Tag: doing the work

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Do The Work, wake up to reality, amaze yourself (Year of Inquiry starts Orientation next week)

The worker-bees are buzzing and working behind the scenes to get Year of Inquiry participants on board. (And, those buzzing bees would all be me–haha)!

It’s quite the undertaking to join a whole year program primarily online. Holy smokes, what a commitment.

Fortunately, the effort it takes mostly is marking your calendar and dialing a phone or clicking a link to join live calls, and also connect with partners in The Work.

But the other day, when an acquaintance learned I’m about to start another Year of Inquiry again, he asked me why on earth I’ve done The Work for so many years, week in and week out, and with a whole group of people?

He said it sounded a bit boring (he actually made the ‘yawn’ motion with his hand over his mouth).

Hmmm. I might have to do The Work on him.

But meanwhile, I also thought about what a good question he asked me:

Why ask, and then answer, the very same four questions over and over, and find our turnarounds….about events, people, situations that have disturbed us?

What I’ve noticed as someone who has returned over and over to The Work as a regular practice, is how interesting my answers are. How educational.

How enlightening.

And how sometimes, doing The Work is really the only thing that ever helped calm me down.

Byron Katie calls the inner life we experience “The School of You”.

But it’s not ever about only ourselves–it’s about our relationship to reality, to life, to the world, to how we see and feel this astonishing experience of being alive.

There’s so much I’ve called “boring” in my life (as if I need all those boring things to be entertaining or large), but The Work is certainly not one of them.

Every time I sit with someone else or the four questions, a contemplation and inquiry moves in a liberating way.

This work is about working with feelings, and the thoughts that tend to produce them.

One of my favorite things about The Work is that instead of my old go-to of attacking my feelings and myself for being the one who feels upset or troubled, I look at what I’m thinking and believing, and question it. I used to berate myself horribly for feeling (and acting) angry or afraid, or even depressed.

When we do The Work, there’s no judgment or attack in it….or even if there is, we pause and simply answer the questions.

We get to use our imagination wondering what it would be like without our current perspective (often a viewpoint that was set in place long ago).

When I used to feel anxious or upset or furious, I’d eat, smoke, screen time, plan, obsess, daydream, and try to think about how to fix myself or the situation ASAP.

Now, it seems I more often get to look at myself with great compassion, ask for help, share with others, connect and inquire. Usually inquiring needs to happen first.

The, transformation happens all on it’s own, gently unfolding naturally. Hooray for The Work.

Hooray for the simplicity of coming back to four questions.

What a relief.

If you’d like to read more about Year of Inquiry, and even watch an information session about what’s specifically included for the entire year, please visit this link : HERE.

We start with Orientation next week (!). We’ll get to know one another, and step into a life of self-inquiry, wondering who we’d be without our thoughts, using our own brilliance for insight, not condemnation and criticism.

Would you like to join us?

Head here to read more. Write me if you need to talk first, or you have questions.

Much love,
Grace

P.S. check out my little video I made with this same post on facebook right HERE. (Scroll down a wee bit and you’ll see the post that reads “Why do The Work?”)
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Exclude nothing, welcome it. The astonishing practice of The Work.

Have you ever experienced the feeling like you know The Work of Byron Katie is transformative, you’ve tried it, you’ve done it, you’ve been in workshops on The Work, you’ve sat with Katie in person, you’ve even gone to The School for The Work….

….and yet, something isn’t jarring loose? Something keeps on keepin’ on, it keeps repeating itself, you keep feeling bad about the same thing, you don’t really get how to address your particular relationship(s) or issue?

It can’t be so simple, can it? You can’t just “question your thinking” and change your life, can you?

Yet we’re drawn, constantly, to inquire once we’ve been bit by the bug of the power of self-inquiry. To wonder about if what we’re thinking is actually true is amazing!

What if everything I’ve ever been terrified of isn’t actually true?

Wow. Exciting.

But even though I’ve known and deeply experienced and been fundamentally changed and impressed by The Work, I haven’t always felt the power of it.

I know how to do The Work, but….(we have our reasons we don’t do it, or we think it won’t work….)

The grooves and habits we’re in are perhaps deep, and practiced for many years (since childhood)!

Over the past ten years I’ve worked on my own thoughts about the following topics, and worked with so many people who were suffering about the very same situations.

  • Doing The Work on someone who really angers you, where you felt resentment or even rage for being betrayed, ignored, hurt.
  • Doing The Work on money, or loss of your job, or feeling anxious about your survival because of the volatility of money or your career.
  • Doing The Work on addictions, like going to the fridge for more, more, more when you’re clearly not hungry, or drinking to where you don’t remember what you said, or smoking cigarettes when you thought you already quit.
  • Doing The Work on love, sexuality, couples, marriage or divorce
  • Doing The Work on getting cancer, hurting yourself physically, aging, or not being attractive enough.
  • Doing The Work on the pain of being alive, on mother, father, sister, brother….on everything we learned or experienced when we were tiny things.

