Nearing the end of the summer term of classes, I am so filled with gratitude for all the amazing participants. I usually feel like having a group that lasts much longer…I so love the connections made.
People have a range of experiences during two months of weekly inquiry with a small group. Some have light bulbs popping right and left with awareness. Their actual interactions with people they know change. Their relationship with their own minds become different, they stop binge-eating all the time, or obsessing about food and their bodies, or fighting with their spouse, or constantly thinking they don’t have enough time or money.
Other people feel annoyed at the exercises, their situations, at doing inquiry. Impatient, despairing, not grokking it.
Every so often someone drops away and stops calling in to the classes. Even this does not always mean they left without finding it useful. I’ve known of people who just want to listen to the recordings, maybe over and over again, but not actually participate live on the call.
Everything is welcome. Every approach, every person, every belief.
Yesterday in our very last Money, Work and Business group we questioned the thought that if people knew EVERYTHING about me…that worst thing…then I would be humiliated.
I love realizing that humiliation only enters the room if I truly believe that what I’ve done MEANS I am horrible, worthless, the scum of the earth, “a worm”, as one honest participant said.
The amazing thing I love about the Work is that we can point the finger at someone else who we think of as having done something particularly shameful and humiliating, and then find out if we really, really think they are the scum of the earth once we’ve questioned our judgments about them.
Usually, we find it’s not that easy and simple. They have positive qualities. They were being themselves, doing the best they could. They had a lot of thoughts running through their minds, that were VERY painful and stressful. They didn’t stop to question “is it true?”
Once we do this inquiry and find that those monsters are not so horrific, our feelings that WE might be scummy worms fade away. We have a much, much greater capacity for accepting ourselves as we are, foibles and all.
Mistakes, reactions, compulsive behaviors, decisions we’ve made….they all become lighter stories.
The first place we begin with inquiry is to Knock On The Door of our own inner world. And go inside. Even if we think this is going to be a disgusting, stinking, putrid, god-awful nasty building, full of mean, nasty, horrible, disgusting thoughts.
We write down our most judgmental, critical, petty, childish, angry, despairing thoughts about whatever is going on, about those terrible people, about the world, money, food, God, the Universe, and then it’s there right in front of us on paper.
This is so hard for many people that they want to burn the paper just in case someone would find it. It’s scary to admit these judgments exist, and we suffer so badly just in thinking there is something rotten about us and how selfish and rude we are.
But exposing the thinking, and then sticking with it—turning the light on in that dark room—is the first step towards recognizing that peace is actually here already, inside us. We don’t have to go looking for it.
Gathering with others, we all reveal our most distressing thoughts. And then do The Work, asking what it’s like when we think this thought, exploring it in such detail. Letting it have its voice. We start to wake up from the dream of what we’ve been believing.
“The process is therefore one of recognition. We recognize that there is peace now, even if your mind is confused. You may see that even when you touch upon peace now, the mind is so conditioned to move away from it that it will try to argue with the basic fact of peace’s existence within you: “I can’t be at peace yet because I have to do this, or that, or this question hasn’t been answered, or that question hasn’t been answered, or so-and-so hasn’t apologized to me.”~Adyashanti
Peace is present right here, even in your sadness about your financial situation, your despair about the way you eat and what your body looks like, or the fury you feel when you’re with your mother.
Doing The Work with others, I know over and over again that I am not alone, that I am not weird or different or separate or extra messed up. I am a part of humanity and it is possible foranyone to love, accept, allow, to stay with what is.
Everyone is welcome here, on this planet, in my world. How do I know? Because they’re here.
Love, Grace