Category: Pain, Sickness and Death

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Illness As A Teacher

There is a saying which goes “there may be a gift in the wound“.

This is helpful for looking at what we see as a wound, and finding something useful about it…anything, even the smallest tiniest thing. When we can do this, we have to admit that nothing is 100% tragedy.

I have spent some time today, in response to a wonderful inquirer who asked me to do this exercise with her, to find something genuine and authentically useful about our injuries.

My knee was hurt last fall, and operated on in March. What could be good about that?

  • Several friends did internet research for me, I learned all about knee joints
  • I got to experience a truly amazing high-tech operating room
  • there were about 10 people, literally, present to help during my 20 minute procedure who all introduced themselves to me and shook my hand
  • my soon-to-be husband was not worried in the least, available, and seemed to love being of service–driving me there and back, taking care of necessities
  • it was very still and quiet in my house, lying flat on my back for a day or two
  • I feel more tender, gentle and accepting of my legs—most of the time
  • I realize how much fun I can have dancing without squatting or bending the knee far

Stephen and Ondrea Levine have studied and assisted people with dying for their entire careers, writing books on dying and meditation and mindfulness.

Stephen says, to paraphrase, that illness may be a shamanic apprenticeship….in other words, there may be a gift in illness. He is clear to say that he would not wish illness on anyone, but he would wish for people that any illness they get would be a teaching.

I had a cancer tumor on my leg. Cancer appears to run rampant in my family.

I do know one very profound gift that seems to pop into my mind about this situation. That is, my life is short and sort of doesn’t matter. I know that may sound weird. But it doesn’t matter in a good way.

“When you are ill or disabled, do not feel that you have failed in some way, do not feel guilty. Do not blame life for treating you unfairly, but do not blame yourself either. All that is resistance….Whenever any kind of disaster strikes, or something goes seriously “wrong” – illness, disability, loss of home or fortune or of a socially defined identity, breakup of a close relationship, death or suffering of a loved one, or your own impending death – know that there is another side to it, that you are just one step away from something incredible: a complete alchemical transmutation of the base metal of pain and suffering into gold. That one step is called surrender.”~Eckhart Tolle 
Surrender does not mean, I might add, to lie down on the floor and do nothing. I used to think that’s what it meant a lot of the time. No.

It means I am here with this moment as it is, I do not fight against this situation, this experience. Here I am with an imperfect knee, a hurting hip, a history of cancer, skin that looks older and has wrinkles, hair going gray at the temples.

Here I am with a mind that thinks “I don’t have much time left” or “Well, that was fun (my life)” or “it’s all down hill from here” or “I did nothing of use to the planet”.

I have to chuckle…I can’t believe any of this anymore. If you inquire, you’ll find you can’t believe it either.

What I do see is that when some part of me is complaining…thinking about how something should be other than it is (like my knee) then I’m directing a lot of warring thoughts to the situation.

It’s like I’m shaking my fist at the Universe and shouting “What gives?! Explain!! I hate this! So annoying!”

But allowing everything to be the way it is, not fighting against it, brings peace into this present place, right now. Just a big question mark. Not worry, anger, despair.

“Where I live is ‘what do I know about what is best for me?’ If I have cancer, that’s fine with me and if I don’t have cancer, that’s fine with me”.~Byron Katie

I watched Katie do this work with a man a few years ago, who had cancer growing, and actually found reasons for why this was a good thing.

Amazing world, amazing universe. Thank you illness and injury for bringing it on.
Love, Grace

Byron Katie: I want the cancer to stop growing.
Byron Katie: I want the cancer to stop growing.
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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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Relentlessly Thinking I Should Be Different

A thoughtful reader and inquirer wrote to ask me about the stress she experiences when she believes she needs to relax, lighten up, or stop working so much in order to be happy. You may the post from last week I Need To Relax To Be Successful.

This is such a great discovery, to realize that even with gentle-sounding thoughts and concepts that seem like good ideas, we can start a thread of thinking about how we could improve.