If you wonder about hitches or blocks about doing The Work, like thinking it’s not as big a deal as it seems, or it’s just not so light and easy, you may enjoy listening to the live immersion webinar today.

Come join me for an investigation of what typically blocks us when it comes to this profound and transformational self-inquiry.

We start today, Tuesday, August 22nd at 8:30 am PT: Ten Barriers to The Work and How To Dissolve Them. (2 hours) Click HERE to register. Bring a pen and paper.

At the very end, and I mean truly after 90 minutes of only focusing on barriers to The Work and wonderful exercises to help crack them….I’ll talk about Year of Inquiry for those interested in the one year program starting soon (live calls start the week of Sept 15).

But if you aren’t drawn or can’t attend this live webinar….don’t worry.

I’m here with you in The Work. No one needs a webinar to do The Work. The Work is something you can do, free of charge, by answering four questions and finding turnarounds.

All you need to do is identify one particularly stressful thought today. Write it down.

Then hold it up against the four questions. Keep repeating it over again, as you wonder about every question, and every answer. Then find your turnarounds….all the opposites to your stressful belief.

If you have a special and particularly difficult stressful thought, hit reply and let me know what it is and if you’ve worked it before. I’ll write about it in a Grace Note soon.

“When the mind begins inquiry as a practice, it learns as a student of itself that everything is for it. Everything adds to it, enlightens it, nourishes it, reveals it. Nothing is or ever was against it. This is a mind that has grown beyond opposites. It’s no longer split. It keeps opening, because it’s living out of a fearless, undefended state, and it’s eager for knowledge. It realizes that it’s everything, so it learns to exclude nothing, to welcome it all.” ~ Byron Katie in A Mind At Home With Itself

Let’s do The Work. Because nothing could be so wonderful as to not be against what happens.

Much love,

Grace

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There’s a right way to do The Work

Doing The Work together with friends….can bring closeness, clarity, support. If you don’t do it on your own, try it with others!

Yesterday I gathered up my black briefcase, with five clipboards, pens and a stack of Judge Your Neighbor worksheets, turned on my Waze map app, and ventured off to a beautiful house overlooking the water and the Seattle sky line.

Usually when someone hires me to come work with a small group, it’s their employees, their non-profit organization, their work team.

It’s about leadership and growth, numbers, success, and communication improvement (so they think…although it is indeed all these things, but oh so much more).

But this group was simply a friend, inviting 3 other friends over, to be introduced and to “do” The Work in a little mini retreat of 3 hours. We were all offered cinnamon tea and roasted cashews.

We sat around a sweet dining table with Judge Your Neighbor worksheets, and each woman got to read her worksheet and work a concept from the sheet.

There was such a kind, supportive, loving sense of sharing in the group.

Normally, when doing The Work, it’s important not to share a long story, explain or justify, offer suggestions to someone else’s work or problem, brainstorm someone else’s dilemma. We even have training in The Work to listen to yourself facilitate on recording, listen to your own “hmmmm” sounds, or laughter, or unimportant words.

General overall feel: allow the one investigating to go deep, to follow their own process. There is no agenda.

I started off the little gathering speaking to this, and also mentioning the urge sometimes to tell your story with great detail. I usually say something about how to hold this work–with a lot of silence, consideration, not rushing in to sort out the identified problem.

But these women knew one another very well, and they were such a beautiful delight.

They wanted to help each other out.

Something in me knew to relax around their joy of giving feedback, reflection, asking questions, and watching creative ideas flow as these brave individuals did their work and wondered about their turnaround examples.

Someone shared the wisdom of her long-gone mother-in-law as an example of a person who lives the turnaround “there is nothing wrong with you”. Everyone benefitted by hearing about this unnamed elder who was so accepting of her children, and grandchildren, during her life.

Interesting to sit with this thing, called The Work, and watch the mind have it’s commentary: No one should tell their story, explain in too much detail their situation, give advice, suggest turnarounds, share their opinion.

An inquirer who is planning her own mini retreat in fact wrote to me recently requesting I don’t bring any agenda to her animal rights work. She wanted no convincing, and for me not to have an alternate opinion.

This is profoundly important with The Work. To understand there is no “right” way or “wrong” way….but nevertheless to have a very open mind, whether facilitator or the one inquiring (and the facilitator is actually also an inquirer, honestly).

So I noticed in this little lovely mini retreat with friends who knew one another well, the experience was just right. Not too hot, not too cold.

