Tag: 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.

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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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This Body Takes Away My Peace

Byron Katie has said some pretty radical things about bodies….namely “a peaceful mind doesn’t care about a body.”

Not care about my body? Really?

People have many different levels of care about their bodies…some are very concerned, some have grave illness, some have constant pain, some have terrible injuries, some have head colds or back aches.

The trick with powerful quotes like Katie’s is NOT to read it and then jump immediately to why you are so wrong to have thought of your body during your life so often, and with such passion, with anger or criticism or concern.

All those cures, methods, doctors, practitioners, diets, medicines, tinctures, massages, specialists…they are all part of the path you’re on, a relationship you have with this thing called a body.

Some people get to meet many people who are healers of various body conditions, and some people do not. But everyone has body ailments of one kind or another before they exit their bodies for good. Everyone gets a body that dies sooner or later.

For some people, a strategy for dealing with the body is to pay as little attention as possible to it. I don’t think Katie is speaking of this kind of not caring.

You won’t become peaceful if you decide “fine, I won’t care about my body ever again, I will ignore it!”

But there is some place we all can become aware of that is beyond thoughts of the body, removed from these kinds of thoughts, different. We all have this inside us already. We all touch into this part of us many times a day, in fact. We sleep, have a conversation, read, think, discover, watch a movie, look, hear, rest, work. There is space in between thoughts of the body.

It’s the kind of Not Caring that I like to say is just Not Minding what happens. Those moments when I really don’t mind, I’m actually OK…I don’t know, I don’t have answers, but I couldn’t dream of figuring This all out.

“When you believe you are this body, you stay limited, small, apparently encapsulated as one separate form. So every thought has to be about your survival or your comfort or your pleasure, because if you let up for a moment, there would be no body-identification.”~Byron Katie

When we have something hurting, something painful…then thoughts of the body can appear to be more frequent, more intense. A problem is believed to be present, and boy howdy does the mind loves to solve problems!

Eckhart Tolle has said that when working with illness, the first and most important thing is becoming aware that YOU are not YOUR BODY. So, you are not “a sick person”. That is not what you actually are…not all of who you are.

You don’t need to actually even think of yourself as a sick person…and it is possible to focus on well-being, even when you don’t feel good. It may sound simple, but it’s not easy when you’re afraid or in pain.

“Choose to direct your attention to well-being rather than illness. As far as pain is concerned…don’t let the mind start also to complain about the pain. Don’t resist pain. Don’t create psychological pain on top of physical pain…..You CAN accept a situation that usually would be thought of as unacceptable….but not everybody is ready to hear this.”~Eckhart Tolle

Well-being, beauty, quiet, taking a deep breath, waiting, nature, art, music is all around. Moving your attention towards what is gentle in your environment, what you are drawn towards, what you like, even just a tiny bit.

The good news is that life goes the way it goes, and there’s no arguing with it. It’s the way of it. It’s actually OK no matter what you do, whether you find something around you that is without pain, whether you complain or don’t complain.

“None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.”~Pema Chodron

It just may be a little easier, maybe a TON easier, if you relax and stop fighting this body situation. Not giving up with despair, just seeing what it’s like to be without the thought that you have a body that is sick or hurt, or fat or ugly. Giving up attack.

No longer against what is.

Love, Grace

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Flowing Tears Doesn’t Mean It’s Bad

Sadness and grief have been addressed by teachers, psychologists, philosophers, and religious figures for centuries. Sadness appears to be a long-term experience of humanity.

Loss, despair, change, death…these often bring tears. Many thoughts appear in the mind, sometimes almost simultaneously with this emotion or feeling called sadness.

Expressing sadness can feel strangely out of control. Often, when we really “cry our eyes out” we just let the wave take us from beginning to end. And then, it’s over.

Deep sadness that keeps appearing or returning can become more difficult to navigate. How do we humans work with sadness that remains…with terrible loss or grief, perhaps life-changing loss that follows the death of a loved one, or some other permanent change.

“I’ve developed a new philosophy – I only dread one day at a time.”~Charles Schultz

When I look back on my experience of sadness in my life in childhood and then later as I grew up, I see that I had some really interesting thoughts appear very quickly (that I never questioned) when it came to sadness.