The thoughts go something like this (spoken from one who knows):

  • I should relax more
  • I should be kinder to myself and others
  • If I only knew how to calm down, my life would be more pleasant
  • I shouldn’t let that person bug me
  • If I meditated more, practiced my spiritual path more, then I would be a better person, more loving, and happier
  • I want to spread peace and not war
  • I allowed people in my life to hurt me, it’s my fault
  • If only I had a thicker skin, jeez!
  • If I could just remember to count to ten or have more patience, my kids would be happier
  • I should love myself

What I found is that when I start to get into these kinds of thoughts about how I don’t measure up to the best I could be….frustration, tiredness, low-energy, sadness, disappointment.

One of my favorite exercises in Katie’s book I Need Your Love, Is It True? is to consider the worst you have ever done. Almost everyone on the planet, upon thinking about the WORST they have ever done, feels terrible. We are sure we could have done it differently. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER.

Katie suggests that we couldn’t have done it any better. No better, no different. It went exactly the way it needed to go based on who we were, who they were, what we were all believing at the moment.

We were innocently believing our thoughts. That was the way of it, that is the way of it. We were doing the best we could have done.

Notice how the mind will say “OK, I did the best I could in that moment…and IT WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH!”

You don’t really have to know consciously what you are actually believing, with perfect wording. You can question simply that you are not doing it well, that you could be doing better.

Who would you be without the thought that you are not good enough at relaxing? What if you didn’t evaluate yourself as needing to improve in any way at all, right in this moment?

What if you shouldn’t even love yourself right now? What if it is not possible to be a better parent? What if you are not awakened because you are not supposed to be? What if you are not successfully raking in money or working at a good job because your current status is just right?

“All that’s required of me is that I be good enough just to sit in this chair now. It doesn’t matter what my mind says…..Only a huge ego could say that you’re supposed to be doing something that you’re not doing. If it’s required, just start moving toward it–get the job done. And if you can’t get the job done, it’s because it’s not required.” ~ Byron Katie 

It is so strange for the mind to not have an improvement plan. But how amazing to find out what happens without one.

I was always so sure NOTHING would happen, or BAD things would happen without an improvement plan. Just try for a few minutes, a few hours, seeing what happens if you have no plan, if you don’t know what is supposed to happen now.

See what happens if all that is required is being you, no “making” yourself do, think, say, or be anything. You may find that life begins to live itself, without all the stressful thinking.

Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return. Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity. If you don’t realize the source, you stumble in confusion and sorrow.  When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death come, you are ready. Tao Te Ching #16

Don’t worry about not being where you’d like to be, yet. You are a part of all that moves in turmoil and then returns to balance, to the common source of serenity. You are on your way. You are supported.

Love, Grace

Wonderful Teleclass!

“Being anchored in doing The Work with something regular, and hearing other people’s thinking helped me see/feel/hear my own…wonderful!”~ JCN, Australia 

Accepting Where You Are:

“I loved Grace’s sweet facilitations and exercises to find blocks, her accepting presence and how she affirms everyone’s process…” ~ Money, Work and Business teleclass participant

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Secret True Confession Body Shyness

Dear Inquirers,

Secret Confession: I am shy, embarrassed, protective and nervous about going naked in broad daylight! People do this at Breitenbush Hotsprings (where I was just co-teaching a retreat).

Wow what an absolutely fantastic 4-day retreat, despite this Unrevealed Secret! I am once again amazed at the power and love found in the middle of a group gathered to do inquiry. People came from across the whole country, from corners of the US, and it was sooooo sweet and incredible!

So here is the True Confession: I never went in the naked hotsprings during daylight hours. Only at night under the stars when everyone was murmuring quietly in hushed voices.

And no one could see in detail my imperfect BODY! OMG!

At this retreat, we did the work first on one troubling relationship that has brought angst, sadness, anger, frustration or stress of any kind, as far back into the past as desired.

But what about that troubling relationship with the BODY??!! That dastardly betraying imperfect lump of flesh!

