November 2020 – The Work of Byron Katie with Grace

November 24, 2020

How to stop worrying about someone else’s worrying

In only one week from today, what I already know will be an amazing time will begin. Six days in a row of being with others together online (zoom) to delve deeply into The Work and self-inquiry.

(Scroll to the end to get the daily schedule and info).

I’m co-facilitating this one with my colleague and friend Tom Compton. He’s brilliant and well-seasoned in The Work: for over 30 years he’s been doing this process and sitting in the four questions, along with working with other people.

We have absolutely loved co-facilitating retreats together.

We’re so looking forward to doing it again.

Here’s me interviewing Tom about his experience with The Work, in case you’d like to get to know him a little better:

One thing we’ll be asking everyone attending retreat (I’m asking myself right now):

What’s been scaring you, making you nervous, irritating you, or bringing despair?

What do you notice bothers or disturbs your psyche, your mood, your inner natural experience of peace?

Recently, I had an awareness of something that seemed important.

How do I know it was important–at least important for inquiry?

It disturbed me.

Someone who I adore and have known their entire life shared how angry they’ve been with the world and a situation they’ve encountered.

Have you ever had someone close to you share something deeply disturbing, and you clench up yourself?

“Yikes, that sounds terrible,” we might say.

I noticed I saw visions of them being depressed. A picture of them with head in hands, lonely and sad, scheming on suicidal thoughts.

They did NOT tell me they were suicidal specifically.

But oh look what the mind did.

We join with the person who is crying “this is so awful, really it is so so so awful.”

Nothing wrong with that. Except.

When I begin to believe they are not safe, they are not loved, they are not capable, they are suffering terribly.

Something about sitting with someone who is doing The Work, incidentally, I entirely trust the process.

I don’t “worry”.

I know they’re OK, they are working on it, they are underway with the power of love at their side.

But this was someone who doesn’t exactly do The Work and there they were, sharing about the depth of their misery.

That person is miserable.

What do you think this means, that they’re miserable? I noticed for me, that was where the fear rose up. It means they don’t want to live. It means they’ve lost their happiness.

Is it true, they shouldn’t be so miserable?

I don’t know.

So, no.

What happens when you believe it’s true?

WORRY.

Trying to problem-solve, figure out how to handle the situation, make it better, give suggestions, offer advice, offer to jump in and take care.

There can be a whole list of what would “make it better” that they need to “get”.

Not that there’s anything wrong with reaching out or being there to help. But this is noticing I was doing it with FEAR in the background.

So who would I be without the belief this person is fundamentally miserable?

This can sound cold to even consider. Like you don’t care about them and their perspective.

But I sat for a moment, imagining this person I love dearly seeming to be so stuck and unhappy and angry…

…without the belief “they are miserable–and this must be fixed by me, as soon as possible. I must help! This is dangerous!”

Without this belief, I stay present.

I’m not afraid to be with someone who is suffering. I might say “if you ever want to try doing The Work, I’m available and here for you”. I check in on them.

I remember suddenly the way I felt when I started hospice work on a really beautiful research project run through the University of Washington almost 20 years ago. My very first patient I saw as a research assistant, I felt trepidation entering her apartment. She was dying of breast cancer. I asked her many questions about pain, depression, emotions and fears. All of them pre-written for this project.

Once I was finished speaking with her and back in my little car in the rainy parking lot, I sobbed.

But then, it got easier and easier. By the fifth person, I was able to sit with them and know nothing was required except to be there and ask the questions they had already agreed to be asked. I enjoyed my job so much, I was shocked. It felt so genuine, so real.

Back to my loved one.

I noticed this person said “I don’t want any advice. I just want you to hear me”.

So good to know. Reality tells you what’s needed.

No Advice. No problem-solving.

Turning the thought around: If someone tells a terrible story, it does NOT mean they’ll be miserable forever, or suicidal, or broken.

