Tag: Byron Katie

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I WANT, Therefore I’m Bad

Is wanting something stressful? It sure seems like it sometimes. We have the thoughts “I want it”…..I want to eat (even though I’m not hungry), I want a boyfriend (and I’m single, no prospects), I want more money (my bank account looks less than perfect), I want more time (my calendar is is so booked I’m starting to schedule “time to sleep”).

I WANT.

When we are babies or toddlers, we don’t really have an “observer” who is commenting on what we want. It seems babies cry or smile or reach or play and this thing comes along called “wanting” and it’s very simple. No judgment AGAINST the wanting feeling. It’s more like attention is turned toward getting what is wanted, it’s the way of it.

I remember one of the very first times I wanted something but then ALSO had the thought on top of wanting it that it was BAD to be wanting this thing.

I was eight. In school that day we were allowed to sit on top of our desks to watch a movie. Such a special and strange treat, sitting ON our desks, with our feet dangling down in front.

For some reason I caught a glimpse of my thighs and they were spread wide the way they would be sitting that way. But my mom had recently gone on a Weight Watchers diet and it had occurred to me for the first time in my life that sometimes, people want more food than they actually need, and they get upset about it. They don’t like the way they look.

I suddenly thought “Oh no! I am too fat! Being fat is bad! That’s what my mom is talking about!”

Later, the teacher gave us Reese’s Peanutbutter Cups. I wanted to eat it, but instead I took mine home for my little sisters. I would start copying my mom. We had the same “problem” of wanting too much food. Obviously.

This morning I worked with a client who noticed the thought “I want more time with him”.

She found that she was actually wanting more “fun” and relaxation.

I heard this dear client saying that one way she reacted when she believed the thought that more time with him would bring her happiness, is she had a new thought; “I am going to stop wanting more time with him”. That’s the little tricky part. The strategy to deal with this BAD WANTING. I want, therefore I suffer. So I’ll figure out how to stop wanting anything.

But what if the wanting isn’t “bad”?

So first, I find out who I would be without the thought that I have to have that thing I want in order to be happy? Then I find out who I would be without the thought that wanting it is bad?

Who would I be without the thought that if I was thinner, I’d be happier? Who would I be without the thought that if I had more money, I’d have more freedom, more adventure, or more security? Who would I be without the thought that if I had more time, I’d be more successful?

Who would I be without the thought that if I stopped WANTING things in the first place, I’d be happier? Can I just “want” and still be happy?!

 “Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to change the world so that they can be happy. This hasn’t ever worked, because it approaches the problem backward.~Byron Katie

With inquiry, I notice that wanting stuff is not so bad. In fact, it’s kind of exciting. It gives me new, creative ideas. It’s like the world is a playground and I see the swings, the jungle gym, the monkey bars and want to run around on all of them, oh boy!

I also notice, there is more to “me” than this wanting. It is not all I am.

“When things are not the way you prefer, that does not mean that they shouldn’t be happening. It means that they are not what you want….Your wanting it different means that you want it different. Whatever is you up til now is allowed. Whatever you want or choose now is also allowed. You are allowed to be what you are…”~ Bruce di Marsico

I am allowed to be what I am, wanting to have fun, play, eat candy. Wanting more time, wanting more money….

When I stop criticizing myself for be a big WANTING machine, I can find out more about what I fear, why I want, what is going on in this present moment where “wanting” exists.

What if wanting is the way of it, sometimes?

Come bring your fabulous WANTING and investigate it for the weekend in Seattle next month. We will gather at Goldilocks Cottage (my home) and dive into The Work and see who we are without our stories about believing we want. Limited to 14 people, non-residential.

For more information on this first weekend in June click here.

With love, Grace

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Terrible Horrible Bad Anxiety

Asking questions has been one of humankinds great activities, since some time way back when cave men first went exploring.

What is over there (past the edge of the world)? How can I stay alive the longest?

Socrates had big discussions with Plato about virtue and truth. What can be taught to humans? What is naturally inside of us from the beginning?

