It shouldn’t have happened

The rain’s been pattering down all day long, fresh and alive. Not too harsh, not cold, not driving. But very steady.

Kind of like the sharing and entry into The Work for Day #1 of retreat, right here at Goldilocks Cottage in the northwest.

Now, in the evening, I sit quietly in my empty living room, only myself apparently here, listening to the sound of drops coming down on the roof.

Today….the lovely group of participants sharing this time together looked at the thought “this shouldn’t have happened, shouldn’t be happening”.

Somehow, this excruciatingly stressful thought appeared for questioning, and we did it together, in circle, popcorn style.

If you’ve never done inquiry “popcorn” style it can be a wonderful way to share and weave together a group from the start. Because everyone does it together, listening, speaking, contemplating.

How it works is the stressful belief is dropped into the room.

It hangs in the air, and everyone thinks of a moment when they really thought it was true.

Yes, that moment there. I really thought “this shouldn’t be happening”. It thought it so big and wide, it was so awful that something was happening, it was a terrible situation.

As everyone found their internal image, and pictured a memory, a moment, a future fear….

…I asked the four questions.

Popcorn style means, people simply speak out loud when they have their answers appear. Maybe two people speak at once, and one naturally waits for the other. The pace is usually slow enough where one speaks, there’s a pause, another speaks.

We all get to hear what it’s like to feel and think this stressful thought, and what it’s like without it….the Great Exploration.

I thought of my own moment, when a good friend flipped out and said I wasn’t being a good friend, I wasn’t coming to the rescue, and that he was coming over RIGHT NOW. (I remember reading the email and having a massive jolt of adrenaline run through me, and the urge to jump in my car and drive away, just in case he meant it).

What about other words people are saying that hurt, deeply? What about silence from someone you love and miss, who’s cut you off?

What about sickness? What about painful childhood memories?

It shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have had to experience that. I shouldn’t be experiencing it now.

Is it true?

Gulp.

Um….yes?

I really don’t want to go through that again. It was so frightening. I don’t like it when people go crazy. I want calm in my life. I want peace.

Can you absolutely know that it’s true, it shouldn’t go that way? It shouldn’t be like that? He shouldn’t have done that, said that? She shouldn’t have acted that way, called you that name?

Can you know it’s true he shouldn’t have gotten cancer and died?

Yikes. This is serious questioning. It seems so true.

Yet….I personally have no idea. I look out into the world and see people getting sick, yelling, saying things, doing nutso things, committing violence. I look out into the world and see hurricanes and storms, tsunamis and destruction. They say a stormy wind is coming upon the area I live in two days, the biggest in 50 years.

I don’t LIKE these things, but I really can’t know they shouldn’t ever happen.

I notice when I think they shouldn’t and I get really wound up about it, it’s very painful. I suffer. Deeply. Extremely.

Who would I be without the belief it shouldn’t have happened or gone that way?

This fourth question can be difficult to even begin to find an answer, when something quite horrible has occurred.

All you need to notice at first, perhaps, is that you are not thinking it shouldn’t have happened every waking moment of your life.

Right?

So you DON’T have the thought all the time, already.

Even if you feel quite traumatized and upset, and worried and you’ve seen the thing reoccur in your mind’s eye over and then over again….

….you can wonder what it’s like, and explore it as a possibility, without the belief it shouldn’t have happened. Just a little bit.

I notice, without my belief that difficult day when my friend was going “crazy” with a mental breakdown (I’m the only one calling it that) all that ever happened was me reading an email.

I never saw the friend, physically, in my presence.

I didn’t know how to respond, so I waited, and waited, and waited to reply….and I didn’t reply until the following day, and life went on. I realized I had no idea what was actually happening, and I didn’t need to be involved, and I sat in the unknown, and I noticed I had no idea what was true or untrue, and my fear died away, and all was entirely well.

In reality, that very day of reading the scary email, I worked joyfully with two clients, I greeted my kid when she came home from school, I went to the gym, I bought groceries.

The friend never appeared hammering on my door desperately, like I saw in my mind (like he said he might do).

I notice reality was very kind, and very quiet.

In your situation you might be seeing something loud, and terrifying, and physically painful….

….so from this moment, now, can you find how it’s over? It ended, even as you believed it should never have happened?

There is some point when it stopped happening. Your wish was granted.

I find this helpful to notice.

This is not about denying and pretending something very hard didn’t exist, but only to find a sense of balance and peace, and clarity in the middle of this reality.

If you can find how many minutes you’ve lived, without the thing happening, this is great to realize. Many more minutes have been lived without the event, without that incident, without that person saying those words….than WITH it happening. It came to an end.

Turning the thought around: It should have happened. 

And yikes, don’t take this the hard or wrong way. It’s not said with blame, rage, like you deserved that difficult and terrible situation.

This is only to see if you can find anything that came from it that works for you, anything it offered, anything it invited you to learn, any way it brought expansion, presence, awareness, strength, love, kindness, acceptance, surrender into your life?

For my situation, the friend going mad and writing to me he’s coming over, desperate, demanding, frightened….

….it should have happened.

What are my examples?

He found another, quicker, better way to peace. I did The Work on the thought he needed my help (only mine). I became much more sharply clear about how extreme that person felt about his life, and about my potential role in it.

It showed me something unexpected, something I needed to see.

Other things I’ve believed shouldn’t have happened, I notice have had interesting, heart-breaking, but amazing and new and loving things come from them.

If you can’t find turnarounds yet, that is….examples of why it should have happened, I recommend putting the idea on hold….

….but being open to see if something occurs to you, in the future.

If it was a friendly universe, why would this have happened?

The death of my father, for example, was one of my very first inquiries.

I could see, as I investigated that powerful experience I will never forget from so long ago (he died of leukemia) that he got to be freed out of a body, I learned to stand on my own two feet (slowly, but surely), I became skilled at giving myself my own good advice, and that he didn’t die entirely–only in his physical body–so I talk to him often.

He also showed me how to let go of something that felt unsupportive and filled with suffering, and trust death as well as life.

Getting there, still.

“When a belief hit me, I would sit and write it down and put it up against the four questions and then turn it around. That first year, I was writing all the time, crying all the time. But I never felt upset. I loved this woman who was dying through inquiry, this woman who had been so very confused. I kept falling in love with her….You can’t stop mental chaos, however motivated you are. But if you identify one piece of chaos and stabilize it, then the whole world begins to make sense.” ~ Byron Katie in 1000 Names for Joy

Thank you to all the people coming to retreat with me. I get to fall in love with you, quite literally, and the whole world begins to make sense….

….even the painful thought “that experience shouldn’t have happened.”