Author: Grace

Grace Bell is author of Grace Notes and facilitates individuals, groups, retreats and courses in The Work of Byron Katie. She supports people with eating issues, divorce, difficult feelings and relationship trouble to find peace.
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Willing To Lose Everything

Yesterday I was thinking about money. Not unusual of course. I wonder if there are many human beings who don’t?

The part that is different about my thinking, when I think about money, is that it seems that whether there is a bill due, a payment to be made, a payment to receive, or imagining upcoming future payments….I simply do not have the mental stressful thinking I once had about it.

I have done The Work on money about 500 times. Well, maybe this is an exaggeration.

Exaggeration is common when it comes to money:

  • I’ll NEVER get out of debt
  • This will take me years and years to pay for, I’ll probably be dead
  • I don’t EVER get what I want
  • it’s sooooooo hard to go to work
  • This whole system is set up with such inequality, it is ALL UNFAIR
  • I’ll NEVER understand how to get lots of money
  • I am trapped, stuck, stupid, desperate, hopeless when it comes to money

Stressful thinking can enter so quickly and take off like a rocket, that it is helpful, whether you consider yourself worried about money or not, to consider all that you believe about this thing called money.

Five and a half years ago, I got divorced.

Before that, I didn’t work full time for ten years, but I always worked part time. I actually did editing for several companies as a freelancer, and for one company as a part time employee only a few hours a week. All work done at home. Incredible for a mother of babies.

My story was often “I didn’t work for ten years! Terrible! Lazy!” and also “The rug is pulled out from under me (divorce)! I can’t afford anything! I can’t I can’t I can’t!”

Two years after my divorce, I had zero savings, no job at all (everything had “ended” or closed for ALL the part-time work I had been doing).

I had used my credit card for three months to pay my mortgage and for groceries. My children were eligible, it turned out, for free lunch at school. I could have gotten food stamps but I felt like such a failure to even qualify for them.

I felt like I was on the Titanic and it was going down, fast. I had no way to pay my bills and nothing left. I had borrowed all that was available to borrow from family. I had been to job interviews everywhere….and I was finally open to working at an entry level job at any restaurant or fast-food place. I had been soooo judgmental of those places.

The whole time, during this period, I had The Work. I did it like crazy. I felt the panic inside, I identified all the judgments I had about money, myself, divorce, survival…

I became willing to be doomed, to stop fighting, to surrender. That was actually all I had left. No choice. Except to question my very negative, painful, horrified thoughts.

“You don’t get to vote on what is. Have you noticed?”~ Byron Katie

So yesterday when I was thinking about money, I remembered all this. It’s like the mind showed me all these pictures and images of that experience. I remembered being willing to move into my mother’s house and live in her basement, to stop fighting that or seeing it as terrible.

I remembered recognizing that my relationship with money was a gift one evening, after inquiring into my thinking with a facilitator.

Nothing else could have even come close to helping me walk a path of spirit, willingness, openness, trust. Nothing else could have allowed me to stop arguing with reality, to stop seeing myself as a loser.

“Placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience. Taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them…..I am the perpetrator of my suffering – but only all of it.”~ Byron Katie

In January, it will be four years since that time I completely hit bottom financially. As it happened, I didn’t lose my house to foreclosure, barely.

The amazing thing is, I now have zero debt except for my house mortgage. I didn’t win the lottery, I didn’t rake in piles of money, or get a huge high-paying full time job.

I just kept questioning my beliefs about money when I had them. Even though it felt like I was ready to scream (that was the best time, in fact).

My practice grew with people from all over the world, people also wanting to question their beliefs. I felt creative and put together classes on the work I myself had done around money…and many other repetitively stressful topics.

Waiting for money to be different, for someone else to change, for my body to look “better” or for society, jobs, bills to be other than they are BEFORE I feel happy is very painful.

It stopped mattering what was going on with money. All that mattered was what was going on with the inside of me.

The turnaround to number six in the Work, on this topic, goes like this (write and ask me if you’re not sure what “number six” is): I am willing to lose all my money and assets. I look forward to losing all my money and assets.

“When the ancient Masters said, ‘If you want to be given everything, give everything up,’ they weren’t using empty phrases. Only in being lived by the Tao can you be truly yourself.”~Tao te Ching #22

Love, Grace

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I Am Nothing

People are fascinated with personality through assessments and tests, codes, types, definitions. Personality is defined as the qualities that form a distinctive character.

Your Enneagram number, your Myers-Briggs type indicator, your Attachment Type, your Love Language. I encountered many of these assessments in graduate school for Behavioral Science.