The great spiritual teachers, and probably many that we don’t know about, were asking “What is all this? What is the meaning of life? How can I know God?”

Anthony de Mello, a wonderful Jesuit priest and psychotherapist (who died in 1987), asked burning questions about truth, love, faith and reality. He said “problems only exist in the human mind”.

Byron Katie’s questions are so simple….and the answers I have found require lots of contemplation sometimes. Especially question four “Who would you be without that stressful thought?”

Yesterday I thought about one of my most painful experiences: craving. I used to experience this with food, cigarettes, alcohol, caffeine, then money, excitement, energy, attraction.

I’m talking about craving, that battle that goes I MUST have something, get it ASAP, and I won’t rest til I have it. Feeling desperate, emotional, ready to do anything to find it.

In earlier years food was always by far the biggest, worst, most overwhelming craving. The most destructive, wild, horrible experiences of over-eating to the point of feeling painfully stuffed, learning to force myself to vomit at some point to relieve the pain, then collapsing exhausted into sleep. That was a nightmare!

So many strategies for how to stop, setting dates on when I would quit, reading books on nutrition, reading self-help books, going to therapy, and always wondering what was wrong with me?

I was reading The Guru Next Door today and found new questions from this book applying beautifully to looking at my inner world. Seeing who I am when I am feeling something very intense. These kinds of questions help get to the judgments so you can see them written down.

One wonderful question in the book is: What is bothering you when you are feeling bad? I mean, really, WHAT IS BOTHERING YOU? About life, death, your work, other people, the world?

With my craving what bothered me was:

  • I have to consume something
  • I am very anxious
  • nothing will help me stop being anxious or upset except eating/drinking/smoking
  • I am out of control
  • my feelings are unbearable
  • I am powerless
  • this will never change

Today in the Horrible Food Wonderful Food teleclass we questioned the thought “Anxiety pushes me to eat (or abuse myself somehow)”.

I have anxiety, I have all these thoughts about how to manage it, how to get rid of it, what the problem must be, how to fix it, how to correct it. I am Against Anxiety for sure. No one out there with anxiety comes out OK, I have proof. The emotion of anxiety seems good for nothin’!

But who would I be without the thought that Anxiety is bad? What IS this thing that I’m calling Anxiety anyway?

What if Anxiety is good for something? Useful? Helpful in some way? Showing something of value? What if it’s a buzzing, quick, busy, nervous feeling as a response to stressful thoughts about the future, worries about the future? New thoughts that are untrue, that I could really question?

Turning my thoughts around that I used to have when I was craving something, it looks like this, much more peaceful:

  • I don’t have to consume anything at all
  • Some part of me has sensations (that I was calling anxiety)
  • This feeling will stop without me doing anything to help it stop, it will change
  • I am not out of control, I’m sitting here
  • my feelings are bearable, they are only a part of me
  • I am powerful (I can question anything that hurts)
  • this will change, it will always change (it never sticks around without letting up)

Spending time with each sentence and finding examples of how they are true can be mind-altering.

You can do this for yourself. There is no actual true reason to feel terrible, to feel hopeless, full of stress, out of control. Just as you are, even with anxiety, you are OK.

No reason to suffer, there is nothing wrong with you.

What, you thought you should not ever feel one drop of anxiety? That’s your goal?

“You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer.”~ Byron Katie

With love, Grace

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Loving Yourself As You Are Is Scary

Movement, change, action, motion….everything is always changing. Some patterns repeat themselves, but never exactly the same way. Nothing ever freezes, nothing stops. There is always something new, different, next.

The times we feel most unhappy are because we want something to change. It’s like we believe “this will not change” or “this must change or I can’t stand it” and logically if you follow along, whatever is happening IS going to change. Things NEVER stay the same.

But arrrgh! So unhappy! I want more money! I need a better relationship with my child! My father should have lived a longer life! My mother shouldn’t have been such a perfectionist! Life shouldn’t be so full of uncertainty, pain, death and failure!

