Category: The Work of Byron Katie

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Eat, Sleep and Cry, Oh My!

A lovely inquirer and reader wrote to me this past weekend. She had a common dilemma. One I experienced frequently in the past, from even before I knew about the simple steps of The Work.

“I want to know how to find the thought that makes me want to EAT, SLEEP AND CRY right now!”

There I would be, overwhelmed with feeling, wanting to shut down, disappear, sleep, desiring freedom, peace, anxious, annoyed, flustered, confused.

Oh boy, ingesting something would be good right now, shift the energy for sure.

What do we humans do when we feel confused or overwhelmed?

We can start from the most simple place. It seems difficult to find the thought(s). But that itself can be such a trap.

  • I have to find the perfect thought to question
  • I can’t find any stressful beliefs right now
  • There is a thought here that is disturbing, but I don’t know what it is
  • I feel like drinking, eating, sleeping, zoning out, watching TV, escaping
  • I can’t identify anything I am thinking except that I want to change, right now!
  • I am confused
  • This is terrible, I hate feeling this way
  • I can’t stand this

Confusion itself can have about a million stressful, negative, painful thoughts associated with it. So the internal process blossoms from a little hum into a five-piece quintet, into a full blown symphony. In about 10 seconds.

Byron Katie says that the way we can tell that something is bothering us, is that we feel stress, and when we feel stress, we are believing something that IS NOT ACTUALLY TRUE for us. So, stress = believing untrue thoughts.

The more stress, the more I know I am repeating thoughts inside my own mind in my own story that if examined, I discover I don’t actually believe afterall.

It gets louder when I am repeating thoughts more frequently, without questioning them, that are not true for me.

If you are used to pounding yourself with untrue thoughts, without questioning them, then you get used to the process of experiencing a kind of zero-to-1000 MPH in less than 60 seconds, much faster than any vehicle. Rocket speed!

So I wrote back to the reader, and I suggested she write down whatever she was thinking, for 15 minutes if at all possible, but if she could only do it for three, then that is good enough.

I am someone who tried EVERYTHING to get some immediate relief from busy stressful thinking. A junkie for relief. I was confused and upset…but I also did NOT want to work.

Why? Because I didn’t think I really had good answers to the questions offered for self-inquiry. I didn’t think I was good enough, powerful enough, interesting enough.

I didn’t think that finding my own way through the jungle would actually lead me anywhere. My view of myself was pretty twisted. I’m a rebellious loser. Too smart for my own good. Too egotistical. Too blind.

I thought I needed help, I thought I was in need of additional input. So that kept me looking Out There for answers. I thought they would be quicker.

The thing is, the answers and authors and teachers I encountered that I felt positive about, and even the ones I didn’t, all led me back to….ME.

But wait, I am the loser who is less-than-perfect who is trying to find answers. Jeez! I hate this Loopy Cycle!

Forget all that. Or even if you can’t forget (not a problem really, overall) then just take only this moment and see if you can trust that whatever is going on in your mind is not Beyond Confusion, or impossible, or hopeless.

It’s just there, being the thinking-feeling-machine trying to do its job.

Here in this moment, it is good enough. It is enough. You can write. You can put some of your numerous stressful beliefs down on paper. Only do it for 60 seconds if that’s all you can dream of doing. Before you go drink or eat or smoke, even better.

These thoughts are GOLD. They may look boring, stupid, ridiculous, horrifying, mean, vicious or despairing. But let that voice have its say anyway.

Then, you will have what you are thinking right there in the moment. You can go backwards into what you were thinking 10 minutes before you started feeling most overwhelmed. What about an hour before, or earlier in the day?

Did anything happen that threatened your peace? Did you remember something? Did someone say something that was bothersome?

Let yourself write whatever comes along in that stressful moment. “I’m lonely, I hate my life, I need more money, he shouldn’t have looked at me like that, she doesn’t like me, the weather is terrible, the floor needs to be vacuumed, no one helps around here, it would be better with a life-partner, this is boring, I’m too fat, I should exercise more, I don’t take care of myself…” 

Then begin to investigate. I just want to eat, sleep and cry right now…and this is terrible. I’m too confused. I don’t know where to begin.

Is that true? Who would you be without that thought?

If you need help with this process, or a boost, or tune-up, or want to spend some time on that one particular relationship that’s really bugging you, come to the all day event on December 1st. Of course, you’ll be pointed back to YOU. To register click HERE.

“There’s no place, there’s no dark hole you can go into, where inquiry won’t follow. Inquiry lives inside you if you nurture it for a while. The it takes on its own life and automatically nurtures you. And you’re never given more pain than you can handle. You never, ever get more than you can take. That’s a promise.”~Byron Katie

Much love, Grace

Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven In-Person Intensive Seattle 12/1 10 am – 6 pm.