I often hear myself say to others that I am introverted by nature. I come out so extreme on this scale when taking some of the tests that it looks like I’m a recluse with very little interest in other people.

People exclaim “That can’t be true! You seem so extraverted!” (I love Henny Youngman’s quote: You have a nice personality, but not for a human being. Ha!)

In a wonderful way, these tests assist us to use language and words to say to someone “this is what I am like”. They create connection. Some context for discovering differences. There can be a shared fun of surprise, interest, curiosity.

These kinds of assessments can help people relate or understand one another. To communicate more authentically, honestly. They often help people feel more accepting of their loved ones. People share what they learn, what drew them to answer certain ways if they are taking a test or reviewing a series of Personality Types.

In the end, though, or should I say “from the very beginning”, there is all gray area. People shift and change. They are one way with one person, another way with someone else. They have tendencies but the pattern is never truly linear, consistent.

One really interesting thing to note about any personality assessment, any statement of How We Are, any answer to tests or questions, is that they are based only on the past. On the mind finding proof of moments, feelings, ways of behavior that “show” us that we were THAT way at one time. Before.

These assessments and tests are all about “me” in the world. However, I think why people are so drawn to them is that they put us into the Observing Mind.

When we are just sitting, observing, looking, remembering….we are not reacting as much. We are fairly neutral. There is less right and wrong. We’re summarizing, making notes, like scientists.

It’s like when we do The Work and start writing down our most painful thoughts, the ideas and beliefs coming out of our minds, getting them on paper. We’re not right in the middle of expressing our thoughts, reacting to them….we’re not in the middle of acting out our personalities.

What is REALLY interesting is when we begin to see beyond these categorizations…to ask “who am I?”

What is this “I” that appears to be so present, that is living out this life, concerned with itself, having its tendencies in certain directions, with its particular personality, apparently?

Not once, but two times, Adyashanti suggested to me directly, as he also does in his writings, to think about who “I” am.

Is it bigger than a bread box? Is it an energy ball? Is it a cluster of “thinking” or “feeling”? Is it this pattern of Introverted responses, that number 4 on the Enneagram, the zodiac sign Aquarius?

Adya said to me, when I started to have frustration about how to answer the question of who or what I am…“Quick! If you had to answer RIGHT NOW, who or what do you think you are?”

In a flash I saw a huge, wide, vast open space, like sky. Nothing there.

Rats.

It can be a little discouraging to realize that your story of yourself means nothing, is nothing, doesn’t actually matter. But then, it’s only discouraging if in that split second AFTER you see who or what you are, you find another thought that is afraid of what it sees.

If whatever is here is just running, living, and there is no clear “I” then there’s nothing real to test an actual personality for. This is terrible, chaotic, discouraging, meaningless, depressing, hopeless….is that true?

“The me I know myself as, my personality, is toast…….We do not want to see that there is a gaping void at the center of our existence.”~ Adyashanti

I love the conversations and connections I’ve made by talking about test results or “my” answers. But really, in this journey which seems to be happening of being alive…I have no idea how to describe this thing called ME. Do you?

Maybe that’s OK. More than OK.

Love, Grace

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I Couldn’t Stop Hurting Myself

After the last class of Horrible Food Wonderful Food today I was thinking, for the millionth time, about how people successfully stop doing behaviors that are harmful to themselves.

I used to overeat so frantically, it was like I was getting out of a concentration camp and absolutely insane with the compulsion to get food.

Not one bit of stopping, forcing myself to stop, succeeding in stopping, remembering that I’d like to stop, or that stopping might feel better in the long run. It was definitely like a herd of cattle going flying off the cliff to the death.

If you ask me right now how I got to this place where I never ever binge, or overeat much at all (I do get nicely full on delicious large meals sometimes)…I’m not sure I could even tell you exactly how I did it. But there are elements to the journey that were vital.

  • admitting and expressing my deepest feelings
  • not lying
  • forgiving myself, not condemning myself
  • questioning my beliefs, especially the ones that scared me

One moment 25 years ago that I always like to tell that was a turning point in my recovery was when I was participating in a therapy group of people really committed to looking at themselves honestly, who wanted to stop suffering.

No one else in the group had an eating disorder. I felt so weird. Like the twisted strange addictive one who was really screwed up.

There were some ground rules in the group. One was “I will not harm myself”. Another one was “I will not get sick or go crazy”. Another, “I will not lie”. There were six of them altogether and periodically, we would be asked to say them out loud as a way of reinforcing these commitments.