I love Byron Katie’s description of her huge shift of consciousness when she awakened to a different reality than the extremely painful suicidal one she had been living. She says that what happened is she loved herself more than anything, she fell in love with the being she saw in the mirror.

Katie wasn’t trying to love herself. In fact she writes in the book 1000 Names For Joy that it was as if something else had woken up, “it” opened its eyes, “it” was looking through Katie’s eyes. Love without condition.

The Buddha wrote “You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection”.

Benjamin Franklin said “he that falls in love with himself will have no rivals”.

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely”~Carl Jung

This self-love thing is not easy, it appears. And actually may even be disconcerting, even terrifying to do.

How could this be? We all want this unconditional self-acceptance! What’s the problem?

In the beautiful book The Guru Next Door by Wendy Dolber (which I just started reading) the hero and teacher Bruce di Marsico studied unhappiness and discovered for himself that it was based on believing painful thoughts. There are so many beliefs about our inadequacies, and believing that we need to suffer in order to get anywhere.

Doh! Where have I heard THAT before!?!

These painful thoughts about ourselves are the most painful of all. That we are actually ‘bad’ for ourselves, the way eating rotten food might be bad for us, or smoking cigarettes might be bad for us, or procrastinating, getting angry, wanting things too much, wanting the “wrong” things, needing stuff, not perceiving our own best interests, making mistakes.

How amazing to think that the way you are, oh you who are not successful enough, giving enough, honest enough, kind enough, self-realized enough, enlightened enough, mature enough, pretty enough, rich enough.. ARE ACTUALLY COMPLETELY and ENTIRELY ENOUGH.

Could this be as true or truer than the belief that you need to fix something about yourself? Write down what you think you need to fix! Investigate it!

The way I am walking the road of unconditional self-love is through inquiry. Anyone can do it, even if it feels frightening to give up the ancient beliefs that improvement is necessary for happiness.

Maybe life will have action, motion, change, movement without me “trying” to love myself or make things happen, and the movement will be beautiful. Maybe being here is not an effort. Maybe there are no rivals, anywhere, nothing to be against, when I love myself.

Eventually there is no fear. You come to feel total acceptance: I am this, for now. And it’s all okay…..Ultimately, mind becomes its own friend.” ~Byron Katie

With love,

Grace

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Getting Things Done With A Mind Like Water

Many people have heard of David Allen and his book and teachings “The Art of Getting Things Done”.  Allen writes about productivity and work. He writes about the opposite of the state of not needing to do anything.

As we read Allen’s book, even though he has a whole system of ways to organize and guide our activities where apparently we’re interested in “getting things done”, ultimately the core of it all points back once again to a central place where there is no stress.

The way to get a grip on the piles of things you have on your to-do list, and get meaningful things done with minimal effort, is to work with the mind.

“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything“–Shunryu Suzuki (renowned for opening the first Buddhist monastery outside Asia and writing the popular book on zen practice Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind).

When I read David Allen’s book several years ago, it’s the first time I heard the term “mind like water”.

Water just goes where it goes, always down, or to the most natural easy place. It just runs that way. Mind can be like water, knowing there is a naturally easiest flow to any activity. Especially if I’m not holding the thought that it should go up THAT way, which is uphill.

Byron Katie speaks about the fear some people have when they start to question their thinking, that if I really “love what is” then I will lie down on the floor and let people walk over me, doing nothing.

But I love discovering that doing The Work actually creates more energy, action, joy, and creativity than I ever had before. Action comes. Getting things done is something that happens.

The more mind is like water, after questioning beliefs, the more I find that these things I want done, they are all fun to do. No procrastinating or waiting because I believe they will be hard, boring, or stupid.

And I also don’t have to worry about being a doormat or a lazy slug or never achieving anything of value or not accomplishing anything…..it turns out that after I question my thinking, action just happens.

Roshi Bernie Glassman, another interesting zen buddhist, talks about seeing himself take action, get involved with projects and change. He says it’s natural to take action. “If my hand is bleeding, I can’t sit around watching it just bleed and say, ‘I don’t know what the hell to do.’ If your hand is bleeding, you’re going to do something about it.”

