Grace Notes

Have you ever noticed inner conflict about your desires?

Probably your answer is….OF COURSE.

 [stextbox id=”custom”][Tomorrow, free webinar on Desire, 90 minutes from 10-11:30 am Pacific, see all the information to dial-in below, no registration required].[/stextbox]

I’ve often had debates about my own desires.

Should I want that thing? What if I just stopped wanting it? Is it OK to want what I want, or is there something wrong with me?

I had the terrible experience of having what I apparently wanted become very painful when it came to things like eating, smoking, drinking.

Or what about the struggle of wanting more money when you don’t have enough?

And what about attraction for people? When people are in mutually agreed monogamous relationships, and one person wishes to leave because they want to be with someone else instead, it appears to cause anguish and pain.

Can’t desire be easier? What’s going on when desire seems to bring a mixture of pleasure AND pain?

Can we trust our desires to lead us down paths of peace and enlightenment…..or difficulty and trouble?

Pursuing what we desire seems to go badly sometimes!

Yikes!

But it’s fascinating and very liberating when you study your desires, allowing all your judgments or grabbiness to be there, without being so afraid of this tricky topic.

Where to begin?

The place I love beginning first, is to look at my desires….

….and see what it is I believe the object of my desire would give me, if I had it or experienced it.

For example.

Take five minutes and write down everything you desire in your life. What do you want to add? What are you drawn to? What do you wish for, dream about, long for?

Write small to large desires. Write anything that comes to mind. Allow yourself to be petty, immature, or expansive and idealistic.

Then, start with the very first thing you wrote.

What would you have, if you had that thing, or that condition, or that new situation, or that person?

What kind of feeling would you have? What quality?

Money is a common desire for many people. More money, tons of money, endless money, millions and zillions.

Notice the image that comes to mind and how exciting you believe it would be to have all that money in your bank accounts.

What do you feel? What would you have?

When I did this work around money, I saw that I would feel secure, relaxed, safe, independent and free.

Wow, no wonder I wanted more money!

But then, I could also investigate why it was I was not secure right now with the amount of money I already had, what I was thinking that created anxiety, and how I believed I was dependent and trapped.

This helped tease out and drill down into my objections to reality!

Juicy situations for inquiry!

I could see deeply what I felt insecure about in the present, that I believed money would resolve.

Where was I really insecure? How was it true that I was not independent? Who was to blame?

I discovered in the midst of all the looking at desires in my life that I could actually enjoy the process and the experience of desiring, without feeling desperate to GET the thing.

Strange paradox. But oh so fun, and such a relief to really know what is true for me!

Tomorrow I’ll dive deeply into facilitating you to discover your desires in your life, and see what shadows or judgments arise when you admit what they are!

There are three ways to connect to the webinar tomorrow, which is entirely free: phone, skype or on the web. You need to have a computer to see your screen–there will be a slide show.

If you watch the webinar on the web, you’ll be able to send your questions and comments to me online, or you can simply listen and follow along.

The webinar will be a delicious appetizer to the full 6 week telecourse program starting next week, but there’s no obligation to join the whole course if you come to the webinar.

You will leave having a better understanding of how to enjoy your desires, and question your fears about having them, or not getting them, or the reason these desires live inside you in the first place.

Here’s how you can join (and bring a pen and paper).

Everyone please click the “event” link to see the slide show. If you want to participate, and do The Work (I highly recommend) then dial in AND click the web link.

That way, you can share and you can watch the slide show, too.

In my podcast Peace Talk as I was turning on the microphone early this morning, I knew I would be sharing about suffering in the deepest way.

What a thing to talk about, right?

Not exactly fun, in general.

How do we deal or live with tragedy and loss, or depression and our own agony about what’s happening?

The Work, when you sit with this and answer the questions four questions, can bring freedom beyond what you might ever imaginebefore asking these questions.

I remember thinking….how can answering questions actually bring relief to the worst case scenarios in life?

It won’t change the scenarios! There’s still war, divorce, cancer, car accidents, bankruptcy!

But I was amazed to find the relief….

….and then not only relief, but freedom….

….by simply questioning my own thinking.

It’s not easy.

First, you feel overwhelmed with rage, desperation and grief. From that feeling within you naturally begin to act out the pain. You drink, you hate (yourself or others), you eat, you look down at the ground when you walk. You quit things. You stop trying.

You tell the story of how freaked out you are, or how panicked, or how incredibly depressed.

It may seem trite or ridiculous to ask the fourth question in the series of questions known as The Work of Byron Katie:

Who would you BE without the thought that all is lost, you can’t go on, your life is horrible, the pain is unbearable, the world is a terrible place full of darkness and suffering?

What if you just weren’t thinking in this moment, and instead observing, feeling….being.

What does this mean, to be?

It’s a great question. I’m not always sure.

However, I notice that my thoughts seem to concentrate intensely somewhere in the region of my brain, and flow out into my body and behavior at the speed of lightening.

When I consider “being” instead of only “thinking” I can contemplate my suffering in just a little different way.

I remember that some people…like the guy who lives two blocks down the street…isn’t suffering the way I am suffering right now.

Neither is the cat. Or the grass growing wildly in the yard.