Horrible Food Wonderful Food Weekend In-Person Intensive Seattle January 12-13, 2013 Saturday 10 – 5:30, Sunday 1:30-5:30. To register for either weekend workshop, click here!Fill in the workshop fee after you click the Buy button at the bottom of the page. You can use paypal or any credit card (you don’t need a paypal account).

Mark your calendar for Breitenbush, the end of June! We will be looking at all aspects of what we consider to be flaws in the body, and Un-doing our beliefs about them. Stay tuned if you’d like to join me and Susan Grace Beekman from June 26-30, 2013. You can change your internal beliefs about what you think bodies should be like….and change your entire experience of being in yours.

If you like this article, forward it to friends, family or colleagues. To get on the list to receive these directly via email, go to www.workwithgrace.com and enter your email in the sidebar. Your email will not be sold or used for any other purpose than these articles and announcements for Work With Grace. You can Unsubscribe at any time by clicking at the bottom of any newsletter.

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Crazy Like Romeo And Juliet

Last night I saw Romeo and Juliet at the local high school theater performance in my town.

I know this play really well. I actually played Juliet in college on stage, so at one time I practically knew the whole play by heart.

And in my life, I have known that whole play by heart.

As I teared up during the finale, when everyone is dead and “all are punished” I also smiled on the inside. These people were crazy! Mega-attached, dramatic, killing themselves with knives, killing other people with swords, weeping and howling and depressive, or manic, or enraged.

In case you don’t remember, Romeo is wildly in love with someone else named Roslyn at the beginning of the play…then he switches in one night to Juliet.

He also actively participates in killing two people, and then of course himself. And Juliet, as we know, also kills herself.

Good lord! No one seemed to know about questioning their thinking….although Shakespeare does appear to have knowledge of this himself. His poetry, prose and plays are filled with awareness of what life could be like beyond this “believing” mind.

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”~William Shakespeare 

Now, after being able to ask myself if what I am thinking is actually true or not, in my own opinion and no one else’s opinion, I find the joy of not really knowing, and being aware that some of what I thought was really, seriously true…is not.

So there I was in the past *desperate* for HIM to love me, want me, pay attention to me, talk to me, be with me, call me, write me, email me, stop by, adore me, please me.

We don’t like admitting these kinds of things.

Ha! I say with a chuckle, that was soooooo long ago, when I was a teenager! I’m not like that anymore.

[A very loud buzzer sound just went off]

Oops! Oh, now that I think about it, I had a longing for HIM to come find me as I sat looking out at the beach on vacation LAST WEEK (my husband).

I may not have been all a flutter in quite the same manner as Juliet, or ready to stab myself with a dagger, but these tiny moments are the same.

I need him to listen to me, I want her to be kinder to me, I need him to understand me, I want her to like me, he should talk with me, she should appreciate me, he should contact me, she should call me, he should show up. 

That voice or feeling inside appears, it wants something to come from OVER THERE towards ME.

Being here in myself feels somehow not quite interesting enough, even lonely, empty, solitary, purposeless, lost, boring, meaningless.

These sensations or thoughts can happen with our children, friends, parents, bosses or lovers.

Or God, the Universe, Source, Reality. It isn’t close enough, it should be closer, I should feel it right here with me all the time, there is separation, I don’t get this, I need something more…

So what if this sense, thought, or feeling that something is ABSENT is questioned?

What if nothing is absent, missing, or too far away?

Can you imagine who Romeo and Juliet and the whole entire rest of the cast would BE without the thought that something was tragically missing?

Without the thought, if someone is busy, and focused on NOT ME I would remember that I’ve been spared (one of Katie’s little sayings I love).

I’d have an open, excited, curious, smiling feeling on the inside of my whole body.

Looking out at the ocean, last week, without the thought that anyone else should be here looking at the ocean with me, I stare with joy and amazement at the grand sight. Nothing to do, nothing to say, no one else here, just me and the Big Mystery.

Without the thought….sitting, looking, everything slower.

I love that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. He shows so well what happens when we’re believing with a vengeance: fearful, secretive, sneaky, sleepless, worried, banished, cautious, defiant, fighting a war, crazed, terrified.

Who would you be without the thought that you actually need anyone? You might think that you’d be cold, and no one would ever be around, and you’d have no friends, or your children would never call you up.

Find out!

“You are the one you’ve been waiting for”~Byron Katie

And by the way…if you have some sticky little thoughts that sound like needy ones, come on over to do The Work on Dec. 1st. It’s gonna be good! To register click HERE.

Much love, Grace

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There Is A Community Of The Spirit

Today, it’s almost all Rumi. One of my favorite poems by him is below. Re-read it here today.

For me, this says we are all here in THIS together. Be here with everyone, don’t push anyone out or hate anyone. Feel what it really means to relax yourself in the midst of suffering, or what you think is suffering.