I love Katie’s story of hearing a voice which said “brush your teeth”. That’s it. Nothing big, fancy, amazing. It didn’t say “get everything done that you could ever imagine doing”. It was just one thing, then another. Right and perfect timing for it all.

“Act without doing; work without effort. Think of the small as large and the few as many. Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts. The Master never reaches for the great; thus she achieves greatness. When she runs into a difficulty, she stops and gives herself to it. She doesn’t cling to her own comfort; thus problems are no problem for her.”—Tao te Ching #63

All those things on your to-do list, what would they all look like to you if your main job was to relax with the list, do the one on top, not worry, empty your mind of the beliefs about what will happen if they aren’t done.

Question the thoughts like “it’s too much”, “I’ll never get there”, “I don’t have enough time”, “I hate doing that”, “I would be happier if…..”

With love, Grace

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Dying Is Exciting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Much Love,
Grace

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Is It True That It Hurt?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Much Love, Grace

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Leaving Everything You Know Behind

This morning I was reading letters and responses that people have written to an author named “Sugar” which were printed in a magazine called The Sun. One of my favorite magazines of all time. Well, the only magazine I’ve ever continuously received and read each month for many years.

Someone had written to this woman named Sugar wondering if it was OK to NOT be speaking to her dad. This woman had HAD IT with her father.

Most of us have had the experience of wanting to shut down communication with someone else when we disagree or argue with them, or feel very hurt by them, or just too scared of them. It just seems like too much, too hard, too stress-producing, too uncomfortable, too painful.

I myself have had this experience, not so long ago even.

There is no right or wrong way to be around stopping talk with someone, of course, each experience is unique. But I liked how Sugar answered this writer. Sugar said “I will tell you about my own situation with my own father” and she told that story.

The story went like this: father gets mad, daughter gets hurt, daughter gets mad, no communication for many years, daughter reaches out, father gets mad, no communication again for years, father reaches out, daughter gets hurt, father gets mad, no communication again.

As I read the story, I realized that I expected the daughter and father to reconcile, to talk, to fall into each others’ arms at the end.

But it didn’t go that way. It doesn’t always go the way we like. Sometimes people need, apparently, to not communicate with each other. I’ve been the one myself to say I need a break, I can’t do this, I need to be quiet for awhile.

Doing The Work is like laying every idea I have down about what would be MY idea of a good outcome. It is seeing who I would be without my stories. It is leaving everything I know behind. It is opening to the wide sky, the vast earth, the limitless mind.

One of my favorite recordings, that I listen to every few months, is the haunting and beautiful poetry by David Whyte. A dear friend sent this one to me again recently, so I knew it was time to hear it once more.

Communication, silence, waiting, re-connecting, silence. Who knows how it will unfold, but it is all Love in the end. All of it.

In this high place

it is as simple as this,
leave everything you know behind.

Step toward the cold surface,

pray the old prayer of rough love
and open both arms.

Those who come with empty hands

will stare into the lake astonished,
there, in the cold light
reflecting pure snow,

the true shape of your own face.

David Whyte Tilicho Lake

Much Love,

Grace

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More! Less! Now!

The Tao Te Ching from 64 “…the Master takes action by letting things take their course. He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning. He has nothing, thus has nothing to lose…”

But I want “this” to be faster, bigger and more! Like my business, my bank account, my bicep muscles, my dance moves, my wedding, my children.

And I want other things to be slower, smaller and less! Like the flu, cancer, my neighbor’s noise, bills, natural disasters, problems, my journey to death.

I have found that questioning these concepts one by one, page after page of concepts I’ve written down, I find it pretty amusing the way my mind is so interested in piping up around what there should be more of and less of in my world.

Letting things take their course is revolutionary to this voice that loves to evaluate and diagnose everything it sees.

But wow, is it worth it.

One thought I had recently was that I should have more money. I chuckle to think of this thought right now….but if someone knocked on my door within the next five minutes and said “would you like some more money?” I would probably say yes. If there was no catch.