Is it true there should never be conversation, suggestions, help offered, new ideas, or someone telling quite a few details of their situation?

No.

Who would I be without this story of The Way To Do The Work?

Delighted with time spent with people who are my teachers, these newcomers to The Work.

Humble. Noticing I interrupted and brought people back into the process, and everyone got a turn, and joyful ah-ha’s were expressed, and now….

….The Work continues inside of me.

Trusting that the Universe and Reality have got this, and if I’m a part of the help, hooray, and how could I or anyone not be?

“I can’t find anything outside the brilliance. It’s everywhere, and it’s always gone, even before it happens. It’s how form appears to take place….You see that all stressful thoughts are already gone, you realize that there’s no substance to them, and you feel intense delight.” ~ Byron Katie in 1000 Names For Joy page 131

Much love,

Grace

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Feeling Bad And Don’t Know Why? Here’s What To Do

Fairly regularly, people come to me to do The Work and say “I feel awful, I can’t sleep, I want to eat all the time, I want to drink beer, but I don’t know WHAT I’m really upset about!?!”

This is soooooo common.

You aren’t weird if you’ve noticed this in your life.

Some of the other things people will say are “I am depressed” or “I am anxious all the time” or the most fabulous give-up smack to the world….”what’s the use?”

How do I do The Work on this feeling? I can’t find a concept! Write something down?

There’s nothing to write down….or too much to write down!

Maybe you are considering humanity….and the suffering, the wars, the hunger, destruction, global warning, relationships gone astray, the hurt, the grief.

It’s so big. So hard. So terrible. Blech. I’ll just go to bed.

When it comes to doing The Work, one of the first places to begin when you just feel bad is to locate a specific objection you have about life, and oddly enough, narrow it down in a strangely specific way.

I always have people start there, just like Byron Katie herself recommends.

“But I don’t have a specific situation….I have a whole bunch of uncomfortable or horrible situations….life is just one big fat disappointment, I’m a mess, being here is no good!”

OK, no problemo.

Here’s the good news. Pick ONE.

That’s all that is necessary.

Because narrowing it down to one situation at a time is the BEST THING I EVER DID in my inquiry.

Seriously.

And I was someone who had what I thought were HUNDREDS of objectionable situations.

I used to make very global statements about the difficulties of life. I used to be sarcastic and rather dark…my humor still leans in that direction, but now it’s actually FUNNY.

“Life sucks and then you die”.

I notice…I really don’t say those kinds of things hardly ever anymore. Or, I don’t believe it when I do.

Wow.

Have no fear. If you say big generalized statements about the world, life, you, humans….and it’s dark and bitter….all you have to do is begin with one situation you ACTUALLY went through.

One really lazer, painful, ouchy incident where you got hurt.

That’s the moment.

You put it on “pause” and hold that vision in your mind of that specific situation.

Ow, ow, ow.

Even if you don’t want to remember it, or deal with it, or you feel there’s absolutely nothing you could ever do about it, ever, ever, ever.

Inquiry is investigation into reality, into the truth.

And the assumption below it all is that experiencing pain and suffering in this moment now, through remembering the past or dreading the future, means you don’t have all the lights on. You’re missing something, you’ve thought something to be true that’s probably not really true for you.

But you have to look and see for yourself.

Today….if you have a big black cloud come over you, if you experience deep despair, irritation, depression, rage, frustration, terror, fear or anxiety….

….first simply stop.

Now consider the moment where you got triggered. Maybe an image sped through your mind and it reminded you of something else. Maybe three different people had funny faces, and all added up together you were disturbed because your mind took off on a tangent of despair.

Go backwards in time to the first moment you got triggered.

The scene of the crime.

The day you lost your innocence. The moment you failed, the day you found out that news, the conversation in which it became clear you were betrayed, criticized, unloved, wrong, destroyed.

Don’t worry if you don’t have the “best” worst situation.

The one that comes to mind, is the one ready for inquiry.

Every time I thought I just “felt bad” and didn’t have a thought to question…within five minutes of writing I had a specific situation, a difficult painful relationship to investigate.

“It is only by beginning to examine and realize the falseness within our minds that we begin to awaken an intelligence that originates from beyond the realm of thinking.” ~ Adyashanti

“An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.” ~ Byron Katie

I love knowing all that is necessary is to question.

The suffering I am experiencing is happening through not asking questions, through making statements like “LIFE SUCKS!”

Like I know, right?

Let yourself see the thing that’s bothering you, in that moment of angst, urgency, fear, sleeplessness.

Don’t start wondering if you have the right situation, or the best situation….just begin. Write that Judge Your Neighbor worksheet.

You can do it!