We began our work on the Body part way into the retreat. As we all wrote down all the negative, stressful thoughts we have about our bodies, the laughter welled up. The sheer volume on our lists of what is wrong with the body was incredible.

Too many wrinkles, too much fat here, not enough fat there, too many veins, too much swelling, pain in the back, in the legs, in the neck, gray hair, aching joints, lumps in the wrong places, injuries, dislocations, sagging skin, cellulite-covered thighs, bruises, poor digestion, needing to pee too often.

The body is a wealth of stressful thoughts. My relationship with this body is a profound snapshot of my relationship with my life.

What does it mean about us that we have these flaws?

What am I believing it means about me that I have jiggly and lumpy thighs or thick knees, that skin is starting to wrinkle and sag in many places on this body of mine?

What do I believe other people will see and think if I’m running around naked at the hotsprings in broad daylight!??!

People will think (as if I know): “Oh…I thought she was younger than that….oh, I thought she was in better physical condition that that….oh, I thought she was more disciplined and closer to perfect….oh, I thought she was nicer looking than that….”

They will not like me, they will not be interested in me, they will not think I have anything to offer, they will not be attracted to me, they will not want to know me better, they will dismiss me, they will be bored.

Yes, it’s that petty and ridiculous.

But oh the beauty of discovering this long-held true secret that started so long ago, somewhere in childhood, when I began to believe that I was all my body and not my inner soul. When I started to believe this body could be attractive or ugly to others, and that this could mean I had company or loneliness. When I started to believe that this body needed to be protected at all costs, because if it got sick or died, I would suffer.

What if being sick, having pain, having a flaw, or dying is NOT suffering?

“Every story we tell is about body-identification. Without a story, there’s no body. When you believe that you are this body, you stay limited, you get to be small, you get to see yourself as apparently encapsulated in one separate form. So every thought has to be about your survival or your health or your comfort or your pleasure, because if you let up for a moment, there would be no body-identification.” ~Byron Katie

 

What if I have been focused on the body so I wouldn’t have to be limitless expansive emptiness…something that is entirely beyond the body and beyond “me”? What if that’s the Real Secret Confession?

 

Love,

Grace

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Dying Is Exciting

In 1000 Names For Joy written by Steven Mitchell and Byron Katie together, the preface is by Steven, who is Katie’s husband. He is also a famous translator of mystic and ancient works and translated the Tao Te Ching in 1986.

Katie, who had no background in spiritual teachings and studies, asked Steven what Taomeant. He writes that he told her it meant “the way” or “what is”.

So I have a story of the world. We all do. The interesting thing to notice is how this reality changes, constantly in fact.

And yet some of the painful beliefs, if left to their own devices, repeat themselves over and over and get locked into a well-worn path, like the way footsteps get sunken right into stone steps of castles and stairwells that have been there for hundreds and hundreds of years.

If you took a rock and pressed a pin across its surface every day for a year in the same spot, without even much pressure or effort, at the end of the year you would have a groove right across the rock.

The only way out that I’ve really found that feels genuine and authentic, is to look at what my beliefs about the world are, especially the ones that feel depressing, frightening, or frustrating.

Here are a few beliefs I started thinking when I was really young:

  • Bad things can happen unexpectedly, randomly, any moment, night or day
  • Everyone dies, and this is frightening because we don’t know what it’s like after death
  • Dying hurts
  • People can be dangerous, they hurt us emotionally or physically
  • I’m not sure what is really true…and this is alarming! I’m supposed to know!
  • If I don’t inhabit this body, then I might not exist anymore….and that is scary
  • I have to do positive things, get positive things, learn positive things, think positive things if I want a happy life
  • God doesn’t care that bad things happen, since they happen (is God busy? mean? lackadaisical? uninterested? what gives?)

Steven Mitchell goes on to say in the preface of 1000 Names that no one knows how to “let go”. Here come the thoughts. You’re already thinking them, you can’t stop them. They flow in like a river.

But we can question the thoughts that produce suffering. As a matter of fact, it seems this is all we can do. Either believe the ideas that come along, or question them. This means looking in a deep way, with courage.