These beliefs about sadness kept my feeling stuck, unresolved, unexpressed somehow:

  • my sadness will bother other people
  • I need to keep this to myself
  • if others know I am sad, they won’t be honest with me
  • no one knows how to help people who are sad anyway
  • there’s no solution to this loss (the person is gone, the event has passed)
  • I’ll feel this way forever
  • being too emotional or sad is a sign of weakness
  • if only this hadn’t happened I wouldn’t feel sad in the first place.
  • I hate this feeling

These kinds of thoughts are heavy, weighty, and very difficult for allowing this thing called “sadness” to run through us, without trying to manipulate ourselves or hide it or change it ASAP.

So here it is. Tears, grief, sobbing, body rocking, the voice making sound. Perhaps your sadness is only quiet tears falling from your eyes, and maybe not even that.

Instead of judging this experience….I let it be here. I let it take the time it takes. I notice that there is an end. I remember that there is a saying “have a good cry”. Like it’s actually a good thing, like it releases something.

“I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been – if you’ve been up all night and cried ’til you have no more tears left in you – you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness.” ~C.S. Lewis in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe 

I was listening once to Adyashanti, one of my favorite spiritual teachers, talk about holding a funeral for his dog. He found himself weeping, sobbing openly while everyone gathered around. And right in the middle of that great grief, he noticed a great warmth in the center of his heart, like a light beaming there.

Without any judgment or hope that I will soon NOT be sad anymore…if I watch this sadness thing and notice what is happening…I may find that grief and joy are present together.

I entered my house last night after taking my darling son to college and leaving him there. THAT was when sadness hit me, and I cried. I was having thoughts like “he will never live with me again” (and, chuckle, I do not know that this is true). Something about entering the quiet cottage knowing this, with the thought right there.

The thought enters “I miss him” and I immediately question it. Not 100% true. Images rapidly firing through my mind’s eye of him being born, standing up in the park for the first time, age 8, age 12, now. Do I miss any of that? No, he is right here, in my mind. I can picture him perfectly. I know what he might say, how his face looks.

This is not denying sadness, making it something different than it is. It is just noticing that I cry and cry for this goodbye moment, acknowledging somehow this change….and that this moment is also hello. I begin to find advantages for his departure.

“Is it sadness that you are feeling or love? Isn’t it love, feel it as deeply as you can, let it live in you, allow it, let it cry you, take you over even, its okay, love is all powerful. Don’t confuse feelings that you believe to be sadness with what love feels like, my dearest.”~Byron Katie

Love, Grace

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Indecisive People Are Successful

I love how there are a multitude of theories about decisions and what kind of things happen when people “make” them. I’ve written about this before, but revisiting it again today.

In the western culture, it appears that being decisive is applauded, at least based on what I’ve learned. People who are wishy-washy and who change their minds are indecisive and therefore untrustworthy. People who are decisive are efficient, clear, powerful, and good leaders.

The interesting thing about MAKING DECISIONS is that there is the thought that what I decide right now will change my future. I will become successful…or I will fail.

Those tough decisions in the past….there were some that turned out great, some that turned out not-so-great. I decided something, and my life turned in a different direction and I now see the result.

Both situations, looking at the future possibilities and the past results, are based in the mind.

Both are OUTSIDE of the present moment.

When I’ve made a past decision, or am thinking about a future decision that I think I need to make, I am analyzing the outcome. Going for the “best” result. I am thinking about what will make me happiest. I am also often believing that it’s possible to make a mistake, so I need to be careful.

It’s an anxious place to live. Or downright agonizing, painful, and hand-wringing. Pure torture.

What if this whole thing is not you, alone, creating the outcome? What if it is not YOU ALONE “making” this so-called decision? What if there are all kinds of forces of the universe, of life flowing in it’s amazing way….and what if all possibilities are friendly?

“When you become a lover of what is, there are no more decisions to make. In my life, I just wait and watch. I know that the decision will be made in its own time, so I let go of when, where, and how. I like to say that I’m a woman without a future. When there are no decisions to make, there’s no planned future. All my decisions are made for me, just as they’re all made for you. When you mentally tell yourself the story that you have something to do with it, you’re attaching to an underlying belief.“~Byron Katie

Wow! Really?!