Much love, Grace

P.S. For lots of wonderful information about doing The Work and to see Byron Katie teach you about filling out a JYN, visit www.thework.com.

 

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You Can Love Your Mind

This past week, and many other times before, I’ve talked with truly honest and genuine inquirers who say this:

I am soooo angry, I am furious, I hate everything, I’m mad at my mate, my child, the traffic, my friends, everyone’s annoying, I am just so freakin’ judgmental, I can’t stand my own mind!

When you have this experience, and view the world through these pissy-irritable glasses, it’s not exactly fun.

Like a committee of screaming voices in the head that go from zero to hate in about one-quarter second.

Then you feel anxious, you hate yourself and your own thinking, and you lose.

As Byron Katie says….100% of the time. You lose.

You know it, right?

The loss feels horrible, you get depressed, explosive, you act ways you’d rather not act, you say snappy things to people you love, you become one of those negative complaining sorts.

The kind of person you don’t want to be.

I once was very close friends with someone who was exceptionally critical (my assessment, but he agreed).

We had long, long conversations about anger, death, what made us nervous, what we wanted, what was upsetting about life.

I noticed that this friend would often be at war with his own mind, hating the way it worked, trying to find a cure for his judgmental nature.

He should relax, he should calm down, he should stop being so critical, he is really afraid, he is so nervous and suspicious about everything under the sun…..

….but was that true?

Yes! He would feel a thousand percent better if he just chilled out a little, jeez. He should grow up, what a baby! He keeps wanting everything to be perfect, and it never will be. 

Can I absolutely know that this is true?

Can I absolutely know he should stop having a mind like that, stop judging, stop carrying on, stop criticizing, stop being so horribly mean and nasty towards everyone and everything?

Yes! I’m positive he’d have a better life, and so would everyone around him!

But wait.

Maybe judgment, criticism and nastiness all exist for a reason…..they are part of reality, after all.

Maybe he needs to be just as judgmental and rude as he is, for reasons I don’t even know.

I’ve felt that mean and critical before. I’ve been enraged, bossy, controlling.

Sigh. It may not be absolutely true that he shouldn’t be like that.

I know how I react when I believe the thought that anyone should be different, including MY OWN MIND.

I want order! I command that things go my way NOW!

It’s quite hopeless. Have you ever ordered your own mind to stop being so judgmental? Has it worked?

Who would I be without that thought? Without even being able to think that idea that he shouldn’t be so critical?

I wait, to answer this question. It takes a moment.

Without the thought that for the benefit of all, he should be different?

Dang. That is one mind-altering, crazy different way to look at this.

But I realize, I’d be…..less angry. Lighter. I might move away from him, towards a quieter place under the trees. I might give him a hug and tell him I care about him.

If he pushed me away, I would not take it personally. I might realize he’s feeling the way I’ve felt so many times before. I’d leave him alone.

“It is in the arena of personal relationships that the illusion of a separate self clings most tenaciously and insidiously. Indeed, there is nothing that derails more spiritual seekers than the grasping at and attaching to personal relationships.” ~ Adyashanti

I turn the thoughts around to the opposites: he should NOT stop being the judgy way he’s being, he should keep on doing what he’s doing, I should stop being the way I am being when I’m looking at him, I should stop being so critical of myself.

Could I allow my own critical mind, and his critical mind….to be as they are? No need to change them?

No need to fix anything. At all. Whatsoever.

Including my own mental analysis, criticism, judgment and overwhelm.

Inside I feel an inner sobbing, a welling up of release, freedom, letting go, defeat, surrender.

Acceptance of all that is, including criticisms and judgments and Huge Committee Voices that appear to attack the world non-stop, whether in his head or my own.

“All that happiness is already supplied. But the unquestioned mind is so loud, you don’t realize the happiness underneath the mind.” ~ Byron Katie 

Today, if you could really sit with the ultimate turnarounds to the thoughts that generate out like a machine when you’re upset, anxious about the future, disappointed about the past…

….could the opposites be as true, or truer, than your original beliefs?

I am soooo supported, I am ecstatic, I love everything, I’m connected to my mate, my child, the traffic, my friends, everyone’s incredible, I am just so freakin’ accepting, I absolutely love my own mind!

Wow.

I love my own mind?

Why not?

“You know why I care about loving someone? It hurts until I do. I am someone who knows the difference between what hurts and what doesn’t. I discovered what masochism really is, and that discovery left me as someone who loves you…..If you hate me, you hate you. If you love me, you love you.” ~ Byron Katie 

Today, I love my own mind. I love that it is such a busy-bee.

I notice that when I love it, instead of waging war on it for being a judgment machine….

….it gets much, much quieter.

And sort of, well, friendly.

“All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors.” ~ Nisargadatta

Much love, Grace