Some of us a hard nuts to crack, so the courage to look and investigate our thinking comes only after very acute suffering (I speak for myself!). In fact, for me, I would say that I’m not sure I even am all that courageous.

If something besides questioning my thoughts had worked that seemed a little easier, then I probably would have taken it. Like a pill. But as I’ve mentioned before, none of the usual devices ever worked, and they sure didn’t last long. Everything that relieved pain did it only temporarily, and then that thing itself caused MORE pain.

So what if I look at the turnarounds to these basic childhood beliefs:

  • Things happen right when they need to, it’s OK, I don’t have to know ahead of time, and by the way, good things can happen randomly as well, day or night
  • Everyone dies and it’s exciting, who am I to say it’s “bad”
  • Dying does not hurt, dying heals
  • People are not dangerous at all, they can’t hurt us emotionally or physically–we always heal, we always make discoveries, people help us
  • I’m not supposed to know, the world runs itself without my opinion
  • If I don’t exist in this body, what’s the problem? It’s “scary” if there isn’t a Grace Bell in the universe anymore? Really?
  • I don’t have to do anything, have anything, learn anything, or think anything to have a happy life
  • I have no idea what God is doing and maybe it doesn’t matter if God cares or not, all is actually quite well…and by the way, maybe those things that I think are bad that are happening all over the place are not actually bad.

Katie says that once she questioned her painful beliefs, they lost their power to cause pain. They became funny. They stopped even arising anymore.

What if the pain is a message saying “you know, you could stop dragging that pin across the rock every single day” or “pay attention, you might be believing something that is not actually true”.

Even the big, all-encompassing, great beliefs like “dying is bad”.

Much Love,
Grace

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Is It True That It Hurt?

“The greatest thing you can do is to tell the truth.”~Benjamin Smythe

“No legacy is so rich as honesty”~William Shakespeare

If you can not find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many great authors and teachers speak about telling the truth. And we all think about the concept of “truth” from a pretty young age, maybe the first time we get surprised by an idea, a person, or an experience that isn’t how we thought it was. We find out the “real” truth.

In the dictionary the word “truth” in English comes from the words “fidelity” and “faithful”. Looking at the word further, it is described as honest, just, steadfast, loyal, legitimate, accurate, typical.

All these words are descriptions of something existing, and then staying the same, holding that pattern. Accuracy even means fitting or forming a standard pattern.

If something moves off a pattern, if it changes from being loyal or faithful to one way, then we think either the new experience is NOT true (doesn’t fit what we’ve known so far) OR the new experience is the REAL truth and we were just not seeing the whole pattern before, we were missing something.

So something difficult happens in our lives. Let’s say we feel physical pain.

Today I was working with a client who had the thought that someone had hurt her physically. We wound up looking at the concept “it hurt”.

When we do the Work the first question is “is it true?”

YES YES YES! With physical pain, boy, that really feels true. I remember how it hurt. I howled, I cried, I had to stop doing what I was doing, I was rushed to the hospital, there was this energy called Pain. And I wanted to make sure to never, ever, ever be in that situation ever again.

I look again at this question to see what it means to ask “is it true?”….. It means I know, absolutely, that when that thing happened, then the sensation that followed, the one I am calling “hurt”, it was accurate, typical, steadfast, honest, legitimate, following a pattern.

Can I really know that it hurt? I’m not sure. I’m calling it “hurt”. What is this thing, this sensation of being hurt?

We use “I got hurt” when describing emotional pain and physical pain. Something came into our world, a person or a freight train or a table corner, and there was a sensation “ouch” and THEN the response was stress: sadness, despair, terror, anger, irritation.

Byron Katie says “pain is always on its way out”.

The thing presents itself and BOOM, BAM, POW, KNOCK, KICK, OUCH and then people are really upset.

What would it be like if I wasn’t so upset about the hurt moment? What if that sensation that I’m calling Pain isn’t quite what I thought? What if I’ve always seen how others react, and it looks terrible, but I haven’t asked myself yet?