The catch about these ground rules was that if you broke one….only you know you broke it. And then you were “required” to take the step of writing about what happened, why you thought you broke it, and speak it out loud to the group.

You were asked to do everything you could to understand what was going on when you didn’t keep your commitment to the ground rules.

A few months into participating in the group, I realized that I was breaking the rule “I will not harm myself” every time I ate frenetically, with panic and fear and anger.

If I was going to honestly participate in the group (and keep the commitment to NOT LYING) then I was going to have to arrive at group and then tell about my process to all the participants there. TERROR!

I could stay in my little world, which included isolated episodes of binge-eating and making myself completely sick….or I could speak my feelings and experience out loud to a group of 10 people and 2 therapists who cared about me.

I actually considered choice #1.

This shows the power of fear in revealing oneself honestly. Even though I was filled with self-hate, I thought keeping my secret self-harming behavior might be easier or better than letting other people know the real me.

Fortunately, I made choice #2. I told everyone in the group, with shaking hands as I read my paper, that I had broken the “I will not harm myself” ground rule. I could hardly speak, but I managed to choke it all out.

When I looked up from my paper, the group was looking at me with love. What I received back was compassion, other humans listening to me with loving eyes and ears, and kind words of wisdom.

I was not rejected, hated, kicked out, slapped, silenced or criticized.

That began the journey to self-expression that was so much more authentic. And, I found that if all my feelings were “allowed” then I didn’t feel like eating so much, or drinking or smoking or doing anything else that I didn’t like doing.

“Hurt feelings or discomfort of any kind cannot be cause by another person. No one outside me can hurt me. That’s not a possibility. It’s only when I believe a stressful thought that I get hurt. And I’m the one who’s hurting me by believing what I think. This is very good news, because it means that I don’t have to get someone else to stop hurting me. I’m the one who can stop hurting me. It’s within my power.”~ Byron Katie

It is easier, at least this has been my ongoing experience, to be who I am, which only means revealing all that is here in this moment, without resisting it or hiding it. Including uncomfortable feelings. Perhaps, especially uncomfortable feelings.

“If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength”~ Eckhart Tolle

No more hiding, no more radical, crazy behavior, no more need for addiction escapes. Just mediocre, regular human.

Human who is not hurting.

Love, Grace

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Everyone Is Welcome Here

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

 

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Not Enough Too Much Painful Cycle

First, I’m adding an evening class of Horrible Food Wonderful Food (Pacific time) for Tuesdays 6:00 – 7:30 pm. Write me grace@workwithgrace.com if you’re interested.

Working with a troubling relationship like “food” and eating can be very tricky. It’s similar to other substances like smoking, drinking, using drugs in the way it feels hard to stop using it in the way we do. We consume, take it in, ingest it when we don’t like the way we are feeling or thinking.

The difference between food and other consumable items is that we apparently need to eat to keep the body alive. So we HAVE to face this relationship daily.

When it’s a very addictive, agonizing relationship that triggers a lot of emotion, then it’s like having a neighbor who is mean, angry, critical….or sad, depressed, suicidal…that you see on and off all day long. And maybe all evening or all night long, too.

It’s a troubling encounter, almost every time you meet.

The thing is, this difficult neighbor, this relationship with food, needs to be invited in for tea. I found I had to make friends with it—there was just no other way.

It is not easy to do that with an entity that feels so vicious, powerful, enraged, condemning, and unpredictable.

But of course, it is our THINKING that is spinning off in all these directions, with lots of uncomfortable feelings following all the thoughts that are going a thousand miles per hour.

The way I found the most peace around food was to do the following, which I did not plan out…it was not a strategy or anything I was forcing myself to do. It was what I most desired, so I was drawn to it:

  1. Stop every plan or diet (they never worked permanently anyway) that categorized and listed foods as “good” or “bad” or had measurements or time on the clock for eating.
  2. Accept my emotions, fears, terrors, loneliness, fury, grief as part of being alive, not that it meant something was wrong with me.
  3. Never give up believing that I could be normal with food and eating.

This can also be done with smoking, using drugs, drinking, or any other compulsive addictive behavior, something you don’t love doing but you can’t seem to give up.

For any behavior you notice that you engage in, but you don’t really like the outcome, Step #1 above becomes STOP making a plan for tomorrow or “the rest of your life”.

In the moment when you feel like doing the thing that you know doesn’t work in a permanent way (eat, smoke, drink, watch porn, over-exercise, shop, gamble) see if you can find out what exactly is so intolerable about THIS moment, now.