This poem says to watch what you are afraid of and let it parade by. Don’t grab on to it. It can feel like fear can overtake us: cancer, money-all-gone, people dying, violence, slow traffic, she left me, I can’t live without her, I need to succeed, be someone, do something, I didn’t like the way he said that, she watches too much TV, I’m a bad mother, I should be more extroverted, she is too harsh, it is too hard, I don’t have enough time, my cellulite is ugly, the house is too messy, no one else cleans the dishes, I am too nervous…..

Today I notice that behind the frantic, busy, fearful little buzzing, hissing mind…is silence.

I play with relaxing and it feels like energy going right through my stomach and out the back. Everything opening, cutting through. Doesn’t matter, all is well. Everything changes.

This thing I think is so important, or worrisome? It isn’t really.

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street, and being the noise. 

Drink all your passion, and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes to see with the other eye.

Open your hands, if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel the shepherd’s love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.

Don’t accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food. 

Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.

You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.” 

Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. 

Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always widening rings of being.

~Rumi

Love, Grace

P.S. This intensive day I call Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven. The relationship I am referring to is….THAT UGLY, UNCOMFORTABLE ONE. It could be a partner, your mother, your sister, your job, money, your body. If you have multiple ones, don’t worry. Just start with one, we’ll help you begin to investigate just that one. Who knows what can happen from there.

Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven In-Person Intensive Seattle 12/1 10 am – 6 pm.

Horrible Food Wonderful Food Weekend In-Person Intensive Seattle January 12-13, 2013 Saturday 10 – 5:30, Sunday 1:30-5:30. To register for either weekend workshop, click here!Fill in the workshop fee after you click the Buy button at the bottom of the page. You can use paypal or any credit card (you don’t need a paypal account).

Mark your calendar for Breitenbush, the end of June! We will be looking at all aspects of what we consider to be flaws in the body, and Un-doing our beliefs about them. Stay tuned if you’d like to join me and Susan Grace Beekman from June 26-30, 2013. You can change your internal beliefs about what you think bodies should be like….and change your entire experience of being in yours.

If you like this article, forward it to friends, family or colleagues. To get on the list to receive these directly via email, go to www.workwithgrace.com and enter your email in the sidebar. Your email will not be sold or used for any other purpose than these articles and announcements for Work With Grace. You can Unsubscribe at any time by clicking at the bottom of any newsletter.

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Pessimistic? Do The Work for One Day

Have you wanted to set aside time to learn The Work, really delve in and drill down and get to the heart of some of your repetitive, uncomfortable thinking?

I read Loving What Is, then sat with it on my bedside table for about two years before returning to it. My story about this is on my website. One of my sisters went to The School and talking with her was incredible, after she returned. And I had thought she wouldn’t be the “type” to go to such an event.

For me, it took going to the whole 9 day school with Byron Katie in the room to really do The Work.

For hundreds of other people that I have worked with, who are obviously a bit faster than me and catch on more quickly, they actually DO the Work just by hearing about it.

They notice they have stress. They notice they are thinking things that are disturbing, or downright horrifying. They notice they want to drink or overeat or watch TV, or feel badly about themselves or their career, their health, or their general attitude.

They encounter the idea that maybe, just maybe, what they are THINKING is what is bothering them. Not the actual situation. But their relationship to the situation.

They start following the steps known as The Work. They get curious. Freedom follows. Lightbulbs flashing on all over the place. Or quiet awareness. Things becoming more simple, slower. JOY!

Then…there is someone like me. Doubtful and pessimistic that questioning my beliefs would do anything useful. All it takes is a pen and paper and answering four questions? BALDERDASH.

HUMBUG.

Well. If you are this type of person that seems to be an expert at pessimism, I can relate. You are not alone.

And you might find it incredible to set aside one day, with a small group, to identify your thinking, the stressful bits only, and take them through inquiry.

All the way through. All the way to the Turnarounds. Considering the opposites of what you thought. Turning your replayed thoughts upside down and inside out.

Not kind of thinking “hmm, is that true?” while driving your car to get groceries. Not thinking a thought like “I hate him” and then turning it around immediately, without doing the other steps, into “I love him” and not investigating further what is really bothering you.

This is not doing The Work “in your head” without any pen and paper.

Set aside one day, December 1st, to enter into the DARK ABYSMAL WINTER season (let’s not forget about the pessmism) to identify your stressful thinking, and do The Work in this most amazing simple (yet not so simple) way of thinking.

Even if you are not in Seattle and able to attend our one-day workshop into this freedom, I say, open your calendar and set aside a couple of hours to do The Work. Find a facilitator, make an appointment, trade with someone, call the Help Line (the schedule is onwww.thework.com).

As Byron Katie says…“I did the Work, because I was in a hurry”. 