Often with Pain and Hurt, which feel so very true, comes the immediate thoughts to avoid it, arrest it, attack it, make it so it never happens again.

Telling the truth about the sensation of pain and hurt is an amazing investigation. It could indeed be the greatest thing you could ever do, speaking from exactly where you are.

Find out what you think will happen next, if you opened to the sensation you are calling “hurt”. Find out if you really can’t stand it. Find out if you really do want to avoid it forever, stop it, shut it down.

What would it be like, to not be Against Pain?

“Both pleasure and pain are projections…after inquiry, the experience of pain changes. The joy that was always beneath the surface of pain is primary now, and the pain is underneath it. People who do the Work stop fearing pain. They relax into it. They watch it come and go, and they see that it always comes and goes at the perfect moment”.
 

Much Love, Grace

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Does A Friendly Universe Include Cancer?

One of my best friends summed up the experience of addiction recently: More.

This moment, this place, this experience is not good enough, long enough, big enough, full enough. It needs to change. Now.

Eckhart Tolle writes about changes and shifts in life that “some changes look negative on the surface, but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”

I find that I used to react to change kind of like this on the inside:

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! (picture a person falling off a 2000 foot cliff)

I confess, I might have even had this kind of reaction for things as small as missing an exit when driving somewhere on the freeway. Or the phone ringing. Or realizing I’m at the gym without my towel.

Now I really do feel more relaxed, waaaay more of the time. Something changes and I think so soon “Oh! I guess it’s going THAT way…oh, I wonder what will happen now?!” It’s very subtle, but what a different way of walking through the day.

With the Work, we begin to think ‘What could be the advantage here? What’s friendly about this situation, that seems so unfriendly when I first look at it? What is interesting, curious, an advantage even?’

I think about the time I learned I had a cancerous tumor on my leg. Here is what I found so far have been benefits of this experience:

  • I realize my body is doing it’s thing, and it’s not me. I am something beyond this body
  • my former husband and children brought over roses after my operation to cut the tumor out
  • my mother showed up to drive me to the surgery, and take me home, and I realize how she is always there when I really need her, always 100% willing (thank you mom)
  • I know all this is temporary in a way I didn’t before, this body is going to end in its own time, just like everyone else—I’m not getting out alive (ha!)
  • it didn’t hurt that much, the pain left pretty quickly, I could stand it
  • saying I had 45 stitches sounds pretty cool, I survived it
  • I have done the Work on cancer and I realize it’s just doing its thing, living its life, shining its star….I don’t have to hate it, in fact, it feels exciting to feel open to it just like anything else (cancer! my new best friend! OK, maybe not quite but how incredible to even contemplate!)

Living a turned around painful concept is an amazing and exciting practice. It feels creative, crazy, fun, playful…entering into the previously unknown. What if things are not as I believed….what if it’s friendly out there?

I feel the thrill of being beyond this ME, this individual person, this being with a physical body. This is literal, not a conceptual thing…it’s like Life is happening, I’m in the middle of it, and when this body is done, Life will still be creatively being itself.

Adyashanti, the spiritual teacher I mention often who I so enjoy, says “the very thing that’s animating you is very mysterious. It’s not good or bad, it’s simply a mystery. As long as you’re trying to improve yourself or break yourself down, you’re missing this incredible mystery. And it’s always been there. As far back as you can possibly remember. We look away from it because the noise in the mind is so much more willing to tell you who you are. “I’m a woman, I’m good, not so good”…very willing to tell you about yourself. The spiritual journey is about getting fascinated with this mystery rather than the little me.    

Change comes along and something new emerges, who knows what. Unknown, magical. Just questioning the horrors, injustices, disease, death….what else is there besides all that? Could this be a friendly universe? I used to be so positive that it wasn’t, or so it seemed. But I couldn’t really know it was true, not even before I had the Work.  