I found that I thought of my feelings as unbearable (Step #2 above). I was furious, heartsick, grief-stricken, scared, feeling trapped.

I hated feeling strong feelings so much that I believed I must get away from them, alter them, suppress them, attack them and destroy them.

So really, working with addiction, whatever it is you do to escape, starts with allowing this experience of feeling, being alive, and having that mean neighbor. It’s allowed to be the way it is. Leave it alone. Let this moment be here.

I still have strong feelings. Huge big feelings that seem overwhelming. I don’t necessarily like having them all the time, but I don’t round them up and send them to a concentration camp to be annihilated.

Big feelings are allowed here. What you are angry about, scared of, confused, or frustrated by is OK.

You are not terrible, unusual, missing something, unworthy, wrong, or stupid.

When starting to look at all the beliefs about food and eating that we’ve ever had, about bodies and weight-loss and weight-gain and fat people and skinny people….we begin to see what we thought was true might not be true at all.

When we have big painful feelings, we can invite them in and write down what we are most bothered by. We can be willing, open, curious to see what this terrible experience is all about.

Even if you just ate a gallon of ice cream.

“Whether you are aware of it or not, self-centered thoughts are polluting everything you do. Inquiry is just noticing that, so that the true quietness of who you really are can be realized.”~ Scott Kiloby

You are not “self-centered” really. Maybe you believe you are, and you believe this is very bad. You believe you are not spiritual and there is something greedy and disgusting about you. At least that’s what I used to think constantly when I overate.

But this is only your mind, working out things by “thinking”. It’s doing it’s job.

“The mind exists in a state of ‘not enough’ and so is always greedy for more. When you are identified with mind, you get bored and restless very easily. Boredom means the mind is hungry for more stimulus, more food for thought, and its hunger is not being satisfied. When you feel bored, you can satisfy the mind’s hunger by picking up a magazine, making a phone call, switching on the TV, surfing the web, going shopping, or — and this is not uncommon — transferring the mental sense of lack and its need for more to the body and satisfy it briefly by ingesting more food.” Eckhart Tolle

See today if you find you have a compulsive urge to do something if you can wait 60 seconds before you do it. Yes, that short.

While you are waiting, see if you can write one sentence down that is a reason you are suffering in this moment. What is happening here that is painful?

“Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place.”~ Tao te Ching #3

If you’re ready to look at what you believe about food, hunger, and bodies…come join the teleclass that starts Tuesdays, either morning or evening, Pacific time.

Teleclasses also begin soon on Money, Work and Business, Our Wonderful Sexuality, and Turning Relationship Heaven to Hell. All using Inquiry to find out what we’re thinking that builds stress….and dissolving our stress by answering questions about what is really true.

Love, Grace

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What Would SILENCE Do? (WWSD?)

The mind is constantly looking around to make sure all is well and everything is comfortable. The focus is entirely on what could threaten us. It’s a protection machine.

There is nothing wrong with this of course. It’s very handy if you’re out in the bush with large creatures with big teeth behind trees. You better be on the lookout if you want to live!

I like to joke about being in Terminator mode. It’s like the mind is in hyper-tech-radar position with this invisible little analysis eyeball thing going on for everything it encounters. Identifying, categorizing, assessing. Positive, Negative, I Like, I Don’t Like, Good, Bad.

But if you’re constantly on alert, on the lookout at all times, it can become very very stressful. Sometimes, we just want to RELAX.

One activity that looks really relaxing, that most of us have heard of as a personal practice for well-being, is meditation.

What could be more relaxing that sitting still, being quiet, doing nothing?

When I first went on a silent meditation retreat, about an hour into it I had the thought that just sitting there was a bit crazy. What were we all doing here anyway? Was life really so nuts that we all come together and sit with our eyes closed, saying nothing, being silent together?

I thought this was going to help me feel peaceful?

The thing that was happening is that my mind was still in look-out, alert, terminator mode. So lacking outside stimulus, it started going at it internally (which is what it was always doing anyway). Spinning off in any new direction that entered as a possible “problem” or image to consider.

No distractions. I now had myself all to myself. And I didn’t like it. In fact, I drove myself CRAZY. I found my mind incredibly fascinating and extremely unpleasant all at once. A love-hate relationship.

And it WAS NOT SILENT! JEEZUS!

Most people, even people who have practiced meditation for a long time, get a busy buzzing chattering mind. It has many things to say, ideas, suggestions. It sorts and mulls and chews on “problems”.

