Summer Camp for The Mind starts in a week.
But actually, there’s Opening Day this coming Friday July 6th for everyone and anyone. You don’t have to sign up for Summer Camp until the weekend, if you like.
By attending only on Opening Day, you can get a taste of an online inquiry group, or use it as a stand-alone experience of The Work.
In other words, you can attend Friday’s Opening Day from 7:45-9:45 am Pacific Time, and then decide over the weekend if you want to jump on board for all summer through August 17th.
For Opening Day of Summer Camp, head to the Summer Camp webpage and find the direct link right there. Opening Day will be recorded. You can listen later if that works better for you.
Read more details about Summer Camp, or go ahead and sign up, right HERE.
ITW folks: If you’re getting credits in Institute for The Work of Byron Katie, you’ll need to commit to attending 7 sessions live during the summer to make sure you get 10 hours credit. I’ll take attendance.
Speaking of Summer Camp, it’s actually kind of odd and supportive and wonderful and strange for me to get ready for this Summer Camp program.
Because a huge and major transition has just occurred in my life and the lives of my children and extended family: the passing of my first husband, loving father of our two young-adults children (ages 21 and 24). He died early Saturday morning, June 30th.
He had not been considered well for 8 years, tackling cancer, treatments, stem cell transplant, chemo rounds and finally….death.
Sitting with someone I love and know for so long as they navigate through illness and dying, gazing at a familiar face in permanent sleep, feeling the body grow cold, is not new for me.
But this time there was a deep melancholy within and heart-breaking tears, watching the children we had together sob their eyes out. My father also died at the very same age, almost exactly to the day.
My former husband’s sweet and supportive companion of five years, (and they just got married in the hospital), was incredible through the last several years of his journey with cancer. She’s been there for him in a most remarkable way.
Not long ago, when my current husband and I visited her and my former husband bringing pizza, she shook her head “no” when Tom suggested the hardship she’s been through in taking care of him.
“It’s a privilege” she said.
I’m so grateful for being so included in any part of this journey of relating to the man who just died, and all the chapters of being in relationship with him. Any and every heart-breaking part.
If I had been able to see 15 years ago, before divorce, a picture of June 30, 2018….I would have been shocked beyond belief. Stunned.
How do you react when you believe a story of the way it should be….and it doesn’t turn out the way you hoped or planned or expected?
I agonize. I feel sad. I have images of regret, missed conversations, confusion. I have anxiety within. I can’t sleep. I feel ungrounded, shaky. I might feel like I don’t belong. Discouraged.
Who would you be without this very stressful thought that the way it’s gone is horrible, worse than expected? Without the thought that it should be different than it is?
Without the belief, I notice I’m lying here on my soft bed, typing, and I’ve done this 1000 times without worrying about the way the future should go, will go, must go.
Without the thought it should have gone differently….
….I’m able to notice the precious space of this moment here, and that I have no idea of the entire picture or story.
I notice how well I’m doing here now, and how well I’ve done so, so, so often in life without someone being around or without something going as I expected or dreamed.
Without the thought “it shouldn’t be like this” there is no regret. There are tears flowing, and they feel like immense love and gratitude.
Turning the thought around: It should have gone this way.
As Byron Katie asks: How is it good for you that it went the way it did? How is it good for the other person, or the community? How is it good for the world?
Wow. I know this doesn’t mean I have to love it, or wish for it, or say thumbs-up to it, or vote for it.
I notice, I didn’t get a vote.
Reality went the way it did. Can I find something supportive about that? Can I find the love, the care? Can I be willing to see with more expansive eyes and heart?
It’s not to make something fake sweet and easy, that isn’t.
It’s an invitation to give weight to this other side of duality, the one I often miss when I’m upset or troubled. The side that says “maybe you’ve missed something” rather than assuming what’s happened absolutely shouldn’t have.
I begin to find turnaround examples for it being OK, interesting, beautiful or supportive that it went way it did:
- I found an internal power of willing-to-do-what-it-takes, after the divorce from this man who has now died, that I never thought was possible when it comes to career, earning, ability to pay my monthly mortgage and not foreclose on my house
- I learned I can love, even if I rarely see someone, and appreciate sharing their life with me
- my children and I were laughing and joking as we took a little road trip together yesterday, the day after their dad died. I was amazed and touched by seeing what life looks like when it’s not filled with constant desperate suffering. It looks like people playing the road-trip games we’ve always played. “Those are my cows!”
- we’ve spent the last three winter holiday seasons doing blended family things which were super fun, loving, joyful and abundant
- I’m getting to spend many hours with my kids, hear from friends I haven’t heard from in many years, share deep conversations with others who loved my former husband, replay amazing memories
- A sense of openness to Reality comes alive in this work on death. Isn’t that what I always dreamed of? Feeling friendly about the world, life, reality?
Someone able to write this Grace Note today, and feel very excited about sharing inquiry with other people in the world as we dial in together Friday, and into Summer Camp next week.
Someone who can still imagine summer within, even through tears and a swelling heart.
“Until we know that death is as good as life, and that it always comes at just the right time, we’re going to take on the role of God without the awareness of it, and it’s always going to hurt. Whenever you mentally oppose what is, when you think that you know what should and shouldn’t happen, you’re going to experience sadness and apparent separation. There’s no sadness without an unquestioned story. What is is, because it is. You are it.” ~ Byron Katie
Much love,
Grace
P.S. To find out more about Summer Camp, click the photo here.
