Whose business are you in? If it’s not your own, you’re lonely.

This weekend the 3 day (we include all day Friday) annual Spring Retreat has been underway.

This retreat, like all of them, is a council of wise folks gathering to contemplate reality, to investigate stories that feel painful, to dig in to uncover hidden stressful beliefs….and of course take them through inquiry.

On Saturday night, it seems our tradition on these 3-day retreats in The Work is to have potluck dinner together.

I looked around the huge grand kitchen table at one point during the meal, after our inquiry together for two days, and was so inspired by the beauty, sharing, joy, and great love I felt for each and every person present.

I haven’t always felt connected to everything and everyone in my environment.

I usually felt DIS-connected from everything and everyone, to be honest.

Even though, as I felt the dis-connection and alienation from everyone and everything, and felt very separate from just about everyone and everything…..

…..I was also wondering constantly what everyone and everything was thinking, doing, and feeling, and hoping no one would be mean to me or hurt me, or that nothing horrible would happen.

My general thought was that people are a bit scary, and the world was definitely full of frightening possibilities. You had to be careful.

There is a principle Byron Katie shares fairly often when facilitating people in their work. The “Whose Business?” Principle.

She’ll ask the question as someone explores a situation: “Whose business are you in?”

There are three choices for your answer:

1) I’m in my own business

2) I’m in someone else’s business (and it’s not my business)

3) I’m in God’s business (also not my business)

So for example….I have a stressful belief that my child should not have broken his wrist.

I wasn’t there when he did, I rushed to the hospital emergency room.

My heart is racing, I’m terrified, I’m worried about him, I believe he needs his mom ASAP. I’m driving like a maniac, my hands gripping the wheel.

Whose business am I in?

My child’s business.

His life included a broken wrist….(twice). His reality appears to involve broken wrists, and I notice he hasn’t been all that upset, he’s felt well-cared for, and his life is completely OK despite these broken bones and incidents. They’ve mended. He’s fine.

When I’m freaking out, and my wrists are perfectly healthy, I’m in his business emotionally. I’m over there, worrying about him and imagining he’s suffering terribly, and no one is home with me driving safely on the road to him at the hospital. I abandoned myself to spend time in his business, sweating bullets instead of clearly and calmly doing what needs to be done without more added stress (like a potential speeding ticket).

What is God’s business?

Earthquakes, typhoons, day time, night time, sun, moon, rock, tree, wrists getting mended, the body doing what it does, death, birth, clouds, aging, plants, the whole of reality.

When I’m in God’s business, the same results occur as when I’m in my kid’s business.

I’m lonely. No one here with me. Upset with God. Putting a lot of suggestions in the Suggestion Box, and they don’t seem to be getting answered, either. (God is so remote sometimes, jeez).

Being in my business is the only sane position, the only principle that actually works. The most stress-free position.

Being in my own business, I’m seated here in my own life, feeling the force of being here now, surrendered to what is NOT my business.

Not lonely.

I looked around on Saturday night, sitting at a table with fascinating, interesting, beautiful people who are all very interested in questioning their stressful thinking and waking up to whatever is really true for themselves. I smile with the joy of it all. I feel very much a part of the group, the life force all buzzing together, sharing together. I am not lonely. I’m so fascinated by everything in this room, and every person.

But here’s the funny thing….the more I do The Work and question what I fear, what I’m against, what I dislike, how I am separate, all the stressful thoughts…..

…..the more I find that I’m not even sure there is ANY business I can actually truly, freely, be in. Not even “my” own.

What if every single thing I could encounter in my life is the business of something that is not purely all me? What if nothing is my business?

Just saying.