It is not easy to find the place in silence that is beyond the loud, noisy mind. At least not for the first hour.

But with only a little willingness….or maybe because you’ve tried everything else and nothing really works…you become able to sit quietly and watch yourself, without doing anything about it.

This is entering the experience of allowing things to be the way they are.

Can you imagine allowing everything to be as it is, as Adyashanti and other meditation teachers suggest?

It means I stay, even if I’m thinking of horrifying images, sad and despairing thoughts, memories that are terrible or full of grief. Anything the mind throws at the inner movie screen, I stay.

In life, this means that whatever happens, I don’t fight against it, wish it weren’t there. I don’t hate anything, I don’t attack reality, I don’t shake my fist at God saying “How could you!?!”

In fact, I realized by sitting in meditation that there is no one in charge, except Silence. Ask a question? Silence. Produce a bunch of noise? Silence. Make demands? Silence.

After some practice of meditation, I loved it. Only because I knew all my mind-noise was not true, unnecessary, and chaotic. It had no end and didn’t find any answers.

When I feel stress and anxiety, frustration, sadness, annoyance, and my terminator mind kicks in ready to Get-This-Problem-Resolved-Now (which is tempting but never really works) then the quickest way to peace is:

  1. The Work–answering four questions and turning my thoughts around
  2. Meditation
  3. Dance
  4. Ask Myself What I Want and Get That for Myself

The most important thing is considering, stewing in, remembering, and imagining what it would be like to Allow Everything To Be As It Is.

Just leave it all alone. No trying to change, tweak, manage something or someone. No if-only-it-were-like….it-shouldn’t-have-been….I can’t…they can’t….STOP.

See what it’s like to be Silence. If you were SILENCE, what would you do?

Love, Grace

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Pain! Ouch I Hate It!

Physical accidents, trauma, injury or death all seem to be things most of us do NOT love. Chronic pain, broken limbs, deep back aches, going through chemotherapy, something ongoing that is always there, unpleasant or horrendous, always hurting.

How do we work with inquiry and asking questions like “is it true?” when this kind of stuff is going on? These areas do not seem like ones where I can feel peaceful, accepting, open. Or can I?

Can you imagine the absurdity of saying in your hospital bed when you wake up “oh, that’s right, I lost my legs, I got burned, I have cancer, my back hurts, I’m paralyzed…and it’s not a problem.”

The other day I hurt my hip. It’s actually been an ongoing pain that’s been building for awhile, sometimes a dull ache, sometimes more burning. This time it prevented me from dancing, which I usually do twice a week.

I’ve been studying Pain for awhile…and how the mind works with it.

Humans have studied pain for decades. It’s fascinating. We talk about people having different pain thresholds. Some women report that childbirth is terribly painful, some report that it was only uncomfortable.

We also have thoughts about those people who don’t feel much pain or who don’t get sick very often are doing something right, better…they are lucky, have it easy, are blessed, are wiser.

Not only is the pain bad, but there’s something wrong with me for experiencing it in the first place!

A study was done recently by scientists trying to understand more about chronic pain, at Northwestern University in Chicago. They concluded that the emotional state of the brain, how the mind reacted to an injury, had so much to do with the experience of the injury, that they could predict who would have chronic pain after the injury, based on brain scans.

In other words, different parts of the brain got very excited, jumpy, and active in response to a physical ailment…and this made the pain last longer or hurt more. Who knows why these brains got more excitable, they just do.

So there I was yesterday with my hip, feeling very sorry for myself. Thoughts like:

  • this is the beginning of the end of my life of ease
  • I’m getting older and I will have more and more body parts that hurt
  • I don’t want to “have to” take care of this
  • it should stop hurting
  • I’m such a complainer—other people have it much worse
  • I should be grateful it isn’t some major accident
  • Quit your bellyaching!
  • BUT I HATE IT!

My attitude towards this sensation in my hip is that it is a total annoyance and irritation AND I feel very sorry for myself. And then almost instantly I’m also thinking I should stop complaining about it and ignore it and STOP feeling sorry for myself.

Now I’ve got a boxing match going on inside the mind. What do you think happens when I’m mad at the pain and mad at myself for being mad? MADNESS ALL AROUND!

Endless loop. No inquiry. Mind spinning fast. Pain appearing and re-appearing.

So, I stop and slow it down and ask myself questions. I can be a scientist studying this interesting sensation in the hip joint.

It shouldn’t hurt. Is it true? I can’t stand it. Can I absolutely know that this is true? It means I will continue to feel pain into the future, now that I’m aging. How do I react when I think this thought? This is “hurting”. Who would I be without that thought, if I didn’t think this sensation was actually hurting?