If you have a penchant for pessimism like I do, you may think “I have no time…I have no money…I can’t really do it…it’s stupid, boring, another mental exercise, I need more than questions to change my life, it’s too far away”. 

You may notice, those are stressful THOUGHTS. They can be questioned. They may flow in abundance for you.

Doing The Work in a group can slow the whole process of thinking down, keep you on track, keep you steady. You may find future practice partners for doing The Work. This is an exercise in being conscious, staying conscious.

The winter one-day intensive is coming soon, here in Seattle. There is only room for 14 people! The fee is $125 for the day, we meet 10 am – 6 pm in a little cozy cabin known as Goldilocks Cottage. My darling husband Jon and I live here, and he will be participating and supporting us all right alongside for our day together. And he rocks at doing The Work.

If finances hold you back, please write to me and ask for assistance. This may be the way I make my living, but I have also questioned the thought “I need money” and found, incredibly, that it is not true.

What I DO find to be true is that I love, with all my heart and soul, each and every person who comes to inquire with me, and I honor each and every dollar that shows up as the flow of giving and receiving that happens constantly among us all. (Hint: do the Work on Money if you don’t love it yet).

I can’t wait for a day of inquiry on December 1st. My hands are clapping! Come join us!

Total beginners are welcome, people super familiar with the Work are welcome…every level will work. We all have the same thoughts, ready to be questioned.

Devote your day to inquiry, no matter where you are, and get “there” in a hurry.

“Inside this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now.”~Rumi

Register right now by clicking here and entering the fee of $125.

Love, Grace

P.S. This intensive day I call Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven. The relationship I am referring to is….THAT UGLY, UNCOMFORTABLE ONE. It could be a partner, your mother, your sister, your job, money, your body. If you have multiple ones, don’t worry. Just start with one, we’ll help you begin to investigate just that one. Who knows what can happen from there.

Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven In-Person Intensive Seattle 12/1 10 am – 6 pm.

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Eternity Is Our Destiny–Is That Scary?

I know I’ve been writing constantly about the mind this past week. Interesting little entity. Very busy, very constant, and at some point, very predictable.

Basically, I’m referring to this mind as a thing…but it’s really a sort of energy. Thinking. Words, images, scenes, sounds.

Byron Katie mentions in her work this mind and how it conjures possibilities about the future and worries about the past like waves in the ocean. Impossible to conquer. Always there.

Today, I love being reminded that if some kind of stress enters the scene of my conciousness, then its only a thought. Really, it’s just a THOUGHT. Made of no substance.

Eckhart Tolle speaks of this universe and our very minds as made up of things…and of space. Thingness and No-Thingness.

I notice that in the content of my thoughts in the last hour are tons of suggestions about things to do, say, or feel. Be sure to leave on time. You have only 15 more minutes to write. I need to finish x,y,z. It’s getting dark. I wonder who is winning the election. I hope my former mother-in-law is OK. I have to a,b,c by the weekend. I wonder why we live in infinite space, like why it is set up this way with earth and the planets and all that. 

I remember recognizing, while watching my thoughts and inquiring, several years ago, that I actually was afraid of being WITHOUT thought. Infinite space. Like a big white-out fog, no people, no objects, no ground, no up or down. I didn’t like the deep ocean either, it always kind of bugged me to watch movies where people were going down with cameras to where it was entirely dark under water. Spooky.

But how amazing to consider who I would be without the thought that I need to know what’s going on around here, that I need some kind of form, that I need to understand, or that “infinity” is creepy.

The collective disease of humanity is that people are so engrossed in what happens, so hypnotized by the world of fluctuating forms, so absorbed in the content of their lives, they have forgotten the essence, that which is beyond content, beyond form, beyond thought. They are so consumed by time that they have forgotten eternity, which is their origin, their home, their destiny. Eternity is the living reality of who you are.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

For me, I realized first how freaky I thought eternity was. It always made me nervous as a child. Too big.

But now that I can question my thoughts, I have discovered that I have no idea that Nothingness is Bad or something to be worried about.

In fact, I think eternity and nothingness and space and emptiness are here, right now, and they don’t hurt, they aren’t terrible. Have you noticed?

“Fear and unhappiness follow from the belief that we are going to feel a way we won’t like feeling in the future.”~Bruce DiMarsico

Who would you be without the thought that you need to be something, do something, think something, understand something….

How would you live if you knew all was well in your ultimate future, and your destiny of eternity that Eckhart mentions is incredible, sweet, precious…and PEACEFUL.

I would be more willing to see beyond whatever is happening here, not to take it so seriously, with such importance and nervousness, not anxious, not threatened, not depressing.

Without knowing what anything is for, or believing all your thoughts, life starts to become really funny, and really calm. You might crack yourself up over what you notice you suffer over.

In fact, I notice that I have never actually, my entire life, had a white-out moment where I was surrounded by nothing, black space, endless dark water, fog, and/or no people and no sound and Nothingness forever. Not even close.