It means they’re whole, intact, aware, moving towards joy.

Could it be just as true?

Why not? Don’t I notice the power of healing, of freedom and joy over and over again?

Yes I do.

Turning the thought around again: If someone tells me their miserable story, my thinking is miserable…not them.

Wow. Yes, I joined in.

I added some anxiety to the pot even.

I believed, just like them.

This person gave me the opportunity to hold and question a thought that misery must be stopped….that it doesn’t stop itself.

I imagined God, reality, support, love, source, mystery, magic and miracles were not possible in this situation, were not already underway.

Oops.

Who needs God, when we have my opinion?

Byron Katie used to say this with a smile from time to time sitting with people who made extra good cases for their misery and suffering and terrible predicaments.

I loved it when I first heard it.

I love noticing that tendency within me that says “No thanks, reality…I’ll take care of this myself! You obviously don’t know how to manage things around here!”

That mind that doesn’t believe love and rest and abundance and ease is possible in certain situations. That mind that doesn’t remember everything passes, and nothing is All Bad. That mind that is not in charge of other people’s healing.

Or my own, for that matter.

I can’t give you anything you don’t already have. Self-inquiry allows you access to the wisdom that already exists within you. It gives you the opportunity to realize the truth for yourself. Truth doesn’t come or go; it’s always here, always available to the open mind. If I can teach you anything, it is to identify the stressful thoughts that you’re believing and to question them, to get still enough so that you can hear your own answers. Stress is the gift that alerts you to your asleepness. Feelings like anger or sadness exist only to alert you to the fact that you’re believing your own stories. The Work gives you a portal into wisdom, a way to tap into the answers that wake you up to your true nature, until you realize how all suffering is caused and how it can be ended. It returns you to before the beginning of things. Who would you be without your identity?

Winter Retreat meets Dec 1-6, 2020 with two sessions a day (Pacific Time) and 4 hours in between for partner pairing and digesting and silence.

9am-11:30am Pacific Time daily and 3:30-6:00pm Pacific Time daily. Every session recorded for those who need to miss and listen later because of timezone.

Still room for a few more. Read more and sign up here.

Sliding scale.

Much love,
Grace

November 17, 2020November 17, 2020

there’s something wrong with anxiety

There must be something wrong with me–I know, because of this anxiety.

Have you ever had that thought?

Whether a moment when you dropped a dish and it smashed to pieces, or someone broke up with you, or you weighed yourself (we’re looking at this in Eating Peace program) or you lost your temper, or you lost your house because of difficult financial circumstances….

….so many times we’ve reacted.

“Yikes! Oh no!”

I did it wrong.

Because I did it wrong, I’ll die without succeeding. I’ll fail. I’ll suffer. I’ll be alone forever. I won’t get “there”.

Some of us take so much responsibility for problems, we’re anxious, then we’re depressed and incredibly full of despair.

But can you be sure there’s something wrong with you because you’re anxious?

Think of just one situation.

For example, two different inquirers brought this to the pot in the past couple of weeks:

They were anxiously thinking about the future.

They were against feeling so anxious. Their minds were out of control.

Unchangeable.

“I’ve been working on this for soooooo long. Why don’t I stop obsessing? Why do I continue to be like this?!”

So if you’ve experience anxiety, and then berated yourself for being anxious….this inquiry is for you.

My situation. Two years ago (ish) in February on a very dark wintry rainy weekend in the northwest. I’m out of town with my husband for a long weekend.

In the hotel room, we receive an email saying they’ll be moving ahead with the building project in our back yard. A new small house with a ground floor apartment for my mother in her elder years, and a studio/office space up above for groups and inquiry work.

They would need $52,000 to begin on Tuesday.

I begin to sweat.

Holy Mother of God, what have we done? This is going to cost so much more than that. If this is only what they need to get started, how will this unfold? What if we don’t have enough? How did we ever think we could do something so massive? Why didn’t we just pay off our house instead of refinancing and building?