Life on planet earth is not 100% full of suffering. There are living beings, even if all I can think of are animals, who are happy, easy, present, not full of brooding and repetitive beliefs about death or destruction.

There is life that comes out of war. Healing happens.

Love happens.

Who would I be without my own thoughts of horror?

A person sitting on a couch.

Who would I be without the thought that “I am a person” (who has just suffered some terrible loss)?

Feeling a body, hearing sounds everywhere, seeing colors and shapes, seeing pictures in my head, noticing the touch of fingers on smooth glass, breathing in, feeling the heart beat that has nothing to do with me–its just running, working, moving through some mystical unexplainable life force of energy.

Something is here, alive.

Who would you be without your thoughts of tragedy?

It’s not denial, or trying to pretend something did not happen that actually did happen….

….it’s simply noticing you are engaged in life of life’s terms, not YOUR MIND’S terms, and life comes and goes, dies and is born, morphs and changes, moves and becomes still.

And there is always something back behind all of it that is very quiet, silent, precious and beautiful.

Who would you be without your story?

“Nothing terrible has ever happened except in our thinking. Reality is always good, even in situations that seem like nightmares. The story we tell is the only nightmare that we have lived. When I say that the worst that can happen is a belief, I am being literal. The worst that can happen to you is your uninvestigated belief system.” ~ Byron Katie in Loving What Is pg. 228

Incredible?

Try it out.

Can you find any place in the middle of your tragic situation that is peaceful? Has there been goodness that’s come from what you’ve experienced?

From my own diagnosis of cancer in 2006, I felt something very profound about the temporary-ness of this life, and a movement to live fully.

From my own father dying young from leukemia, I found the capacity (after floundering awhile) for direct, fatherly guidance from within myself.

From learning of others dying at young ages, I’ve become aware of how precious each day, how temporary, and how astonishing I’m living long enough to have wrinkles and scars.

From knowing how brief we are here I’ve become less attached to acquiring stuff, earning money, saving money, accumulating experiences….and instead trust in sharing, inviting, connecting with no idea where this will go.

From all the suffering I experienced with my addictions I actually feel gratitude they’ve taught me what wasn’t permanent or important, calmed down my ginormous grabby ego, and shown me how to love unconditionally (especially myself).

Yesterday I went clothes shopping with my daughter.

As I was changing in the dressing room, I saw what apparently is my back, shoulder blade and spine in the mirror, and my hair falling long down the middle, and my legs in my yoga pants (I dress Miss Casual constantly) and I thought immediately “she is so cute, just look at this precious little middle aged woman on planet earth who will only be here a short time overall.”

That is who I am even with this body I seem to inhabit that appears as this, without thoughts that things should be different than they are.

Plans, plans, plans.

A fabulous inquirer came to our session feeling overwhelmed with the need to make plans.

Travel, moving, children, dates, taxes, finishing that thing, negotiating a raise or improvement at work.

Plans appear to fall into a few different categories, I have found.

There are the daily to-do’s.

Laundry, taking out the garbage, going through your email Inbox, grocery shopping, gassing up the car, filling out the form for your kid’s field trip, passport application, paying bills, writing the daily blog post.

Then there are a little more wide, expansive to-do’s.

Making that doctor’s appointment, completing your taxes, researching places to stay in Scotland next August, writing job-hunt emails, setting up power-lunch dates, finishing the 2015 business growth plan.

Then maybe really, really big to-do’s.

Bucket list to-do’s or major project to-do’s.

Finish my book, repair the roof, complete landscaping of the yard, new car, colonoscopy, writing out 10 year plan, difficult conversation with sibling, prepare your will, attend the School for The Work with Byron Katie.

The thing is, no matter what time-line is underway….

….plans can be strangely stressful.

The thought pops in “I need to get that handled” and then more thoughts about how much work it is to get that handled, and the putting off of handling it.

An uncomfortable procrastination.

The inquirer I was working with read me her long to-do list. She reported that just in the reading of it, she felt calmer.

And then we looked at the question….would you be without the belief that the to-do list is a too-much list?

Without the thought that it’s sooooo hard, you can’t even begin, it’s too much pressure, that the short-term to-do’s take up all your time and the long-term to-do’s don’t ever happen?

You might get excited!

You might join with that list and say….OK, let’s prioritize.

Which thing first?

One of my favorite books is David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”. It rocks.

It’s how you might be, the next step you would take, if you think your to-do lists are too crazy long and too hard to manage.

You’d get some help, you’d organize which things really need to be on this list, and which can get kicked off, you’d start at the top. you’d put some stuff on your calendar.

And you wouldn’t be procrastinating anymore.

Last year, I said every so often “I need to clean out the shed.”

My mind would think of it, I’d feel anxious–yes, I should clean out the shed–but I’d pass it by and move to the next thing.

Until. I remembered to notice the anxiety.

Right! Time for the work!

Without the thought that cleaning the shed is a problem, I put it on my calendar to take up an entire weekend 5 months later, during the summer. I announced to family members it was happening. I arranged a truck to borrow all those months away.

Then….I NEVER thought about how I need to clean out the shed again, until the proclaimed weekend arrived in August and it was all energy, all the time, on cleaning that shed.