Love, Grace

Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven In-Person Intensive Seattle 12/1 10 am – 6 pm.

Horrible Food Wonderful Food Weekend In-Person Intensive Seattle January 12-13, 2013 Saturday 10 – 5:30, Sunday 1:30-5:30. To register for either weekend workshop, click here!Fill in the workshop fee after you click the Buy button at the bottom of the page. You can use paypal or any credit card (you don’t need a paypal account).

Mark your calendar for Breitenbush, the end of June! We will be looking at all aspects of what we consider to be flaws in the body, and Un-doing our beliefs about them. Stay tuned if you’d like to join me and Susan Grace Beekman from June 26-30, 2013. You can change your internal beliefs about what you think bodies should be like….and change your entire experience of being in yours.

If you like this article, forward it to friends, family or colleagues. To get on the list to receive these directly via email, go to www.workwithgrace.com and enter your email in the sidebar. Your email will not be sold or used for any other purpose than these articles and announcements for Work With Grace. You can Unsubscribe at any time by clicking at the bottom of any newsletter.

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We Need To Talk

Right before I went on “vacation” someone sent me a note that appeared to say they were unhappy with something I had done. I didn’t know what. Couldn’t think of anything, even though my mind would return to trying to guess (that little part of the mind hates Not Knowing).

In the past, if I had received a note and it didn’t appear favorable (or maybe even if it DID appear favorable, honestly)…I may not have been able to sleep. It was basically the same kind of sentence on paper as when someone says “Grace, we need to talk”.

OMG we need to talk!? Adrenaline rush. What? Is there something wrong? What did I do? Are you mad at me?

It sounded like this person would contact me later, after I returned. FEAR arose. The beliefs come alive: I hurt someone’s feelings, I made someone uncomfortable. I have to be nice at all times (even if it means lying). I shouldn’t cause upset. Ever. Anywhere.

The key for me is that last thought “it is bad if someone appears to be upset by something I have done”.

Instead of leaving, distracting myself, or worrying, I knew it was time to do The Work. With self-inquiry, I notice that I can get excited about possibilities, curious, open, available. I know that I can be interested in other peoples’ perspectives.

My stressful beliefs: I hurt someone’s feelings, I made them uncomfortable, they don’t like something I did or said, they are too critical, I should never make anyone uncomfortable, there is someone very nervous or sensitive out there. I have to fix it. It will be weird if I run into that person.

As I enter into questioning these beliefs, and see what it’s like to have them, I notice that my mind gets all fired up.

My brain goes into over-drive trying to sort through memories of what I might have done that would be upsetting.

For many of us, we may imagine we’ve done something wrong because of the look someone gave us, the slight sigh or deep breath someone took after we spoke.

Someone might say they didn’t like the movie we just went to see, and we might feel bad because we insisted on that movie choice.

When I believe I’ve done something wrong, I start apologizing right and left, in my very core, energetically. I try to make up for it, or plan to make up for it soon. I feel sick.

Who would I be without the thought that I’ve hurt someone, done something wrong, that I’ve made someone uncomfortable in the past…and they may be ready to retaliate, hurt me, get revenge, or abandon me?

Without these thoughts I am here reviewing images in my mind of situations in which I have clearly said things that hurt other people. I am remembering moments where people reacted to me. It feels way more simple, no fear, relaxed, just watching and reviewing.

Who would I be without that thought that ANYONE has done ANYTHING WRONG? Including me. Who would I be without the thought that getting that note means something bad?

What if nothing “wrong” has happened? Who would you be?

I would be relaxed. Breathing. Looking at the people in my mind with acceptance and care. Not knowing… only being.

“Whoever relies on the Tao in governing men doesn’t try to force issues or defeat enemies by force of arms. For every force there is a counterforce. Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself. The Master does his job, and then stops….Because he accepts himself, the whole world accepts him.”~Tao Te Ching #30

When I do The Work, I am giving attention to my inner world and my running, judgmental, worried mind. I am not trying to force an issue or defeat an enemy.

I turn around this worry about having done something wrong: Since I’ve upset someone, something good will happen. Something will get healed or balanced. There is opportunity for peace right here in this situation. I can let things unfold and I will find out what this note meant at the perfect time.

I love seeing that my mind was about to have a heart attack because a piece of paper had words on it that said someone needed to contact me later to talk.

Even the tiniest inner violence towards someone results in a counter-violent rebound. This “violence” can be in the most subtle form of living with the thought “I caused someone to be upset (and it’s terrible).”

I turned the thought around as I did The Work right there on vacation next to a swimming pool. It’s just as true that something wonderful is happening, not scary. Someone is wanting to express themselves, to express a concern. They are engaging with me, making contact with me…it’s fabulous. This is all very exciting. Curious. Appropriate. A moment to surrender.