How could I have imagined I would even be eligible to do such a grand, gigantic thing?

People are starving in Africa.

As my husband began to breathe heavily later, in a deep and restful sleep, I began to think.

Maybe we should back out of this.

And by the way, why are we in a hotel? We should be saving any extra money for this ginormous project.

We should probably leave in the morning. I don’t like it here.

Now, you might think….she probably started doing The Work in the middle of the night, right?

Oh no.

I was having a full on epileptic thinking seizure. I stared at airplane lights far in the distance out the dark window, wondering how I picked a hotel this close to the airport.

I’m honestly still not sure why or how that all rose up to such a heightened sense of speeding thought, and how it happened that all sense of safety was sucked out of the room. (That’s dramatic–the room was entirely safe. The future, in my head, was unsafe).

I’m not sure why I did not meet the anxious mind with four questions as I always find liberating.

Maybe the fire needed to burn very brightly, so I could see how much I feared not having enough in the future.

I had images of boarded-up unfinished houses seen in neighborhoods sometimes. People who started a big project, and couldn’t finish it.

I had images of stocks plunging to zero and everything tanking.

“What is wrong with you?”, I thought.

“Don’t you want a simple life?”

People who come into the programs I facilitate often come with this core belief running in the background, this terrible doubt about themselves; Relationship Hell to Heaven (which just ended last Sunday, such a beautiful healing group), Year of Inquiry (gathering all year for self-inquiry together), Eating Peace (people feeling horrible about their eating issues).

Everyone is upset with how life has gone, and especially how they’ve responded to it.

Is it true there’s something wrong with you, if you’ve been full of emotions, like anxiety?

Are you absolutely sure it’s wrong to feel anxious?

No.

What’s the reality? Anxiety exists.

What happens when you’re upset with anxiety, with thinking, with a circumstance or a condition that sends you into fear?

I see flashes of terrible failure in the future.

Suffering. Sorrow. Regret.

I have to make the right decision NOW. I panic and run. Or I jump in when not quite ready.

Everything on the topic is an emergency.

In my mind that night during the news that our plans were really happening, I was unexpectedly thrown off by my panic about the unknown future…and money.

Who would I be without the belief that something was wrong? With me? With the circumstance?

Aware that nothing WAS actually wrong in that moment.

Even with this mind.

It was doing its job, reminding (re-mind-ing) me that only ten years earlier I almost lost the very same property to foreclosure and debt. Reminding me I should be very careful (which can be questioned). Reminding me I’ve suffered in the past, so suffering may happen again in the future.

But it was just mental images and thoughts and imagination and stored memory presenting itself.

I could question it all.

Who are we without our thoughts about the thing causing anxiety, and the anxiety itself?

I love we can turn the mind towards using the imagination for support and loving kindness, rather than drama and chaos.

Without my beliefs running, I’d notice the stillness and the powerful support of the present moment.

Turning the thought around: there’s something wrong with my thinking.

Yes, I can see my thinking, left unto itself, runs rampant when believing there’s a threat.

Turning the thought around: there’s something RIGHT with me (as I gaze at anxiety).

Could this be just as true, or truer?

Anxious images in a slide show, anxious feelings in the body.

And still, woman listening to husband’s sleeping breath. Looking through a glass at the night sky. Listening to the quiet room.

Stillness present.

Safety present.

Secure in gravity, warmth, resting, oxygen.

Mind busy, doing what it was born to do.

Nothing wrong.

“It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering.” ~ Byron Katie

Body lying on a bed, feeling what the mind is thinking.

Failing to notice the joy of the space, the support, the slowness. Failing to notice no check needs to be written in the middle of the night, right at that moment.

All else, perfectly in order, perfectly on time.

Life, offering something. Person reacting to it and believing. Person believing the thought that believing a thought was wrong.