One of the most anxiety-producing beliefs is the concept “my future depends on making the right decision”. Equally painful is the belief “I made a terrible decision”.

Again, both of these thoughts are concerned with the future and the past.

I find that without believing these thoughts, I’m back in the present. I’m not concerned with worries that whatever I decide will be uncomfortable, difficult, or lead to disaster. Everything is so simple: I work with what is right here in this particular moment only, what feels loving, what feels easiest, what feels most in the flow of life.

If I un-do and question all that I’ve ever learned about decisions and people who make them, then I am at ground zero, a new innocent, fresh place. It’s like I just came from another planet and I’m not concerned with what is right or wrong.

 “It takes time to get used to operating from a whole different perspective. You have a decision to make, and your mind wants to know what the right decision is. But you realize that isn’t a relevant concern anymore because your framework for decision making has been conditioned. A “right decision” according to whom? One person’s “right” is another person’s “wrong.” If you’re not going to make decisions based on right and wrong or should and shouldn’t–which only exist in thought–then how do you move?”~Adyashanti

Just do one thing at a time. And wait. Let the universe support you. You don’t have to “know” what is right or wrong…in fact it may not be possible to know.

“In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way. It can’t be gained by interfering.”~Tao Te Ching #48

Love, Grace

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Spiritual Teacher Yosemite Sam

There are a lot of spiritual writings and sayings that are becoming cliche these days. This has actually probably happened throughout human history. An idea enters into the scene, and little thoughts-to-live-by start to get repeated.

Sayings like “we are one with everything….there is no duality….I am not really here….this is all an illusion….the present moment is all that matters….at every moment we choose love or fear…I must find the pathless path…”

All very helpful, if it is truly REAL for you, makes sense to you….AND if you can tell yourself the thoughts without immediately thinking you aren’t living up to it. Or use it against yourself in some subtle (or not-so-subtle) way.

Sometimes, I must laugh. One of my favorite spiritual teachers is Yosemite Sam. Yes, that would be the cartoon character.

It’s helpful to have an irreverent bone in your body. It helps you stop the attempt to be “good” and “better” all the time. There are many advantages, in fact, to irreverence.

One day I was reading yet another “spiritual” book and the author was talking about “Is-ness”. I thought, if one more person talks or writes about “IS-ness”, I’ll shoot a gun off! Like Yosemite Sam!

I don’t really like the sound of the word “Is-ness”, although I do like made up words. But not that one. Even though some of my truly favorite authors or teachers use it.

And I don’t always think that it’s helpful to start telling myself little spiritual principles or quotes or sayings to try to get myself back on track, to try to get myself to stop feeling damaged, poor, broken, or defeated. Not when I don’t really believe them.

Yosemite Sam stops all “trying” to be Good. Stopping can be very helpful. Shoot a couple of rounds into the air and jump up and down. At some perfect moments, that is the most fabulous spiritual practice.

Irreverence in the dictionary is defined as LACK of veneration. Veneration is the feeling of awe, fear, reverence, devotion. It comes from the root to worship. We’re talking about giving up worship and awe here. In a good way.

“I used to try to be smart and now I don’t and everything works a whole lot better. Stopping being smart was one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.”~ Jed McKenna

Ultimately, the only thing I can do is be myself. It can’t be true that if I read a certain book (the bible, for example) or encountered the right teacher (like Byron Katie) that I would be free, liberated, good, or better…..and that if I didn’t encounter these amazing teachers or writings, that I would be stuck.

Instead, living with uncertainty, and not knowing, appears to be what is true.

Eckhart Tolle says “when you get comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life.”

So here we are….and apparently, if you’re here, then it means you’ve probably read many authors and are always hearing about another new amazing teacher, and a new practice for living life well. You might have little sayings to tell yourself.

Nothing wrong with any of this (I sure hope not, I’ve spent a lot of time being fascinated with anything I can get my hands on about the meaning of life).

But sometimes it’s good to consult Yosemite Sam.

