Author: Grace Bell

One of the most interesting exercises and invitations to us all as we do The Work and self-inquiry….

….is to wonder what it would be like to “live” a potent turnaround.

As you probably know….

….the turnarounds are all the opposite angles, perspectives and views to our stressful beliefs.

“He should give me flowers” becomes “he should not give me flowers” and “I should give him flowers” and “I should give myself flowers.”

We sit with these crazy opposites and find examples of how they are also true.

It doesn’t mean any of them are the “right” answer.

They’re like trying on completely different coats, or wearing a different pair of shoes (or moccasins, as the ancient wisdom native saying goes).

Sometimes, we’re hit with the implications of a turnaround, and we might feel great excitement in turning our life situation inside out into something new and different.

The situation that seems so very threatening and awful….

….with a turnaround seems challenging, but possible.

Or, super thrilling!

Or, hilarious!

We get to ask this awesome question: What If I Lived This Turnaround?

What if I actually went into the flower shop, and bought myself the most gorgeous bunch of flowers in the whole place?

Instead of holding onto my thought that HE should be the one doing the flower-buying.

If it can start with something simple, like buying myself just the thing I always wanted someone else to buy….

….what else might be possible to turnaround?

What if I really could bring something different to life, even out of the tragic thing I experienced?

Yesterday I got two sweet and brilliant examples of living turnarounds right before my eyes.

The first was….

….getting to talk with an amazing woman who has clearly lived an astonishing turnaround in her life after giving birth to a baby with down syndrome 28 years ago (Debra Ruh).

I was so moved by her lifetime example of turning her difficult experience into something beautiful, I interviewed her to share it with Peace Talk listeners.

(You can download this Episode 106 of Peace Talk on itunes right here).

The other example of a living turnaround yesterday was…..me.

I led a retreat online, with people dialing in using their phones or computers, for three hours about questioning love stories that hurt.

I shared my biggest painful love story of divorce (that has turned into a blessing).

You know what the living turnaround is?

That I was leading a Valentine’s Prep Day retreat online, where people came from all across the United States, Europe, Australia….

….and this is what I do for a living now.

I join with others to question stressful thoughts.

I get messages like these….both of which I also received in emails yesterday:

I had the thought….wow….

….it’s bragging to share these beautiful comments.

But my life is full of these kinds of expressions of love now. Full of thoughtful, incredible people so sincere about questioning their suffering.

Who would you be if you lived one of your turnarounds?

If you opened up to the thing that happened, that incident, that relationship….

….could now morph into something spectacular, or new?

I was once on staff at a School for The Work and was partnered with a woman who was very distraught about a horrible tragedy in her life.

She had been the driver of a car, on a family vacation, and the tires had suddenly blown out (they were later recalled for all these types of vehicles) causing the SUV to flip wildly off the road.

The accident killed her husband, one of her daughters, and the best friend of her other daughter.

In her path of healing, at a future point in her life, she founded an organization to help people handle the shock of sudden death, including helping firefighters and police officers deliver shocking news to families after accidents.

I cried with her, as we did The Work together, as she undid the terrible pain one level further.

We could both already see, in that inquiry, how stunning it was to see what came out of what seemed awful. It was something helpful to humanity, to her community.

Love prevailed.

She’s an inspiration to people of overcoming accidental death and living an incredible life beyond beliefs about how reality should be.

Just like Debra Ruh, the woman I spoke with on Peace Talk.

Now….my own experiences have never been so dramatic.

But I certainly never could have dreamed I’d get to question my thinking, talk with other truly powerful people on a daily basis, or have three hours fly by while asking and answering questions, and turning suffering around into blessings.

What turnaround are you living right now?

Meditate on what it might look like, if you did turn what you’re imagining around.

Let it come in as an idea, an inspirational thought.

You don’t have to know right now….let it come to you.

Let it take as long as it takes.

“To exclude anything that appears in your universe is not love. Love joins with everything. It doesn’t exclude the monster. It doesn’t avoid the nightmare–it looks forward to it.” ~ Byron Katie

“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.” ~ Ben Okri

Last night there were emails flying around about a celebration my family gathers for every year that extends from many generations back.

It’s called Easter.

It’s a super fun and meaningful time of gathering.

Somehow the true, deep spirit of spring, renewed life, starting fresh, the promise of growth, revitalization, rebirth, returning warmth, resurrection out of suffering….and family connecting together in a really loving way, all show up in this day for me.

I also love something I found out at some point in my forties that completely surprised me.

Easter, every year, is determined by the moon.

When I heard it, I said something like….that can’t be right?

Seriously?

Easter is figured out every year by the first full moon after the spring equinox?

That sounds too astrological or earthy or something. Too ancient.

Are you pulling my leg?

It’s true, though.

Easter is the first Sunday, after the first full moon, after the vernal equinox (the change from winter to spring on March 21st). Jewish passover is the first full moon after the vernal equinox. I know there’s all kinds of information about Julian calendars and Gregorian calendars and proposals to always make Easter the Second Sunday of April and many other ideas about the date of the holiday….

….but I was startled by something that up to that point it seemed so laid out in stone about What We Do and What We Believe (from my church growing up)….

….being determined by the moon.

The moon is part of a natural, wild world far beyond humans. It’s there and we study it, explore it, wonder about it.

It feels entirely mysterious.

I guess I never noticed how the date jumped around to various spring-ish Sundays while growing up.

I was like the moon as a child, as so many of us are.

The number of the date doesn’t really matter. That’s not what we’re celebrating. The calendar simply marks something as the time it happened.

It brought to my attention a place I was potentially wrong about my childhood religion.

I had thoughts about how mind-and-rules-and-commandment oriented it all was…..but this was evidence to the contrary!