A lovely inquirer in Year of Inquiry said in passing in our call last Saturday “that Rumi poem about staring at the wound, that one…”

It’s one of my favorites, and I read it at retreats quite often.

I opened it up later to re-read it, and bring it to this memory of an imagined anxious sleepless night, noticing the intensity and beauty of that weekend and the turning within, the awareness. The invitation.

Look.

Look again.

Who are you, without your thoughts, even in that past memory of anxiety?

Who are you without your thoughts that having anxious thoughts is terrible, or wrong or unenlightened?

Healing the past, in the present moment of inquiry.

Calling back the past “see, it’s OK, it always was. Relax, relax.”

Kind to the anxious one. Willing to question.

“Trust your wound to a teacher’s surgery.
Flies collect on a wound.
They cover it, those flies of your self-protecting feelings,
your love for what you think is yours.
Let a Teacher wave away the flies and put a plaster on the wound.
Don’t turn your head.
Keep looking at the bandaged place.
That’s where
the Light enters you.
And don’t believe for a moment that you’re healing yourself.”
~ Rumi

If you have a past memory that surfaces, an experience of something “wrong” with you, with others, with life….

….you can believe your thoughts (how brilliant that you have done so) and you can also answer four questions and find turnarounds and un-believe your thoughts.

We can keep looking at the wounds, and not turn our heads.

Letting the light enter us.

If you want to, join me and the wonderful Tom Compton as we support you in healing the anxious mind with The Work.

Everyone, experienced to beginner, is welcome.

We meet Dec 1-6, 2020 with two sessions a day (Pacific Time) and 4 hours in between for partner pairing and digesting and silence. Every session recorded for those who need to miss and listen later because of timezone.

We have wonderful things planned and the unplanned will present itself, as it always does, to hold us in steady joy and silence in the background of it all.

We can’t wait to be in the adventure.

Still room for a few more. Read more and sign up here. Sliding scale $375 – $895 for six days.

We prepare for winter, on the inside, on the outside.

The immense gift of inquiry: noticing reality is kind. Noticing reality is a teacher. Noticing reality can be trusted.

Astonishing.

Much love,
Grace

November 12, 2020November 12, 2020

Election fears, terror of death and Peace Talk Episode 172

This past couple of weeks has been so exciting.

I’ve gotten to facilitate others (and myself, always) on their beliefs about physical pain, illness, weight or weight loss, aggression, fear and terror of someone dying in the future (who we love), and nail-biting on the political scene in the USA.

Here came the thoughts, hitting people like hail in a great storm.

I loved sitting with each and every person:

I’m not safe
the election must have the “right” outcome
my well-being depends on politicians’ behavior
my body is not safe with this condition (pain, disease, political scene, over-eating)
something terrible will happen
I’m being abandoned

The amazing people I get to do The Work with unique backgrounds, languages, countries, ages, experiences….

….and yet all considering their minds and how powerful the stressful thinking can be.

What do we do with images and fears about what will happen in the future?

This is all it takes. This is step one:

Willing.

Willing to look more closely. Willing to identify what I’m believing. Willing to feel those feelings. Willing to be with the suffering instead of push it away, block it out, try to destroy it, hide from it.

Someone joined Year of Inquiry this week, someone else joined Eating Peace. These programs already started and they asked and said “I really want this”.

They felt a drop of “willing” to step into this work more deliberately, more regularly.

Anyone can do it, if you have a pen and paper or a friend who can ask you four questions.

So let’s look at lack of safety, as so many people felt it was looming.

Is it true that you are not safe and your well-being depends on a certain outcome?

I think of all the moments I thought of this as true.

My father’s cancer and death.

A dear friend’s betrayal and silence.

A partner leaving unexpectedly.

War. Fires. Death.

(I often reacted by eating, eating, eating and then vomiting or starving for days, and focusing on the belief that my well-being depends on eating right. AFTER the other stuff already was looming).