We need to talk. Fantastic. What interesting news will unfold? I look forward to it! It is just as true that all is well. Truer. And I notice, with that…I’m back to totally enjoying the present moment.

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No Vacation For The Mind

What on earth is a vacation? I love that word “vacate”.

I am exiting the scene, leaving the premises, departing, disconnecting, vanishing, sayonara, bye-bye!

A very common human strategy is to STOP, DROP and ROLL! (You may recognize this from fire-first-aid. It’s what you’re supposed to do when your clothes catch on fire). Ha!

When things get hot, people often believe whole-heartedly that they need to stop, drop and roll and then go on vacation from whatever was making them upset. Forever.

By getting hot I mean dicey conversations with other humans, relationships going sour, anger getting ignited, bad business deals going down, frustrated scenes with employees or co-workers, disgruntled customers, worry about Life in general.

Someone can make a statement, someone who you really care about, that sounds like they are upset. It’s scary, or feels hurtful. You are disappointed, anxious, or you feel defensive, or guilty.

Some people get angry and lash out at the source of the discomfort. They believe they will feel better when the other person is sorry, or stops, or regrets what they have said, or feels remorse, or apologizes.

Others have the VACATE reaction. Rrrrruuuunnnnn!!

I am just now returning from being on an actual Vacation, a holiday. I left my home and my daily routine and many of the people I know closely…and went to a different location in the world with different weather and trees and food, and people I love dearly who I hadn’t seen for years.

But my mind was right there the whole time. No vacation for the mind!

This used to seem like a BAD thing, I wanted to get away from the incessant thinking, or uncomfortable relationships, or boring situations like the jobs I used to have.

I wanted to get away from my own MIND. Short distractions would work, but they were never satisfying (they never are).

So of course…the easiest thing to do (even if it doesn’t seem easy) is to accept that parts of you can never go on vacation. Vacating won’t work.

In fact, it may make things harder.

For me, getting away from it all usually led to binge-eating, heavy drinking, over-exercising, smoking. AWOL.

I would leave people scratching their heads in confusion, wondering if I was ever going to make contact, finish a conversation, face my fear and talk with them directly, answer their calls, respond to their concerns.

I didn’t do this for myself…I ditched myself constantly. I didn’t respect my own painful thinking and feelings. I wasn’t kind to me.

NOW my favorite thing in the world is staying still, standing here in the midst of activity, noticing that the mind never takes a vacation, allowing it to be itself as it is…full of evaluations and comments.

What I find here is that when I stay still in the middle of someone saying something I find uncomfortable, or a situation that brings up fear, is to stay and see what happens without me either Vacating OR Defending.

This means, as my mind suggests things to do or say, as it suggests ways to handle the situation, I don’t DO them instantly. I don’t try to fix anything.

“She who is centered in the Tao can go where she wishes, without danger. She perceives the universal harmony, even amid great pain, because she has found peace in her heart. Music or the smell of good cooking may make people stop and enjoy. But words that point to the Tao seem monotonous and without flavor. When you look for it, there is nothing to see. When you listen for it, there is nothing to hear. When you use it, it is inexhaustible.” ~Tao Te Ching #35

I noticed sometimes during the “vacation” I was on, I would have thoughts about people back in my daily regular life at home, or business or work.  Instead of leaving those thoughts, I could clearly find them, even writing them down.

Moving into them and finding out what was most uncomfortable about my thoughts about other people was incredible.

Stay tuned for the next post…I’ll tell you what it was like to do the Work on one repetitive thought I had during “vacation”.  I may have gotten to stop and enjoy music, laughter, and good cooking….but returning to the center by investigating my internal world brought such peace.

My mind? Actually, it’s a blast to take it everywhere. Might as well enjoy the ride.

Inquiry returns us to the Tao. Emptiness, mystery, even joy. And inquiry can be done anywhere!

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What Is The Advantage of This Sucky Thing?

When I was 19 I went to my first therapist. Arranged by my parents. “You need help”.

My parents didn’t know how to help me, but they truly believed there had to be a way. They may have been very worried and had many stressful thoughts about me, but they also had the thought that any human being is capable of finding happiness, and stability.

I knew it too. I remember thinking, in the middle of extreme suffering and wondering if it was worth living, that I just HAD to be born with the same abilities as the next human to achieve peace or balance.

Part of me was extremely determined to reach enlightenment, or die trying. Like the Little Engine That Could “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…”

In fact, it isn’t possible that a human being would be born with the absolute inability to achieve happiness or peace.

Even Hitler, Vincent VanGogh, or your mean grandma.

But for some of us humans, we’re caught in the mine fields of fear, hatred, defense or sadness. Believing that there isn’t a way out, we’re trapped, stuck, hopeless.

If it goes on for awhile in time, we think of it as lasting forever, even more hopeless.