He’s great at helping you close the book, stop trying to meditate or chant the right phrases, look around at the territory. Stop knowing anything. Bam Bam, then silence.

“Notice the feeling of irritation that arises when you are unable to fix the malfunctioning toaster. Then notice the space around that irritation. Notice that the broken toaster is not a problem until you make it a problem through thought.”~Scott Kiloby

I notice that Amazement is here, without me trying to find it. YOU are amazing. Me too.

Love, Grace

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What Would SILENCE Do? (WWSD?)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thought this was going to help me feel peaceful?

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

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

And it WAS NOT SILENT! JEEZUS!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love, Grace

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Anger–Must Get Rid Of It

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

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

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

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

GASP! Moi? Angry?!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love, Grace

 

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Her Voice Is Excruciating

Very recently I re-read the first few chapters of Loving What Is by Byron Katie for a class.

In the Introduction of the book, a woman is sitting with Katie, doing The Work on her husband.

One of the woman’s thoughts she has about her husband: I hate the way he breathes.

Hilarious! So perfectly childish, petty, and yet the kind of thought most of us have had in our lifetimes that has left us feeling annoyed, unhappy, definitely NOT peaceful.

Having a stressful thought means that I think the thought, it passes into my mind, and almost instantly I believe it’s true, then I have uncomfortable, difficult, troubling feelings or responses of any kind. Even these silly, babyish thoughts about people and their breathing.

This reminded me that I know one person whose voice is annoying….like annoying enough that I cringe at the sound sometimes.

When I ask myself what that’s about, there are many meanings I attach to that voice. It’s too nicey-nice, it’s fakey, it’s false, the person is needy, there is no range, it’s controlled, the words are too slow, patronizing. All of these beliefs come out of that voice, or vice versa.

The woman working with Katie really was upset with her husband for being needy, not being aware, not being powerful, for being dependent, out of shape. These are all the thoughts located inside this woman—they are not true for those of us listening, we don’t even know this man who is her husband. But we’ve had the same kinds of thoughts.

If that person is needy, then I’m outta here! Gross! I resist being open to them, even physically in my body I brace ever so slightly against the sound of their voice, their breathing.

We start proving all the moments are true that show how needy, powerless, and dependent those people are. Building up the story of those messed up needy people over there.

So….to turn things around and look at ourselves, this is the great self-inquiry. Can I see that right in that moment that I’m wishing that person wasn’t so needy that I am needing them to change? They need to stop acting needy, and then I won’t feel so frustrated.

I am trapped, in that moment, in waiting for that person to change so that I can be happy. Very hopeless, very impossible, random, unknown, a roll of the dice whether they can make the change or not. And I am 100% in need of that person to make the first move.

This is called being a victim. My mind is full of what THEY need to do so that I can be excited, thrilled, happy, safe, comfortable, loving, peaceful.

What if they will never, ever change and the only person who could change is you, from the inside out? There they are, doing what they do, being themselves (breathing and speaking) and now I get to work with how to be truly stress-free in their presence.

Reality is, that person presents themselves in the world in that way. I can argue with the way they are, or stop arguing and see what that would be like, for a change.

“I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality…..When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.”~ Byron Katie

Think about something very small but irritating in your world, something you see that you feel annoyed with. It doesn’t have to be a huge, major, difficult dilemma in life (although painful thinking of every kind can be taken to inquiry).

Now what if you didn’t believe it was true that it should change, so you can feel better?

“The generals have a saying: ‘Rather than make the first move it is better to wait and see. Rather than advance an inch it is better to retreat a yard.’ This is called going forward without advancing, pushing back without using weapons. There is no greater misfortune than underestimating your enemy. Underestimating your enemy means thinking that he is evil. Thus you destroy your three treasures and become an enemy yourself. When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield.”~ Tao te Ching #69

Do you think there will be greater change if you enter the room hating that person’s breathing and the sound of their voice, and believing they are needy?

Or, if you enter the room NOT knowing, seeing with different eyes, being open to the beauty in that human being, being open to how much you actually care about them?

If that breathing-annoying-voiced person offered you a path to peace (and they do, because they apparently show up and throw you out of peacefulness) then you would sit with their image in your mind, you would ask yourself questions about what you are really believing is dangerous about them.