How amazing, though, to really ask myself, is it true that I want more?

I ask this in my teleclass on Money, Work and Business…and it’s an exercise I’ve heard variations on before in studying money and our beliefs about it: What do I really want more money for? I mean really? Security? Peace? Freedom? Joy? Power?

What do I want more of anything for? Or less of something for? And if I want it to be bigger or smaller than it actually is, if I’m not relaxing and letting things take their course, all I get is the Not Relaxing part.

It turns out things always take their course. I don’t get a vote.

This does not mean I have no importance, I have no influence, that all is random chaos and it’s terrible, meaningless.

In fact, when I find who I am without the thought that I need something to be MORE or something to be LESS, for anything to run a different course than it’s running, at first I catch a glimpse of excitement.

If I let myself really see who I’d be without the thought that I want more money, all afternoon, all the next day, and let my mind work with this idea, this imagination, this picture…

I see how all I really thought I wanted that money would give me is either already here, or perhaps impossible. I don’t have to go “get” it. There is no security that can be guaranteed by money, there is no peace that money brings, or freedom, or joy. I cannot keep it or pin it down. I have no control over it. Money does nothing, is nothing but a story. I can’t even keep it, if I had it I would put it out there again. It comes, it goes…it runs its own course.

What is here, is peace, joy, silence, love, security, freedom, a great hum of unknown. Just here, with me listening. Can you hear it today?

“The master has nothing, thus has nothing to lose.”

Much Love, Grace

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Sneaky Little Rascally Mind

The mind can be so tricky, slippery, sneaky! That rascal!

I thought this today as I remembered Cheri Huber’s quote “you cannot be non-violent if there is any part of yourself that you are in opposition to”.

Then the thought comes in “oh boy, I have a bit of work to do still, I notice I am not perfectly THERE all the time, all self-accepting and non-oppositional”.

This sneaky little thought is actually an opposition in itself. I need to change, to adjust, to fix something. I need to be just a wee wee bit more purely non-oppositional.

How very, very strange it is for the human mind to consider having nothing to do, nothing to fix, nothing to change, nothing to say, no new way to be.

I can hear the thoughts getting nervous right now, like a hen house at night when there’s a fox creeping around. What would become of us! We’d all go to hell in a hand basket! Life would be meaningless! Nothing to do? Nothing to fix? No! Impossible!!! Cluck Cluck Cluck!!

  • If I stop trying to improve my business, I’ll sit around all day watching Puppetiji on youtube
  • If I let go of protecting myself or I don’t set good boundaries, I’ll get hurt
  • If I really don’t think I need to do anything, I’ll be worthless this lifetime
  • If I let go of all control, I won’t have a schedule to follow
  • If I don’t oppose my fat butt, then I’ll never exercise
  • If I don’t oppose the dandelions in my yard, I won’t pull them up
  • If I don’t feel like going to work (that boring job) then I’ll lie on the couch all day and eventually, I’ll starve to death (which is bad)
  • If I don’t oppose those wealthy people, they’ll take over even more and I’ll never get what I want

This effort to control things, to control yourself, takes a lot of energy. And it believes underneath it all that you can make a mistake, other people can make mistakes, and very bad things can happen unless you get a handle on yourself!!

Cheri Huber writes “Pay attention. Self-hate is slippery. It will even say things to you like, ‘you shouldn’t believe the voices of self-hate. If you are still believing them, there really IS something wrong with you!”

We believe that if we exert enough control and stay “good” people then we’ll have a good life. If we have a bad life, then we must be doing something wrong.

What if we really let go of control…even in our thinking, and found that life moves and ebbs and flows and creates without our personal control or lack of it.

What if we opposed nothing and let go?

Katie says, if you put your hand into a fire, do you have to decide to move it? No. When your hand starts to burn, it moves.

Maybe we don’t have to dictate to ourselves how we’re going to behave today, what we’re going to say or do, or plan. We will sense easily how to be, and our nature is very loving. It doesn’t want to get burned.