For me, that first extreme depression in my teens led to me dropping out of college, becoming totally OCD with food and eating (turning into a borderline anorexic) and then struggling with bulimic episodes for a decade.

It seemed like the worst of times. If you had asked me the honest truth, in my opinion, about whether or not I was happy and peaceful, I might have told you “NEVER! I am NEVER happy or peaceful!!”

But that was actually not true.

Here we are in this world, floating around on a big ball of rock, living our lives, and we may have the idea that we aren’t having a particularly good or amazing life all the time. We may really believe that we need help.

I have found this kind of moment, having the thought that I’m a mess, a wreck, I don’t like this situation, I don’t like being here, I need help, to be an amazing time to do The Work.

This means questioning a stressful belief like “I can’t find peace” or “I am not capable of getting out of THIS” or “I can’t heal or help myself”.

First question: Is that true? Really absolutely 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt true that you have no way to get to peace? That you are not capable of getting beyond your situation? Or that you can’t get help or find healing?

If nothing changed, if you did nothing, if you just stopped worrying about what that person said, or your lack of help, or your inability to heal or find peace….what would that be like?

Who would you be without the thought that you need to find something that gets you peaceful? Who would you be without the thought that you don’t have what it takes to be truly happy right now?

Back when I was 19 I might have had the thoughts that I needed help, was not peaceful, and was deeply screwed up somehow…but I also can find examples of how all the opposite was also true: I am receiving help all the time, from the whole world, from my life. There is a part of me that is entirely peaceful no matter what is going on. I am healing, I am capable of getting beyond my situation. I am moving into balance. Even if things feel traumatic or worrisome, or destructive…there is peace, freedom and creativity here. Anything is possible.

Here at age 51 now, I find how amazing it was to experience disordered eating. Wow, that was extreme!! It forced me awake.

It was incredible to drop out of college, go to therapy with the help of my very loving parents, and begin to study life and freedom that has taken me into a spectacular journey.

“Life creates situations that push you to your edges, all with the effect of removing what is blocked inside of you.”~Michael Singer

The advantages to having such depression, addiction, and pain in my past was that I answered a call from the universe, God, the Tao to come to the middle of the storm, find the eye in the center, un-do my belief system that wasn’t working.

You are getting unblocked, no matter what your mind is telling you about your situation. Find out what is good about it.

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Is What You Are Thinking True?

If you do “x”, then you will feel BETTER.

How many people have said this, to other people, throughout the ages?

I heard this in my life starting very young. Family, friends, TV, church, movies. You don’t feel good? Do This. Think This. Say This. Be Like This. Feel This. Follow This.

When I was young, one of the biggest things I heard adults talking about with suggestions, plans and ideas about how to feel better was with food. They weren’t necessarily talking with me at all…they were talking amongst themselves. Or talking out loud in the kitchen.

All these moments of communication, that we can’t even remember specifically, enter our little minds as children and we take bits and pieces in and start to build a world, a story.

I heard adults talking, I saw that they were unhappy, and I too was unhappy.

The Work itself is one of the offerings I have found in my life that suggests that I will feel better if I do it.

But that is not necessarily the case.

Byron Katie says that she began to do The Work for the love of truth, not in order to feel better or different. She saw that when she believed her own thinking patterns, her thoughts and ideas, she suffered, and when she questioned them she did not.

When I first learned about The Work I got the book Loving What Is and read it. I was incredibly moved by the stories and the ideas.

Then I set the book down and went about my life. It was in no way incorporated into my daily experience. In fact, even asking myself the first question “is it true?” was something I didn’t quite “get”.

I didn’t think I myself could actually answer that question. And I didn’t LIKE that I couldn’t answer that question. I was a ball of uncertainty.

Something inside me, actually, could see quite well that what I thought for most of every day was NOT true. I wasn’t sure about anything! Total uncertainty, completely unstable, worried, hand-wringing, nervous, anticipating discomfort.

But it never occurred to me that it could be a relief to not know. That if I found something was not true, it could be the position of letting go, dropping the shoulders, and not worrying so much.

OH! I can’t know that what I am thinking is actually TRUE! That’s the way of it. It’s not BAD that I don’t know whether something is true or not.

The way of it is, apparently, that we can’t be certain of anything. The way of it, it seems, is that when we think someone is being rude, mean, evil, scary….or when we think an event is terrible….we don’t really know.

When I first REALLY started doing The Work I actually allowed myself to answer the question “is it true?” with quietness and openness. Not fear of realizing that it probably was not true, that I couldn’t actually know anything for sure.

The question about whether something I was thinking was true or not used to disturb me, I discovered.

Now, I could just wait after the first question and see how strong the feeling was to believe or not believe something. Not be so terrified of the answer.

Spend some time today (or with the rest of your life) with the question Is It True?