“Everything turns out to be a gift—that’s the point. Everything that you saw as a handicap turns out to be the extreme opposite. But you can only know this by staying in your integrity, by going inside and finding out what your own truth is—not the world’s truth.”~ Byron Katie in A Thousand Names For Joy

How is it a gift that I have this hip pain, for the third day in a row? Or, any physical ailments in life: broken ankle, cancer tumor cut off my leg, horrible case of mumps, chicken pox, fevers, vomiting, rashes, colds, car accident, aging.

Katie speaks of herself doing inquiry on physical deterioration of the body. She watched the mind become horrified once when she passed a very old woman at a mall. Being right inside that old woman, she thought “oh my God, I’m trapped here! I’m supposed to be the young, bright one! There’s been a mistake, I’ll never get out, I’ll be like this forever!”

Without these thoughts of being stuck, trapped, horrified….there is such openness, entering a mysterious unknown. Katie describes how her own inquiry canceled the painful thoughts out.

“….The horror was equivalent to a deep gentleness, a caressing, a full, immovable acceptance. There was no discomfort. It began…..to love itself as the old woman, and to appreciate the slow pace, the withered flesh, the pain, the stench….there was no longer even the slightest desire to be anywhere else…”~Byron Katie

As I stop dictating to myself that I shouldn’t complain, stop telling myself that this hip is awful, that I’m STUCK because of it, that I’m trapped in a body that can get sick, injured or die….then I wonder what this is all for. I’m curious. I’m gentle and kind. I listen to the voice of this pain.

“Your thoughts make you suffer more than anything else, your interpretation of how dreadful it all is….”~Eckart Tolle  

I stop inflicting more, additional pain upon myself the minute I turn my thoughts around.

I have no idea, I realize, that this hip pain means I am trapped, that it will last, or that I can’t ever dance again. I notice that I can be happy even if I feel physical pain or sickness or aging, I’ve known that always, I’ve experienced it.

I start to get excited about getting older. Feeling what happens, watching skin change, feeling messages to stop or go or do other entirely different things with movement.

What an amazing body, bringing me research into peace, awareness, awakening. 

Love, Grace

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They Can Do It Themselves—You Don’t Need To Help

I love how anything we tell a story about, anything difficult, painful or annoying… contains information about the story-teller.

We often LOVE looking with child-like innocence at the projection, the story, not at the one doing the projecting…..

Imagine being at a theater show for children, and notice how they believe everything told in the story. Even if it’s obvious to us as adults that a person in a bear costume is a human, not a bear, the kids think it’s a bear.

But we adults also envision what is being said and we think “it’s true!” We can be the same way in a movie, with tears streaming down our cheeks at a moving moment, even though we know the whole thing is made up.

When we start slowing the mind down and looking more closely at our thinking, we start to see in our own stories how it’s all about us, our own beliefs and attitudes, what we get drawn to, how we look at things, what we’ve scooped up and bought; hook, line and sinker.

We start to see that every single time we tell a story, there are holes in it where we can’t be 100% absolutely sure that our version of the story is the WHOLE TRUTH. The way we see money, family members, food, our bodies, neighbors, co-workers, colleagues….all have to do with clusters of thought that we’re thinking might be true, past experiences, gossip, what the people around us also believed.

If we question our own thinking enough, with open examination, and realize how subjective all stories are, then when we start to hear other peoples’ stories we can start to think “Man, that person should do The Work, they should question their thinking, they would be happier if they didn’t believe so resolutely that they’ve been a victim!”

Someone says “I don’t have enough money” or “I don’t have enough time” or “I don’t know enough” and they are sad, anxious or depressed….they talk about the terrible things that could happen since they don’t have enough.

Another person says “I hate political conservatives” or “this world needs to change” or “my boss is so annoying” or “the 1% are ruining the economy” and we get a sense of this person who is doing the talking…and we start to have some thoughts, you may have noticed.

Once we have started to question our own stories, we begin to see how that person over there who is suffering and telling their story is probably not seeing a whole, complete picture. They are believing painful thoughts and concepts.

You may be easily able to think about someone you know right now who is telling a tough, difficult, hurtful story to themselves. Notice what you are thinking about them:

  • they should stop taking their situation so seriously
  • they should stop complaining
  • they need nurturing, therapy, counseling, support
  • they should to The Work
  • they are too entrenched in their own story to find peace
  • they need to relax

The thing is, these are also judgments and stories ABOUT THOSE OTHER SUFFERING PEOPLE.