What if it’s possible that what lies beneath your opposition is a life force stronger than you could imagine? What if you won’t lie there like a log if you let go of all control and planning?

Katie writes in Loving What Is “people new to the Work often say to me, ‘but it would be disempowering to stop my argument with reality. If I simple accept reality, I’ll become passive. I may even lose the desire to act’. I answer them with a question: Can you really know that that’s true?

Much Love, Grace

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I Can’t Stand It!

One of my favorite thoughts to question is “I can’t stand it!!!”

It’s one of those simple, short, instant thoughts that comes to my mind if I really don’t like something that’s happening or something someone is saying.

Can you feel the sensations in your body that match the idea of not being able to stand it (whatever it is)? Tension, frustration, agony, fear!

A place that I’ve had this thought before is when I’ve had very little sleep and I’ve been awake many hours, and maybe I see that I’m probably going to be awake many more hours still….the thought comes in “I can’t stand it, I have to sleep!”

But if that were really true, I’d fall down right there, wherever I was, and start sleeping.

It turns out I always “make it” through the day. So far in life, I’ve always stood it, I’m still here.

Let’s take a harder circumstance. I was reading Byron Katie’s book this morning Who Would You Be Without Your Story? and there is a woman whose husband had left her to go be with another woman. The woman believed “I can’t stand it”.

I remember when I was waiting in the doctor’s office after getting a biopsy of a funny mole on my thigh. The doctor had checked the stitches from the biopsy and then said “why don’t you get dressed and then I’ll come back and we can talk about this”.

Suddenly, this wasn’t going the way most other doctor’s appointments went. We’re going to TALK about this? My mind was off like the race horses! Before knowing anything! Adrenaline, alertness, anticipation, intuition.

And, I also had The Work. I watched my mind within 10 minutes only, before the doctor even returned, question the belief “I can’t stand it, if it’s cancer”. It was cancer.

Katie writes “You believe you can’t stand it because you haven’t inquired. You haven’t enlightened yourself about how the mind works. So you have to live out I CAN’T STAND IT’. “

A friend who loves doing The Work emailed me a new title of a book he’s reading “The Guru Next Door” by Wendy Dolber. I live across the street from a bookstore (my personal addiction….we’ll talk about that later) so I’ll be looking for it today.

In the book is a list Wendy calls The Seven Understands of All Unhappiness. One of them is so simple:

“Believing something causes unhappiness is the very reason it seems to “cause” unhappiness”.

When I think about the things I can’t stand, I am CERTAIN that they cause unhappiness. Duh! Lack of sleep, lack of money, the cancer thingy on my leg, running out of gas in my car, not enough time, getting the flu, people dying, war, earthquakes.

Do these experiences REALLY cause unhappiness? What if they don’t? Almost hard to imagine, right?

But that’s what The Work brings. Even if it’s just the possibility that what I’m believing isn’t actually 100% true, and peace is possible, even in this “difficult” experience.

What if I CAN stand it? What if my life goes on? Or even if it doesn’t? Am I sure I couldn’t stand THAT? 

So I watched what happened with the thing called cancer on my leg. I cried on the surgeon’s table as I was being wheeled in, but it was like my tears were not 100% serious. I thought about Jesus when he knew what was about to happen with the whole crucifixion situation and he said “God, do I HAVE to? Are you sure I can stand it?”

Now there’s just a big 3 inch scar on my leg where there was once 45 stitches. I like to say I got in a sword fight with a pirate. What if having a cancer tumor cut out of your thigh is just as exciting as getting stabbed by a pirate? It’s a pretty good story. The key word being ‘STORY’.

“We’re using mind to enlighten mind, because there isn’t anything else….When we realize that it’s our own mind that is causing our suffering, then The Work begins, then the fun begins. It’s living in a whole other polarity, a whole other realm. And what I love about it is we no longer believe that the world is causing our suffering, that it CAN cause our suffering. It can’t not ever—no chance of it.”—Byron Katie

Much Love, Grace