or what email they sent that scared you, aren’t actually happening RIGHT NOW.
Good to know. Good to notice.
I’m interested in cleaning up my past imprints, all the things I pushed inside myself and have stuck there, and now….I’m taking a look.
So I let the movie play.
I see that person vividly in my mind, doing what they did, saying those mean words.
I notice how my stomach starts to feel sick right here in the present moment, but I also notice again (over and over again) that the actual event is over. It’s not happening right now.
You can let yourself have the support of noticing this, in this moment, as you do your inquiring work.
Now….I take a look at this question “who would I be without my stressful thought?”
I imagine actually being someone or something else. You know how I thought I’d be someone else, not me?
Well….how might someone else be, without this same stressful thought?
It’s simply good to notice, without berating or criticizing yourself, that other humans have likely had your same thought, and similar experiences, and they’re OK now.
They might be very OK. They might feel free, even if horrible things happened to them.
These are actual examples of being without the stressful thought.
You get to notice that you, too, are a human and therefore capable of also living your life without the suffering you’ve endured in the situation you’re thinking about.
If you can believe a thought, you can un-believe it too.
If you can’t even imagine being a human, without your stressful thought, then I love imagining what it’s like to be a tree, or a cat, or a rock.
How do these entities in nature, these alive existing organisms BE, without thought?
How does a tree feel, even if someone is yelling at it?
And….as this amazing reader suggested….
….I consider slowly how I would feel without my stressful thoughts? How would I move? What would I do? What would I notice, without this stressful thought?
How would I walk down the street? How would I do my laundry? How would I drive to the gym? How would I hang out with my friends….or family….without my thought?
How would I stand there, in the person’s presence (who I’m doing The Work on) without my thought?
You get to use your imagination.
If you think you don’t have a good imagination….
….who’s imagining that story from the past, into the present right now?
Your imagination is excellent. You just need to give it some new options you never thought of before.
Some fear-free options, some funny options, some humorous options, some life-affirming options, some neutral options.
You don’t even need to know what to do.
All you need to do is wonder what it would be like to be sitting in a chair, remembering a stressful situation, without running away from it or getting super worked up, or falling into pure reaction.
If you want, you can take a week to wonder how you’d feel without your stressful thought.
You can see which aspect of being you love to consider the most without your thought? Do you like to wonder what you’d do, or say, or feel, or see without your thought?
All of this wrapped up together creates who you would be.
And I love breaking it down into bite sized pieces, not a huge big wide heady philosophical question that seems far away in outer space.
“In Life, the transformation occurs in the process. This is, no doubt, why the ego-identity maintenance strategy is so focused on preventing us from ever getting started or keeping to a program of any kind…..The process IS the outcome.” ~ Cheri Huber
Good news.
Wondering and imagining what it would be like to be a fly on the wall in your stressful situation, or a flower, or a rock, or a tree, or a person, or then, YOU….is all you need to enter transformation.
Nothing more required.
Much love, Grace
P.S. Tomorrow….Online Retreat on Love Stories. Come with any love story that feels painful. Only $37 for 3 hours. We’ll do The Work, and practice using our imaginations, and hearing from each other, what it might be like to be without our thought.
Register HERE. Don’t let funds hold you back–if you want to join, write me (just hit reply).