Doh!

I love how Byron Katie says, if you think someone else needs to do The Work, then YOU need to do The Work.

If I think my neighbor or my clients or my family members are in a terrible situation, that they can’t get out of it, that their story is horrendous and they really DO need intervention, some major miracle, or a labotomy….then I need to go back into my own story and question it.

“What really matters is always available to everyone. Nothing comes ahead of its time, and nothing has ever happened that didn’t need to happen. Bringing inquiry to people is my job. After that, there’s nothing to offer. I know that ultimately people don’t need my help. I go through the world helping people, it appears, and I’m only selfishly helping myself. When you say Help Me, I understand that. I’ve been there. but even if I could give you freedom, I wouldn’t do it. I love you too much for that. I leave your freedom to you. That’s the gift.”~ Byron Katie

Everyone is enough, everyone has all they need to find their way, to transform their stories. We may not know when or how, but everyone is on the perfect path. There they are, believing their thoughts, in our presence, so that we can question our OWN thinking.

“When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists. Next best is a leader who is loved. Next, one who is feared. The worst is one who is despised. If you don’t trust the people, you make them untrustworthy. The Master doesn’t talk, he acts. When his work is done, the people say ‘Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!'”~Tao te Ching #17

Those people close to you who are suffering….they need to know they can do it all by themselves. They are trustworthy.

I do not need to say the right and perfect thing, to plead, argue, talk, recount, explain. All I need to do is govern myself well, do my own work.

I heard the word “co-dependent” growing up, since it was popular then. Now I understand how not to be. Trust that person to take care of their own life….because they can.

Love, Grace

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Anger–Must Get Rid Of It

Today in the Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven teleclass, someone asked me how doing The Work has really changed me. The wonderful inquirer who was asking the question also said that she felt like she had done the Work often, and she didn’t feel entirely peaceful.

We wound up doing The Work in class together on the belief “I’ll never get it right”.

I remember once raising my hand at a Byron Katie event with a lot of internal pain, feeling like I had written worksheets and gone through the process of asking the Four Questions of The Work many times on the same situation….

Before I even got to say “what am I doing wrong?” which was my basic question at the core, Katie said to me “How do you know you’re supposed to be angry? You are!”

GASP! Moi? Angry?!!

It suddenly dawned on me that I was trying as hard as I could NOT to be angry. Being angry was WRONG. Unspiritual, negative, selfish, unhealthy. I had a motive with all the work I was doing “on myself” and “on others” all the time. To get Good Enough.

I had even heard that if a person was angry a lot, they could develop cancer and other diseases. Anger could bring on heart-attacks, made steam come out of your ears. It forced people to pick up arms against other people, to hit or slap.

Walking around feeling anger could create muscle tension, stress, aches, sick stomachs, poor digestion, high blood pressure.

But what if the actual ANGER itself is not terrible? It is, after all, a part of reality. It is an energy, it’s doing something….it exists. Who am I to say it shouldn’t?

Perhaps, I realized at the time, I was pushing so hard against being angry…sort of like having anger against my anger…that I wasn’t seeing its use, or benefit. It was getting STUCK.

But wait! I had a huge gigantic expectation that spiritual, good, loving, faithful people are NEVER ANGRY. I wanted to get it right.

Being a kind, gentle, loving person who is not expressing anger is an image many of us inquirers have in our minds of how we would be if we could “get there”. We would be awesome, cool, holy people. Nothing would bug us.

If you can allow yourself to write all the most vicious, nasty, hateful, mean, angry judgments down about someone who when you think about them, you feel rage…..then you have made the first step, identifying your beliefs.

Next, you can get up and do some jumping jacks and fist punches into the air and maybe yell into a pillow. It’s a lot different to feel accepting, or even grateful, for anger. If that seems like a stretch, just allowing it to be here is enough. This is deep patience.

Then you can get back to understanding what is truly going on here, right in this moment of furious emotion. No looking to replace the fury with peace with the snap of a finger…but looking with curiosity. No seeking some different state.

“To seek something, you must have at least some vague idea or image of what it is you are seeking. But ultimate truth is not an idea or an image or something attained anew. So, to seek truth as something objective is a waste of time and energy. Truth can’t be found by seeking it, simply because truth is what you are.”~Adyashanti

So when you are angry, feel it and appreciate it. What is it saying? What does it mean? What are you afraid of? What’s the worst that could happen? If that awful person keeps on doing what they’re doing or saying what they’re saying, what is terrible about it, really?