Question one: Is it true our safety exists only if it goes “well” or our success happens only if it goes as we hoped?

No.

What happens when we believe it absolutely has to go THAT way (the way we want)?

We’re freaking out if it doesn’t go our way. We’re terrified if it doesn’t. We’re bitter, angry, resentful, depressed. The whole world appears to be unsafe.

So who are we without this thought of being dependent on something happening (you know what it is) in order to be happy?

Wow. Really?

It’s just an experiment. This doesn’t mean you should not believe it would be better if things went your way.

It’s only a way to use mind, which is so powerful, as a tool of support rather than a fear-monger.

Being “without stressful thought” doesn’t mean being passive.

Without this thought, I feel a sense of trust, of openness. Of absolute freedom and independence from conditions to make me happy.

Which feels like the ultimate empowerment, to be honest.

It feels like freedom. Even joy.

TurnAround: No one and nothing can make me endlessly unhappy, or hurt me, or keep me depressed. Only my depressive thinking, or my anxiety-riddled thinking can bring depression or anxiety (or both). I don’t need it to go my way, in order to be happy. I can be happy just because.

My thinking isn’t safe, I AM safe, life is safe
the election must have whatever outcome it has
my well-being depends on my questioned thinking
my thoughts are not safe with this condition (pain, disease, political scene, over-eating)
something wonderful will happen
I’m being set free

And even my thinking doesn’t need to be the problem.

By questioning the belief that these things shouldn’t happen, you can end your own suffering about the suffering of others. And once you do, you’ll be able to notice that this makes you a kinder human being, someone who is motivated by love rather than outrage or sadness. The end of suffering in the world begins with the end of suffering in you. ~ Byron Katie

Watch inquirers as we walk through stressful beliefs causing fear and terror. Join me on any future First Friday for this work.

Or listen on Peace Talk podcast or download audio-only here.

Devoting time to self-inquiry, even just a little, can bring one moment of insight that could change your life. This process has changed mine, thought by questioned-thought. Not too crazy fast, not too slow, right on time.

Join me and the good Tom Compton in our upcoming six-day winter retreat for the brilliant power of self-inquiry to connect us all more deeply to our one precious life.

Only 19 days until we start. Can’t wait to share the time.

If you’ve noticed anxiety, fear, intolerance, frustration, nerves, worry….this is the place to practice becoming your own willing and loving advisor.

Four questions. Your answers.

Much love,

Grace

November 4, 2020November 4, 2020

What does it mean to move without resistance? The joy of acting in The Work.

There was a time when I became aware, about two years into doing The Work, that sometimes the mind can hold up a belief very solidly in the background of a situation we’re investigating, and not let go.

I didn’t even know I had the belief. That’s the funny part.

I was dating in my forties.

I was also rather shocked to be dating as I had felt so married-for-life in my first marriage of 15 years.

I loved partnership and had mostly been with a partner for the majority of my life since age 16. It seemed easy and natural.

(And before that, I always had one close best friend).

So there I was, meeting men and dating.

There was one man I found incredibly funny and smart, but also quite troubled.

We’d go on a walk or have a meal and talk in depth, and all kinds of weird emotional conflict would appear.

I’d feel nervous, angry, or incredibly disgusted.

Fairly new in my experience of self-inquiry and The Work at that time, I’d write a worksheet on the moment of disruption and get all my thoughts on paper: “he shouldn’t have said that”, “I need him to be different”, “there’s something wrong with him”, “he’s too depressed”, “he’s an addict”.

I would take them through the four questions and find turnarounds and feel amazed with what I learned about myself.

And yet…the conflict persisted.

And so did the on-and-off dating, anxiety, and anger.

When suddenly one day, while sitting quietly in The Work, I heard the voice in my head ask this powerful question:

Why are you trying so, so hard to make this relationship work….when it just plain isn’t?

Why are you trying so hard to like red when you prefer blue?

