This month the Year of Inquiry program is looking at the body, physical conditions or limitations, feelings like “exhaustion” we don’t like.
But really, the sticky beliefs we have about the body are almost the same as the ones we have about anything that feels uncomfortable.
If it’s a person, an experience, a condition, an interaction, part of reality and it causes anxiety, heartbreak, worry, or rage…..
…..often we have the same reaction.
Kill it.
Now, I’m kind of joking around here.
But “kill it” can mean the following: get away from it, destroy it, figure out how to crush it or punish it or make it go away forever, work hard to eliminate it, seek help to change it, and never be happy unless it looks like you might be successful at putting an end to your contact with this thing, person, condition, interaction or experience. Forever.
People in Year of Inquiry were noticing weight, shape, or feelings all as being “wrong” and how much the mind suffers when something is present that it thinks shouldn’t be.
I’ve had the same feeling with people, or with the condition of “not enough money” or even towards my own MIND.
It’s a problem.
How to solve it?
Make it go away. It shouldn’t exist. Not like this.
But let’s look at “change” and the wish that something was different than it is.
I demand this to change. Now.
Can you feel the stress? The frustration? The fury at that thing Not Changing?
What if you wished this about your mind, and the act of thinking itself?
Yeah! It should be calmer! It shouldn’t run around like a Tasmanian Devil. My thoughts should be relaxed, still, sharp, genius, and non-judging, and Not Bored.
Haha! As if.
(You know the saying “as if”? You say it with sarcasm like a super rebellious teenager and it means….”As If that could EVER happen!”)
So let’s do The Work on this demand for something to change–even the mind itself.
Is it true that it should change?
Answer this question about whatever it is you really, really think would be waaaaay better if it changed, upgraded, improved, stopped.
Are you absolutely sure it should?
Um. Pretty sure. At least…..
…..dang, now I’m confused.
Maybe not. Maybe I can’t know if it should change, this thinking mind. I’m not really trying to MAKE it think. It’s just doing that.
How do I know it’s not supposed to, or that I’d feel better if it didn’t?
I know how I react when I believe my mind is a problem.
I hammer away at it. I read books about “thinking” and changing the mind. I feel irritated with it. I’m sure there’s something I’m missing, that other people are enjoying out there. Poor me.
Who would I be without this belief, though?
Clunk.
Going blank.
You mean….no belief that this needs to change? No conviction that this is bad, and must be fixed?
Wow.
Wait, even the mind?
Yah.
What if you didn’t believe your evaluations were true, that this should go away, it needs to change, you will be happier later (and you aren’t right now)?
Who would you be without your thought that your thoughtsshouldn’t be as they are?
Hilarious, right?
“At the core of our suffering is the sense that something bad is happening to us. In fact, that’s what the word suffering literally means–to undergo or endure. There’s a sense of passivity (from the Latin passio, meaning ‘I suffer’), of not being in control, of being the victim of life….When the pain is not deeply accepted in this moment, I become ‘the one who is in pain’. And then the search is on. I do not want to be the one who is in pain. I want to escape pain. I want to be the one who is NOT in pain. I don’t want to be pain’s victim. I want a new identity!” ~ Jeff Foster in The Deepest Acceptance
What if you turned it all around and you stood here, right now, without any sense of anything being wrong, or happening to you….
….not the difficult person, your condition, your body, the uncomfortable moment, or your fearful or troubled thoughts?
No need for any new identity.
As if.
“Open yourself to the Tao, then trust your natural responses; and everything will fall into place.” ~ Tao Te Ching #23
Much love, Grace