So once again, next month my family is celebrating Easter together for a whole day the way we’ve been doing for ages.

And it turns out, the Abundance, Desire and The Work Retreat I accidentally scheduled for that very same weekend.

I wouldn’t have known until a third person said they couldn’t make it, and really wanted to, and calendar checking occurred, and these discoveries.

It caused a thought or two to flicker through my mind, like a racehorse.

You should have checked the dates better. You’re no good at scheduling. Didn’t you say you were going to hire administrative help this year? What’s the hold up? Can’t you do anything right? Maybe you should just cancel altogether. You’re already doing the April Eating Peace retreat. Jeez.

Have you ever noticed that voice says “you” like it’s talking TO YOU?

This is a fascinating thing to notice.

Who is that voice, anyway?

Where is it coming from?

I’ve noticed all my life….it doesn’t feel entirely like it’s me. I feel like the one hearing it.

At the Mental Cleanse about six weeks ago, a beautiful young woman got up in the chair on stage, with Byron Katie, to question her thoughts.

She had a very mean, vicious voice in her head and the thoughts she had written down were about this horrible, troubling voice.

She said it had a male gender.

By the end of the inquiry session doing The Work, Katie and this woman were laughing about the Voice.

I don’t mean to make light of this very difficult and VERY frightening experience, to have a violent or mean voice dictating and shouting at you from within your own mind….

….but how astonishing to be able to hear it as the voice of something that is not out to destroy you, but to find out more about what it wants, what it means, what it’s saying.

To actually be open to listening to it.

There was a moment between Katie and the young woman, where Katie suggested to her after some dialogue and awareness and insights….

….Doesn’t this make it easier, to invite the voice in rather than be so terrified of it and want it destroyed? Then, if it says for you to break your arm, (or something “mean” like that), you can say back “Easy for you to say, you don’t have a body!”

I loved it.

You get to treat that critical voice like it’s your neurotic friend, trying his best, doing his best to help bring peace to your situation.

Rather than take on the very same energy of trying to kill it, suppress it, shut it up forever.

Isn’t that approach, after all, WAR?

When you hate your own critical voice, or try to help other people stop theirs, then you’re treating these voices like they treat you.

As enemies.

So maybe the voice in my head is helping me realize….

….I really could use some administrative support and to stop thinking I need to do it all myself.

And reminding me to lighten up, everything is OK and just write to the people already enrolled and see if they can make a switch.

Why not? These things go imperfectly sometimes.

Which is actually what this whole Abundance, Desire and The Work Retreat is truly all about.

It goes like this…..

I have a vision. It’s in the future. I want that condition, thing, person, situation, clarity, dream, adventure.

I want money, a soul mate, enlightenment, restored health, a youthful body, wealth, glory, fame, success, to be thin, to be free.

Usually in my life, I have an urge to go get it.

I start to run towards the thing.

It looks like THAT (see image in head of wonderful thing in the future). It looks like a perfect retreat, on those perfect dates, with the perfect people showing up in the perfect numbers.

But now….instead of simply assuming it’s true, that it’s what I really want, it’s my desired destination, it’s the end goal….

….we can explore a little, instead.

What will this vision bring me, when I have it?

What else would I have, if I had it?

What would I no longer have, if I had that future desired thing?

What would “abundance” really feel like, look like, smell like, taste like…..

…..BE like?

Anything can be the focus of desire.

Even “awakening” and a mind that works differently, one without a critical voice, for example.

But who would you be without the belief that you can only feel that ultimate pleasure, success, abundance, clarity, love, bliss, joy or peace WITH that condition you’re dreaming of?

It’s strange for the mind to contemplate.

And yet….

….how brilliant to consider who I am without the thought I need “x” to fulfill me.

At the Abundance and Desire and The Work Retreat, everyone gets to identify that thing they want, and not give it up, or try to get rid of it, or live without it, or pretend you don’t want it.

Instead, you get to see why you want it, what you expect, and what you think’s missing right now, that this other thing would improve.

You get to track your thoughts, but even more profound….

….you get to see how you want to feel.

You get to give yourself the gift of feeling, maybe even in the now.

You get to feel, and be, what you want, or get a sense of opening up to the joy of desire as a practice, rather than experiencing desire as sad, frustrating, or wrong.

In the past, I felt so embarrassed about wanting money so much, when I had so little.

Ick, how can I write a worksheet on money and how much I believe it would help me feel secure, safe, proud, powerful, cared for and solid?

It turned out, the conflict within was the thing that really hurt the most. The resistance to my own desires, and trying to kill the voice that said “I want!”

Slowing down to take a look at the image desired in the future, and the associated feelings, and inquiring deeply….

….allowed me to see the peace always possible in the present.

Right now.

To make friends with reality, to feel the support of Now.

Isn’t that what Loving What Is, is all about?

And the fun thing is….

….feeling abundance, joy, bliss, love and peace right now only brings more of it.

Wow.

If you’re curious about what blocks your own freedom, peace or love….

….if you want to meet your desire with friendliness, not upset….

….join me next month in Seattle at my cute Goldilocks Cottage Friday evening March 18 through Sunday 4:30 pm March 20. ($295 for the whole weekend).

Join me next month in Seattle at my cute Goldilocks Cottage, Friday evening March 18 through Sunday March 20. New dates! New location! If you’re traveling from out of town, I can give you recommendations of places to stay, and there may be others who would enjoy having you at their home. There’s also some sleeping bag space in Goldilocks Cottage. Commuters can carpool.

You might even discover what you thought happened, like the way Easter has been scheduled for thousands of years……didn’t.

Exciting! Hands clapping! Now!

“There is no here, no there; infinity is right before your eyes.” ~ Seng-Ti’an

Much love, Grace