There are so many thoughts streaming through consciousness, it’s incredible. Byron Katie says to start with the thoughts that are painful to be thinking.

The pain of thinking these difficult thoughts is what moves, in me at least, the interest in doing The Work. I found I DID want to feel better. I was willing to do almost anything in order to feel better.

What I found was that doing The Work was a much deeper, more living, rich, powerful solution to my problem of always feeling anxious. It was not a quick fix or temporary solution. It would take me into a new place to wonder about and ask about. It was not going to give light, feel-better-immediately answers either.

“The Work is about discovering what is true from the deepest part of yourself….there are no right or wrong answers to these questions….This can be very unsettling, because you’re entering the unknown….All I can tell you about this realm is that what lives beneath the nightmare is a good thing. Do you really want to know the truth?”~Byron Katie

Start with only one issue or person or situation that bothers you today. It can be that thing someone said, or that idea you had that was uncomfortable.

I now have discovered that there is no temporary way to feel better, not really. And the Work doesn’t always “make” me feel better. But I am so amazed by entering the mysterious world of the unknown, of surrendering to What Is, and this is such a beautiful relief, that I can’t stop doing The Work.

It took me suffering to the point of suicidal thinking, desperately seeking answers in the world to life, reading the book Loving What Is twice and then going to The School for The Work to actually answer the question “is it true?” without freaking out.

Maybe you could do it today, without all that extra resistance.

Love, Grace

P.S. One of the best ways to stick with the questions when your mind wants to drop them and go on to Something Better is to do The Work with a group in a class. Teleclasses all will start in January.

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It’s OK to Relax

About seven years ago I began to practice a movement art called Qigong. This particular practice comes from China.

After I had been doing it for awhile, the teacher said “the first step is all about relaxing…that’s really the entire practice for Level One”.

This helped me so very much to hear. Most of us know what it means when someone says “relax your muscles”. You can feel the difference between tightening them up and letting go without clenching them.

Not quite so easy with THOUGHTS.

Lately I’ve been talking about working with thoughts, and the way Eckhart Tolle and some of our other great authors and teachers speak about where to start when working with stressful beliefs or painful thinking.

The first step with investigating this internal world, it seems, is simply noticing that you have one, and how wild and crazy it appears to be.

It’s almost like with the internal world, things are so nutty that we have to break it down into smaller, tiny little incremental steps of awareness.

With this inner world, we don’t even worry about relaxing yet. Even though we crave peace, relaxation, and gentleness so VERY VERY VERY MUCH.

And yet, just like my Qigong teacher, if someone said to you “go ahead and relax” you might notice that you like that idea. Apply relaxation, in whatever way you can, to your mind.

The very interesting thing about relaxing a muscle, your bicep for example, is that it feels like you are un-doing some kind of energy. Instead of pushing, doing, asserting….you let go, open, wait, get slower, unclench.

You stop moving the bicep. You let it be.

The greatest and most ancient holy teachers suggest in all their many ways that to experience this kind of letting go is not just Level One. It is moving into the greatest experience of peace that can be felt by humans.

So first, you notice. Then, you relax.

No grabbing, ruminating, planning on what to do, how to do it, what will happen, what to say, think, what you wish would happen.

It can seem cold to say “relax, open up”. In the face of natural disasters, destruction, death, danger.

Relaxing sometimes seems like the OPPOSITE of what is needed to solve a major mental problem.

But you can feel what it is like to only act if truly necessary, and that thinking obsessively about something feels tight, tense, aggressive.

“Sometimes you will go through deep experiences that bring up intense pain inside of you. If it is in there, it is going to come up. If you have any wisdom, you will leave it alone and not try to change your life to avoid it. You will just relax and give it the space it needs to release and burn through you.”~Michael Singer

See what happens if you can watch your mind tense up, but then find out what Relaxing would be like. Not apathy, not despair, hopelessness….just relaxing.

I find that where I was pinched around something, an idea, a thought, some imagination story in the future….I enter a place where I don’t know, I look around and see so much more of what is happening right here and right now.

I feel less alone, more in partnership with the universe, like we’re here together.

Love, Grace

Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven In-Person Intensive Seattle 12/1 10 am – 6 pm.
Horrible Food Wonderful Food Weekend In-Person Intensive Seattle January 12-13, 2013 Saturday 10 – 5:30, Sunday 1:30-5:30. To register for either weekend workshop, click here! Fill in the workshop fee after you click the Buy button at the bottom of the page. You can use paypal or any credit card (you don’t need a paypal account).

Mark your calendar for Breitenbush, the end of June! We will be looking at all aspects of what we consider to be flaws in the body, and Un-doing our beliefs about them. Stay tuned if you’d like to join me and Susan Grace Beekman from June 26-30, 2013. You can change your internal beliefs about what you think bodies should be like….and change your entire experience of being in yours.

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