Now, even if I’m unsure or afraid, I see if I can find examples of how the thing I thought of as terrifying might have something to offer. This is not playing be-positive games, this is seeing what’s actually true for me. Wow, I really don’t know if it’s 100% terrible or not. And this alone is lighter, even if I don’t think I LOVE something.

Once upon a time, there was this bad experience that entered the kingdom….what exciting adventure will happen next, if I remember that it’s just a story? It’s a Mystery. 

Much Love,

Grace

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Questioning Death

Byron Katie says that it’s not necessary to question your wonderful, happy stories. Your inspiring stories, your joyful stories. Those are working for us, we don’t worry about them. The Work is about looking at painful, stress-producing, terrible stories.

Still, one of Katie’s wonderful questions (and other philosophers and teachers as well) is “who would you be without your story?” It’s a pretty huge, wide open question. I find that both the “good” stories and the “bad” stories are becoming less easy to define the more I do The Work.

Some of the most amazing changes for me have come out of having cancer, recovering from an eating disorder, being in love and out of love, losing all my money and many of my possessions, or someone close to me to “dying”.

Last night I attended “Parent Night” for my 17 year old son’s driver’s education class. The teacher went over laws, how we parents should help with teaching our kids to drive, reminders of how the licensing system works.

And then he said “now we’re going to see a little movie about the dangers of inexperienced teens driving”.

Oh no…..I hate this story.

In the movie was film footage from a car accident where there were only teens in the car. I see the body of a boy lying face down on the street, I notice his big athletic shoulders and white t-shirt, and there is a pool of blood extending far around him as his body lies still. A fireman puts a tarp over him, the camera keeps moving. There are other bodies, too.

Today I see the movie scene again in my mind. It’s how the mind seems to work. When something is particularly troubling, it seems to repeat the image over and over again. I saw the film clip once last night and that accident scene lasted probably 2 minutes…but now I’ve shown it to myself  probably 1000 times in the last 15 hours, and I was asleep for 7 of those hours!

I even hate telling this story, I don’t want to make others sad, remind them of troubling situations, or admit that I felt like crying and sobered just by seeing that film. But I  can only be worried about telling this story IF I really think it’s TRUE that it’s a entirely tragic story.

One of the most profound experiences in human life is when people overcome very horrifying, dramatic, powerful, life-changing events. What do we mean when we say “overcome”?

For me it feels like the deepest awareness of surrender, of not having control. Difficult events happen. Things that produce profound grief, mental anguish, torment. I can’t sleep, I think about it over and over. I feel numb. Before I had the Work this repeated itself for years. I’d wonder about the meaning of life itself, how can such things happen? It is all so frightening and terrible. Death is shocking, and an accident is a tragedy.

First question: Is It True? My answer: Yes!

I pause…Can I absolutely know that it’s true that the accident I viewed was 100% tragedy? Can I know that they all suffered, or the parents suffered constantly, or that those kids should have lived longer?

How do I react when I believe that this thing was such an awful story, was so terrible? When I think about it, I am overwhelmed with emotion, pain, stress, anger, grief. I think about never driving. I am actually scared, even though nothing has actually happened to me, personally.

So who would I be without the thought? This is not a form of denial, I’m not  pretending the accident didn’t happen….just questioning what would it be like if I could even just rest in the moment of not thinking of it as 100% horrific.

What kind of action do I take when I realize I’m actually entirely safe right now?

How do I live when I realize that every day, people die, some of them in car crashes, and I don’t know why, and will never know why. Some of them are teenagers. Have I noticed that people of all ages die? Have I actually noticed that EVERYONE dies? I am arguing with Reality by saying “that shouldn’t happen”.

“When you argue with Reality, you lose…” suggests Katie.

Tears come, and I feel grateful for being alive right now. Grateful for all the amazing people who arrive at accidents and help clean them up. Grateful that I’ve seen my children live, so far, all the way to teenagers. Grateful that now, my son is going on this adventure in life where he is learning to move his body from point A to point B in a really amazing thing called a car.

Who would we be without the thought that death is terrible and frightening?