“The path of developing loving-kindness and compassion is to be patient with the fact that you’re human and that you make these mistakes. That’s more important than getting it right…If you apply patience to the fact that you can’t let go, somehow that helps you to do it. Patience with the fact that you can’t let go helps you to get to the point of letting go gradually–at a very sane and loving speed, at the speed that your basic wisdom allows you to move.~Pema Chodron

Slowing down, I allow myself in any moments of irritation to look, instead of swat it away like a fly.

Welcome, anger. Welcome, fear. Good that you’re here, so you can be seen. Because once a light shines on the troubled spots, and you can wait, stop, love yourself anyway….you may find people don’t bug you as much anymore.

It could be you are getting it right. Bumbling along, twisting to and fro, being human. In fact, I’m sure of it.

Love, Grace

 

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What If This Was Your Only Path To God?

There is an idea that humans have used for centuries to find relief. The idea is that their pain means something, that their suffering is not just random, chaotic and ridiculous, but that it is instead part of their life path. How could it be otherwise? There it is….suffering.

If this experience of life that I am having hurts sometimes, perhaps a lot of the time, it can help on a basic level to consider that what hurts is offering something of value, that I can learn from it.

The tricky part for many is when they quickly also conclude that some other great and powerful entity, that is outside themselves (maybe called God, but it could also be called Reality, the Universe, or Fate) is throwing “hard” situations into their paths so they learn.

That there is a power, we’ll call it God, that is punishing. You suffer, God doesn’t care, let’s it happen, or even creates your dilemma. We’re in a wild, uncertain world where terrible things can happen.

Byron Katie will occasionally use the phrase “if this was your only path to God, would you take it away?”

This question comes from her out of a way of thinking about God that is without fear. This God is love, peace, neutrality, beauty, silence, kindness, openness, truth. Truth. 

We like the idea of a path to this kind of God. So the thought that our pain holds a path to God helps quell the urge to panic, escape, shut down or eliminate this painful path.

We can breathe a little. You mean I might be OK in the end? You mean this is all going somewhere, and it’s good?

The phrase Katie uses helps us enter non-resitance to the situation we find so difficult. Allowing ourselves to stay with it, to look at it. To understand the truth of this situation, to see it from every angle and nuance.

Eckhart Tolle has many incredible things to say about human suffering and pain. He suggests that we have a Little Me that is very self-centered, that always thinks life isn’t good enough. Terrible things can happen.

If we get deeply into this Little Me that is all about, well, Me….then we are constantly on edge, irritated, annoyed, enraged, defensive, nervous or terrified. Always thinking about only the past and what has gone before, or the future and what should be prevented. He calls it being in the Pain Body.

At the core level, the Pain Body is screaming DANGER DANGER DANGER. It is scared out of its wits. Literally. There is no clear thinking, beliefs of imminent danger take over our entire awareness.

But what if this Pain Body experience was actually our path to God? (Whatever God is for you, you can say “Love” if you like, or “Peace”).

Eckhart Tolle himself would not be who he is today without terrible suffering as a grad student. Byron Katie would not be who she was today without years of extreme suffering into her early 40s.

Pema Chodron felt rage at her former partner and realized she couldn’t live with that kind of anger, and that set her on a path that changed her entire life. Joan Tollifson was a drug addict living on the street, near death, became sober, and grew into a beautiful spiritual teacher.

Then there are so many others who felt unrest, sadness, unhappiness, never-ending seeking, like THIS was not enough….ever….and now they are different.

A common thread is allowing everything, especially their pain, to be the way it is. Not attacking it, running from it, pretending it’s not there, doing Positive Thinking and saying affirmations. Not fighting.

This is it. Here’s the path. It’s what you are on, it’s what you’ve been living. Right in this moment, if you leave everything the way it is and drop any part of you that wants it to change….see what that feels like.

What if everything is supposed to be exactly the way it is right now, and everything has led you to this moment. Now.

“Only a huge ego could say that you’re supposed to be doing something that you’re not doing.” ~Byron Katie

Feel the relief of not needing to do anything—without a thought that you should do anything, say anything, think anything, feel anything different than THIS.

Even if the Pain Body or Bad Suffering seems to be here, Bad News, Sadness, Anger…see if you can only stop needing to do something about them. No trying to get to a peaceful state, no working on yourself. No getting over to a different Path.

Nothing wrong with THIS.

“When we realize who we are, we no longer have this endless confusion, this eternal battle with ourselves. Therefore we tend to not struggle with others or the world.”~ Adyashanti

Love, Grace