And the hidden “agenda” appeared before my eyes.

This. Relationship. Must. Work.

Dreams of a future living with this person in bliss, enjoying the support of the money he had accumulated and his good taste, feeling that old natural feeling within me of having one best friend in my life, imagining easy conversations and someone to whom you could say “hey, did you see that?”

Some part of my mind didn’t like noticing this dynamic did NOT really work.

I scared him, he scared me.

Everyone confused and upset. Uneasy.

Ideas about what “success” or “love” looks like.

Is it true it had to work?

Is it true the images I had of “it working” were real? Or was it all imagination? (Um, I would say it was imagination, LOL).

What happened when I believed that relationship MUST work and turn into the relationship I dreamed of?

Well one thing that happened, is I did The Work itself on every tiny thing I did not like, in an effort to land on peace, enforce peace, arrive at peace.

Even my dreams of “peace” were false and guessed at. I said peace didn’t look like the present moment, it looked like a vision I had in the future.

I ignored my preferences, for “peace”. I turned everything around to myself “for peace”. I went places and ate food I didn’t like and said “yes” to invitations “for peace” or “for hope”.

I turned all my stressful thoughts around and then made an effort to keep myself directed narrowly to this goal of making the relationship work: “I shouldn’t have said that”, “I need me to be different”, “there’s something wrong with me”, “I’m too depressed”, “I’m an addict–especially about him”.

But who would I be without the belief “I’m going someplace BETTER in the future (this future relationship working the way I want and imagine)?

Who would I be without the belief “This Must Work”?

On that day I suddenly dropped below my hopes and motives to enforce happiness in the future, my attitude of “fighting” for happiness….

….and I noticed reality.

Reality didn’t look like my plan. Reality didn’t look like celebration and loving connection and beauty and two married people smiling at each other in that moment.

What was the reality?

Not that.

THIS.

And then…the questioning opened up and I became aware of a turnaround: This IS Working.

This is it. This is where this is going.

Right now.

Not in the future somewhere, where heaven awaits.

Heaven could be right here, despite the discord in relating and the difficult thinking and the tortured emotions and apparent confusion.

The sun still shines behind the sky, the world still moves, the breath still flows in and out of this body, the life force still pulses with joy–no matter what I’m ever doing, no matter what is happening, no matter what is being “thought” in any moment.

I could be cleaning dog poop off my shoe, and this is what is, in that moment.

Not the future cleaned up shoe.

Can I notice This. Is. Working.

The relationship may not involve future active connection (turns out it did not) but what a joy to flow with life instead of push against it.

I understood then what Byron Katie and others might be talking about when they spoke of doing The Work with a motive or agenda, how it can block the freedom and peace you have access to right in the middle of any condition, relationship or situation.

Could heaven be possible even with this?

Of course.

Who am I to say “this is not heaven”?

Good news.

It didn’t matter that I had been doing that when doing The Work with a motive of eventually getting to peace. Insight came when it came, at just the right time.

I explored, I stayed, and then I saw, and I broke up with him.

The joy of not knowing what will ever happen, the freedom from being dependent on things going a certain way in order for me to be happy….dissolving.

Who are you without the belief “this is not it”?

Turned Around: This is it. This is life, being lived. This is heaven. This is waking up.

Peace is possible now.

When this realization landed inside me, I knew to break up with this man and that I didn’t have to make myself Not Think of him.

I didn’t know my future and it was totally safe, totally OK. I felt gratitude, clarity, tears, empowerment. Life moved in its own direction.

I couldn’t have gotten there, experiencing that moment as peaceful and exciting, without The Work.

Wow.

“Eventually, through practice, you no longer impose your thinking onto reality, and you can experience everything as it really is, as pure grace.” ~ Byron Katie

If you’ve got beliefs about what is required for peace, for awakening, for love, for eliminating stuckness…you may want to come do The Work on retreat.

Winter retreat is a month away.