Much love, Grace

Posted on

Non Superbowl Suicide Survival Testimonial

I was going to write an e-mail that had something to do
with the upcoming Superbowl…maybe about how powerful
our internal “winning and losing” can be…not just in fueling
the multi-billion-dollar sports industry…

But in arguments and power struggles with the people we
dearly love and cherish…that start as innocent differences of
opinion…but that then escalate…almost with a life of their
own…into winning and losing that hurts and attacks.

But I got this e-mail in response to the one Friday about
cravings and trying to fill ourselves and our lives with other things…

…like food, sex, money, looking beautiful, being smart and getting
lots of degrees, exercise, power, enough approval to make the
pain stop…it’s all the same thing.
———
Dear Grace,

I had tears in my eyes when I was reading your e-mail from yesterday.

I could really see how your struggle with food and eating was just
like my attempts to do enough, and learn enough when I was
in my early twenties.

I was innocently trying to make myself OK, but didn’t know how.

I tried with all my strength but I just couldn’t ever succeed at what
I was trying to do which wasn’t anything all that unusual.

I was in such despair and depression after trying over and over
that I just couldn’t try any more and I couldn’t see that my struggle
would ever end.

I finally took sleeping pills and booze, to make sure it was enough
to kill me because no matter what, I didn’t want to go through this anymore.
My mom found me and I was rushed to the hospital
and was in a coma for a couple days.

I woke up and was then angry to still be alive and on top of everything
else, I would now have to face the embarrassment of having
tried to commit suicide.

Like you, and so many people I’ve talked to, I’ve done a life time
of seeking with every therapy, meditation technique, prayer, success
seminar, religion, book, practice, soul searching, journaling, and
trying to find answers from people I thought could provide them.

It seems that I learned something from everything, but with doing
The Work these last years, it seems that all my previous searching
makes sense and I have compassion for myself and what I was
doing and though I still struggle with many things, I notice a
deepening sense of peace and little by little, struggle less and less.

I find that working alone and with others in teleclasses and the
helpline and with friends who do The Work, I have a common
language of the soul to continue this process.

Sometimes there are periods where I actually don’t struggle
or strain at all.

It’s not a big mystical thing like I thought it would be.

But it is the greatest gift and miracle I could ever imagine to
just feel OK as an ordinary person.

–A friend in The Work and in Life.
—————–
I love hearing from this dear fellow traveler about his own life
journey.

Come join one of the upcoming teleclasses, all listed here. We
laugh, we cry, we investigate….amazing!

Love,
Grace

Posted on

Bare Naked Heart

Although it was scary at first (and still
is at times), doing The Work with others
and allowing them to see where I hide from
the world and myself, is one of the most liberating
things I’ve ever done…and continue to do….

…my heart…bare and naked!

So…here’s some of MY latest work.

Which I’m showing you here for a 2 reasons.

One is, to help dispel the myth that people who’ve
been “in” The Work for a long time are in some
way “different,” more “evolved,” or “superior.”

If anything, the longer you’ve been in The Work,
the thoughts you work on seem even MORE petty,
trivial, and ridiculous.

And I guess the 2nd reason is sort of the same.

To remind you that we’re all working on the same
thoughts and can learn from each other’s work.

I continue to marvel at how everyone’s work
in my classes…is MY work, too.

I’m also amazed at the courage, integrity, and
innocence of “us.”

My clients and class members inspire ME!

With that said, here’s my one liner. I’ll give
you the whole thing over the next couple days
in a thumbnail form (not all the scribbling, doodles,
and arrows in the margins of my notebook):

“He/She should stop hurting”

I look out into the world, I talk with the most
amazing, beautiful people, and sometimes I feel
sad that they are “hurting” or suffering; grieving,
smoking, drinking, overeating, hopeless, full of despair,
cheated, lost, desperate, suicidal, afraid…

They are sad, so I am sad.

Now that’s rather…funny really. Stay tuned for how
I work with this thought. And write me about your
experience of working it as well.

We’re all in this together.

Love, Grace