When someone I love suffers, whether a client, someone in my family, a dear friend…I sometimes feel great grief.
I am with a loving human being, who is doing their best….and they have just found out their son has cancer, their husband has been racking up secret addiction debt, their aunt has sold the family heirloom behind everyone’s back, their best friend has been making up stories about them due to jealous madness.
The loss is gut-wrenching.
The person sobs, or feels frantic, stunned, ruined.
One of the most powerful things about The Work is the way you can stop and look at the nature of reality, the way you are seeing it in every moment.
The Work is not some kind of mind-game, although it may feel heavy with thought, with energy in the brain, in the head, with ideas and images and voices talking to us….while the body is reacting in fear, terror, sadness, desperation.
The Work is four questions. Good questions.
Not magical, twisty, special, secret questions….simply four powerful questions worthy of asking yourself if your mind is spinning, and you notice your thoughts and your body are reacting….even in the most dire situations.
So if you have a terrible situation occurring in your life, or something that occurred in the past that is truly frightening…
….stop for a moment. Breathe deeply.
It is 100% horrible. You are not safe. You can’t bear it. You won’t make it through this emotionally. There is nothing good that could come of this.
Is it true?
I once sat with a woman who was in a car crash. She was the driver.
Her family had gone to Disneyland for a long-awaited vacation. She and her husband had planned for months. Her two daughters each were allowed to bring a good friend. They traded off driving from the midwest all the way to Los Angeles and had a spectacular time.
On the way back, a malfunction in their SUV. In the middle of wide open plains, no other traffic in site, the entire vehicle flipped off the highway.
Her husband was killed, one daughter, and the other daughter’s best friend. Everyone on one side of the van, instantly killed.
What I learned from that courageous woman, as she answered the four questions, was that even this was handle-able.
“If something happens that we don’t like, we resist it. But since what we’re resisting has already taken place, what good is it to resist? If your best friend moves away, it’s understandable that you don’t like it. But your inner resistance to that event for years to come does not change the fact that they did, indeed, move away. It does not do anything to the reality of the situation….It is not life’s events that are causing problems or stress. It is your resistance to life’s events that is causing this experience….Stop resisting.” ~ Michael Singer
One way I know to stop resisting, besides lying on the floor, is to investigate the beliefs that appear, screaming in your head, when something apparently awful happens.
Can you absolutely know it is true that this is 100% horrible? You are not safe? You can’t bear it? You won’t make it through this emotionally? There is nothing good that could come of this?
No.
Nothing has been 100% horrible, I have always been safe, I have been able to bear everything, I’ve found happiness again even after much destruction, and there is great goodness that has come out of it.
Who would you be without these thoughts? What would it feel like? Without labeling the sensations you feel? Without being so sure you know this is wrong? Without listening to all the chatter in your head, all the words?
Without the idea that you are not safe?
“The apparent craziness of the world, like everything else, is a gift that we can use to set our minds free. Any stressful thought that you have about the planet, for example, shows you where you are stuck, where your energy is being exhausted in not fully meeting life as it is, without conditions.” ~ Byron Katie
You can turn the thoughts in your mind around and find examples of how these opposite thoughts are true.
It’s a practice that cracks open the universe…allowing you to see how worthy, loved, innocent, and powerful you are.
And how you’ve made it, so far, through everything.
Much love, Grace