Even if you felt sick to your stomach, you would not underestimate this person, thinking of them as absolutely 100% incapable of peace, evil. You would see them as worthy, and by this, you would see yourself as worthy as well.

You are worthy of yielding. You are worthy of going forward without advancing, without using weapons (including verbal attack). Worthy of questioning how, why, when you feel threatened by someone’s breathing or voice. Are you absolutely sure you can’t wait and see?

“Defense is the first act of war” ~Byron Katie

Love, Grace

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Sick, Crazy, Insane Thoughts

Many of us have thoughts enter our minds which actually attack other thoughts:

  • what I am thinking is sick!
  • I must be crazy—he/she/they must be crazy
  • I can’t stand my own mind
  • if I didn’t have this mind, my life would be much better
  • my mind is a cesspool
  • I should be able to stop all this chaos in my head
  • where is the OFF switch?

It’s an all-out war on our own thinking process. An entirely internal argument.

When we make grand sweeping statements like this many of us get tired, depressed, angrier, and wish we were someone else. We start to want to have some big shift of consciousness, some kind of enlightenment, to take us out of this battle field!

But what if we just take one of these thoughts and treat it with some respect. Instead of having such judgments about the actual thinking process we’re in, what if we softened and spent some time looking, like a loving, patient parent perhaps.

Who would you be without the thought that your mind is a cesspool?

Phew, it’s hard to even begin seeing who I’d be. My mind is so speedy quick and the thoughts churn out a million miles per hour.

But really, if I didn’t have the thought that this “thinking” is wrong, bad, annoying, or crazy? I would feel relief. I would also instantly step out of the “thinking” and be able to watch it from a different vantage point.

I would feel this part of me that is an observer, looking and open, without judgment.

Curious, fascinated, interested. Ready to be here for myself. Not so overwhelmed. Trusting that I am the one who can handle this mind, since I’m the one here with it.

“I haven’t met a sick, crazy thought in years. Thoughts are like children–they’re the beloved. They’re children. They’re screaming to be heard, and they scream and scream and scream. And we shut them up; we send them away; we push them under; we deny them, we try to pretend that they’re not there. So when we bring them into the light….and we question them and turn them around, then the children begin to get quiet.”~ Byron Katie

Now, imagine being with a person you know or have known in the past who you have thought of as crazy, sick or insane. You’ve treated them as dangerous, uncomfortable, mean, selfish. You have judged them as someone you need to get away from.

What if you could be with that person without wanting to attack them, push them away, deny them their voice, shut them up, or pretend they are not there? What if you didn’t move away from them so quickly, or decide to “end” your relationship with them forever?

I notice there is something beyond fear, worry, or terror that knows all is well with that person, and all is well with me. I surrender. I allow it all.

Everyone has their path in life, and some paths look crazier than others, more extreme and more painful. The more compassion I have for my own mind, I notice the closer I can get to every kind of human being, even people experiencing extreme suffering, people who appear really nuts.

When I am kind, when I am willing to be with myself in a loving way, all people I encounter are welcome in my company.

Byron Katie suggests that being with that person we consider the “enemy” can be like sitting at the feet of a true guru. This is my great moment of undoing the part of me that has to be right, that feels so vulnerable, that has to assert itself.

So can I sit with my enemies and open to them? Can I sit with my own mind and open to it, without all the judgment, defense, analysis and war?

This starts by questioning my thoughts.

“Do we see an enemy?  If so, then we are not seeing things in their true light and are part of the problem we are trying to solve.…..There is nothing wrong with thought and it can be used whenever necessary.   But in every moment you can choose to follow your thoughts or you can recognize that which is not thinking.  Don’t try to stop thinking, let it happen.  Just recognize that which is not thinking.”~ Adyashanti

Don’t try to stop those people out there who are not behaving or saying or being how we would like, just recognize that you are not seeing them in their true light.

You can see them in their true light. Part of this amazing universe, part of your world. Here for an important reason, to bring out love beyond all fear.

We can all love those people and that nutty thinking inside ourselves, unconditionally. You may notice…..they get quieter, more manageable, and they scream less.

Love, Grace