Did you get ditched? (Or, did you do the ditching?)

If you’d like to join the online meetup for anyone, beginner to experienced, we’ll all dial in tomorrow and do The Work.

I’ll guide you through filling out a worksheet on your judgments on any situation bringing you disturbance, then we’ll work on one thought from start to finish. Click HERE to join tomorrow morning. It’s a good sampling of this work if you’re considering joining theRelationships 6 week teleclass that starts Wednesday morning! You can participate, or just listen.

Speaking of relationships.

Somewhere along the way in my history and practice of doing The Work, I noticed a thought that continuously came to the surface about other people.

If they criticized me, or confronted me, or challenged me, or disagreed strongly with me, I felt a terror within of potential abandonment.

Sometimes an incredibly fast reaction to this fear occurred almost immediately. Anger. If they abandon me….fine. They aren’t worth it either, they’re the jerk, they screwed up, good riddance, etc. I ditch them! Take that!

Such a great word “ditch” I noticed. I think I started speaking it, withothers kids, maybe around 3rd grade.

“Let’s ditch him!”

Weird how it showed up that way in our language. It didn’t mean anything horribly wrong. We’d be acting it out more like a hide and seek game.

And yet….how awful, sometimes, to be the one ditched.

What does it conjure up in the mind? I picture someone getting thrown in a ditch and buried at the side of a road, rather than in a graveyard. The poorest kind of abandonment and lack of caring. A sense of being discarded and worthless. No funeral. No acknowledgement. No connection. Treated like garbage.

Ouch.

I notice, I think it’s true.

I think it’s true that sets of people can ditch other sets of people (war) and families can leave families (what happened to my ancestors immigrating from Sweden and Ireland) and relationships can suddenly, or not-so-suddenly end, and people can die.

I know how I react when a friendship has disappeared and someone I cared deeply about stopped speaking to me or, I stopped speaking to someone I cared about (yes, I’ve done it). I know what it’s like to have people I love so much die.

It feels heart-breaking.

But who would I be without the story that the heart is actually severed in two? Who would I be without the story of being ditched? Who would I be without the story that heart-break is terrible and to be avoided at all costs, or even CAN be avoided?

Who would you be without the story that heart-break is impossible to live through, or that when you’ve ditched someone or they’ve ditched you, you can’t live a joyful, meaningful, engaged life and go on?

Turning the thought around: I am not ditched by my friend, I did not ditch that man I once knew. I ditched myself. Ditching hasn’t happened.

How could this be just as true, or truer? What are some examples?

I notice I’m here, alive in this temporary moment. I remember the people with care and attention and love who I no longer see regularly in person. Life has gone on after others are no longer present, they’ve left, or have even died. I have new friends in my life, constantly.

I will be gone someday too.

Does that mean I’m ditching planet earth?

Ha ha….not at all.

As if “I” could be even doing that anyway, in the first place.

I would be simply moving on, following the way of it, moving with the universe. I’d be someone with a heart broken over and over again, but somehow it was OK anyway.

Because I’m here, right now.

“When you inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy or appreciate them–while they last….Even if everything were to collapse and crumble all around you, you would still feel a deep inner core of peace. You may not be happy, but you will be at peace.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

Right now, I notice, if I want to make contact with someone I haven’t connected with in a very long time…or I have thoughts about being ditched or ditching someone else…I can actually make it right, without expectation for anything happening next.

I can write a letter to that someone and let them know they were not worthless or discarded, if this is appropriate and wise. I can write to family members or ancestors even when they are no longer alive and send the letter to them through fire (burning it). I can sit still and feel the deep inner core of life within me and acknowledge the peace.

I can feel the presence of Reality, the Universe, or God handling all of this without my approval, and notice no matter how much ditching I’ve imagined has happened, something mysterious is still here anyway, and life is going on.

In fact, I am surrounded by things in this moment: chair, desk, lamp, carpet, humming sound of heater turning on, light, window, cup, sign, phone.

Nothing is absent in this moment. Even my stories. But I don’t have to act like they’re absolutely true and I need to do something about them based on terror or avoidance.

Not right now. I’ve got inquiry.

Then, movement and action can be born out of my stories based on love, and wisdom, instead.

Much love,

Grace

Inquiry Call Tomorrow: