Tag: Grace Bell

Posted on

Yesterday’s Boring Post

Yesterday I sent out a little FB Page announcement. That’s “Facebook” for those of you who don’t shorten absolutely everything in print for texting, like I do with my teenagers.

The announcement was supposed to say that I’m scheduling $50 sessions from now until March 10th if you go over to the FaceBook page and “like” it. But that wasn’t what the post looked like.

The fantastic thing about The Work is that I automatically start to question even the littlest stressful beliefs or reactions to something. It just starts happening, almost on it’s own, despite my busy mind.

So today, I could say “that big blue Facebook announcement looked weird, said nothing in particular, and had nothing much to offer to any of the amazing and interesting people who read these posts”.

I could even add other little thoughts I have that come up right after I think about how that announcement didn’t look that great. Thoughts like “jeez, who cares about my FB page!”

Not caring was always one of the ways my mind went to “solve” a problem or quit worrying about something. I’ll stamp it out and turn off my interest in it, I’ll quit caring!

“I’ll quit wanting more money! Who cares about money! I’ll quit wanting food! Who cares about eating! Not me!

He or she can go to hell! I don’t care about them anymore!”

I have a wonderful little postcard of the famous artist Roy Lichtenstein whose cartoon illustrations always make me smile. It is on my wall in my kitchen, to remind me of how funny it is that one way I think of solving a problem is to cut it out of my life (the thing, the feeling, the person, the memory…etc, etc).

The postcard reads: “I DON’T CARE, I’D RATHER DROWN THAN CALL BRAD FOR HELP!” Oh the drama!

 

Here’s the most interesting thing about doing the Work when I really get down to business and write down everything I’m actually thinking and believing about a situation, and then go through all four questions and the turnarounds: I don’t have the reaction to decide not to care. It really feels peaceful and calm, not hostile or closed.

So this morning, when I had the thought that my little Facebook post was sort of boring, wasn’t my usual writing, and didn’t even have the announcement I thought I was including, I can ask myself why this bothers me, what I think it means, give it a little attention.

One of my beliefs is “it’s embarrassing to promote my FB page.” It shows I need help or that I care. Another is that I need to offer something fabulous. Another is that I only have so many appointment times open anyway over the next 2 weeks so I may not be able to work with everyone who wants to!

Oh horrors! It’s getting worse the more I consider it! Wouldn’t it be easier to just NOT CARE/ shut down/ cancel out/ move on/ divorce/ squash out/ ignore/ or pretend it doesn’t exist!!!??!!

Instead I question that it’s embarrassing to send out a boring post, that has no obvious benefit to the reader. Is that true that it is actually embarrassing? Like something I’d rather not do, not talk about, and not suggest afterall? Is it terrible to need help? Or to show that I care about my own business success and growth? Or that I care about making helpful offers to people?

After doing The Work, I can ask myself in a really neutral, open way, what would I like doing now? Well, I’d like to say “Hey fabulous people! I’d love to work with you and I’m offering really crazy inexpensive $50 sessions!!”

And I actually have no idea if getting the Page “liked” on FB matters much, some people seem to think it may be helpful, like taking vitamins (which I enjoy). And it’s wonderful to have an online page so I can hear from you and stay connected.

The next teleclass on business and marketing, where you can really get help seeing what your beliefs are about Facebook, Google, marketing, emails, posts, blogs, money and your business, starts on Saturdays, April 7th.

Much love, Grace

Posted on

You Are Not Enlightened?

I was thinking about several different people I know who appear to be suffering deeply.

Byron Katie says that the state of suffering is caused by blind attachment to something that you think is true. It’s hard to do The Work in that kind of state because you would do almost anything to prove that your story is true.

It’s like when I’ve been really, really sure about these kinds of thoughts:

  • life is a struggle
  • it takes hard work to earn a lot of money
  • we all die, and this is TERRIBLE
  • I must reach enlightenment before I die in this lifetime
  • cancer is horrendous and I never, ever want to have it again
  • he doesn’t love me (and he should)

These thoughts seem true in the moment and they become so real. When I have thoughts like these I start to think about ways to fix the problem:

  • I should practice manifesting and being “positive”
  • I should go to an ashram and meditate more often
  • I’ll take lots of vitamins and eat perfectly and avoid cancer
  • I will analyze, read, gather, listen and follow gurus
  • I’ll improve myself or fix my “ego” and then I’ll become free

I like that when I think something is really, really true, I start to prove that it’s valid. Like if I criticize someone else for being clumsy, or a liar, or mean-spirited then I see all these images or cases of when they really WERE those things. I kind of forget about how they are graceful, honest or kind-spirited.

I do the same thing to myself. If I think I’m NOT enlightened, then its only because I’m imagining what an enlightened person is like, that they are peaceful, clear, beautiful, calm, funny, strong and honest (for example) and then I see how I am NOT like that 100% of the time. So I must not be enlightened, see I proved it!

I love how Katie and many other “spiritual” teachers say that we all have inside of us exactly what we need. We all have the same wisdom, the same capacity for love. We all know best what our paths need to be.

What if we all are enlightened, we just forget sometimes and we start telling a nutty story that we’re not measuring up? Whatever painful thing you’re telling yourself today, about yourself, see if you can find an example of the opposite.

Love, Grace

Posted on

Sneaky Deceptive Liars

Today in my morning teleclass on sexuality, we questioned the age-old concept that feels so very true “he/she shouldn’t have been deceptive”.

One of the first times I heard Byron Katie she was speaking to the whole audience about common stressful beliefs. She said “people shouldn’t lie….on what planet??!”

I got that Katie was saying that here on this planet, ever since humans have existed, there have been people who are deceptive. People tell outright lies, people invent elaborate cons, people also exaggerate, diminish, or modify the truth. People withhold important information from others. People don’t say what they really mean. People get scared, even little children, and they hide or keep secrets.

Getting angry that humans do these things is really painful. And it’s an ARGUMENT with REALITY, as Katie says. The reality is, is that people are deceptive. There are people that steal, cheat, hide, manipulate and withhold the truth.

But let’s get down to the bottom of why it makes us absolutely sure that it’s true that people should NOT be deceptive.

It’s because I shouldn’t be deceptive.

Have you ever told a lie, or smoothed over the real truth, or avoided saying what you really feel because you know it might hurt someone’s feelings? I notice that it doesn’t feel that great for the one being deceptive.

In Dostoyevsky’s famous novel Crime and Punishment the main character gets away with murder and believes he will do good deeds with the riches he obtains. But he is tortured, he knows something is off. Woody Allen’s movie Match Point also shows the torture of crime by the criminal. The character can’t believe he’s gotten away with it. He loses all faith in the human condition, that no one is “catching” him and punishing him.

I read a book recently called “Radical Honesty” by Brad Blanton. He suggests saying everything and telling everyone the real truth, because it makes for an intimate, passionate, REAL life worth living.

If you feel sad or angry about someone who has misrepresented themselves, or been deceitful or deceptive….turn it around for yourself, for your own sake.

I shouldn’t be deceptive. Maybe even with that person who I perceived was dishonest. How was I deceptive with that person? Well….I laughed when what was being said wasn’t that funny, I didn’t speak up when I disagreed, I pretended I had something else to do instead of saying I didn’t really want to get together.

Now, the next step is being compassionate with yourself, and finding out what you were believing that made you think you needed to be deceptive in the first place….

Every little deception is there for a reason, it is there because the person engaged in it thinks it’s better to be deceptive than truthful. If I told the truth, that person would hate me, attack me, be enraged with me, talk about me to other people, be hurt….and if all those things happened….I would be all alone.

Ahhhh, now I can question “I need other peoples’ love”—is that true??!

With love and radical honesty, Grace

Posted on

Shut This Down

How many times in my life I have had the thought about a person or an event, or a circumstance “this needs to be shut down”.

It feels like a natural place for the mind to go, once there are enough stressful beliefs accumulating about a person, place or situation. We get really full of emotion and feeling, angry, afraid, confused, conflicted, maybe steam is coming straight out of our ears…

In comes the terminator. Total control. Military. All guns pointed at the culprit. This must be stopped!

In that mode, I’ve done things like start a new food plan, “quit” things like cigarettes, or gone silent with people who are important to me (talk to the hand!)

There is something really amazing about the power of discipline and goals and taking action with lots of energy and conviction and courage. However, for me personally, I really need to look at what I was believing right before I decided to bring out the big guns. In the end, it’s a LOT EASIER.

It’s usually been thoughts like these:

*I can’t make it through the day without _________ (fill in the blank, like cigarettes) because ___________.

*There is no other solution except to drink alcohol or overeat in this moment

*I am simply powerless over this, I don’t have what it takes to resolve this situation

*That person is too manipulative, too mean, too frightening, too annoying

*I am getting hurt

If I question whether any of these are true, and spend some time with the opposites and find how this can be as true, I feel a different kind of power grow within me:

*I CAN make it through any day, without __________ because ________.

*There IS another solution

*I am capable, I have what it takes to resolve this

*That person is being perfect as they are

*I am getting healed

Questioning even one of the stressful concepts that enters the mind before we think we need to shut something down is incredibly liberating.

And, it does not mean that I will continue smoking or continue overeating, continue talking with someone in my life in the same frequency or the same way. It does not mean that I won’t walk away from a violent or really painful situation.

It means I find a loving place inside myself and I take action or not, and I don’t have to “know” 100% what to do. I wait with patience and love. I relax. I don’t have to find who the enemy is or what is “wrong” with my situation and ATTACK.

When I attack and go into serious terminator mode, I find that the energy it takes to keep holding the weapons of mass destruction and be “against” something or someone break down eventually. Then I’m back to the more confusing thoughts I had before I decided to SHUT THIS DOWN.

Staying with those confusing thoughts, not moving away from them or getting distracted from them, can be uncomfortable….but it stops the cycle.

When I question the beliefs that bring out lots of fear, I have no desire to be violent or like the military with my thoughts. There is no need. I know I am ultimately safe and I can let things and people be as they are.

I notice I move away from some people, say “no”, say “yes”, leave certain situations like places of employment or move to another city, or I notice that I never binge-eat or smoke cigarettes or use drugs of any kind. These are done not out of defense or attack, but out of a place that feels like love.

I love knowing that we’re all on a path of un-doing our belief systems that keep us needing a personal internal military. The next time you think “this needs to be shut down” see what you.

Love, Grace

Posted on

Northwest Nice

There is a term around the part of the northwest United States where I live that some of you may not have heard before. I’ve heard it a few times: “Northwest Nice.”

The people of the Pacific Northwest have a reputation as a culture to appear calm, sort of cool….friendly but not too friendly, soft-spoken, and generally creative, introverted, distant, contained, not too much overt passion….and “nice”.

Northwest Nice is kind of hard to pin down…It is not always meant as a compliment when you scratch the surface.

What it means is that people in this region of the world are sometimes “too” nice.

They open their doors to door-to-door sales, political canvasers, people asking for donations, and a high percentage of us say “yes” just to get the solicitor to leave.

Northwest Nice means you don’t reeeeally know what people are thinking. They might have a smile on their face but on  the inside be thinking “get me outta here!!” or “what an idiot!”

….because it’s more important to appear “nice” than like those Rude East Coasters!

I bring up this generalization about this area of the world and how we behave because, well…..that used to be me.

My automatic conditioning was to be friendly, open, to smile, be pleasant, and avoid conflict. I really don’t think I’ll ever enjoy a debate or start yelling at someone on the street. It’s just not me, for whatever reason.

I could attack myself for being this way, for not saying “no” when I really meant it in the past, for being pleasant in many circumstances that others would go ballistic in.

In my former life as someone who had bulimic episodes, a couple of years of starving and over-exercising, drinking to black-outs and smoking cigarettes, on the outside I was SUPER NICE, and appeared calm.

But inside, I was a turmoil of conflict. And if you think about it…all those behaviors really are not all that “nice”, even if I’m the only one in the room. They were not kind to me. They were the results of being terrified to tell the truth and terrified of my own thinking!

Criticizing myself about being too nice doesn’t work all that well either. The
thing that works the best of all is to see what is going on in my mind when I’m being “northwest nice” and question if what I’m thinking is really true.

What’s the worst that could happen if I’m really truly myself, really honest? Not
trying to be different than I am or trying to channel a bold, loud, sassy New York reaction when it’s not natural?

Now I find that I feel so much less afraid of people. I may have to think about their requests, or get a sense of them as I spend time with them, and I may notice I feel nervous, frustrated, anxious, bored…and then I tell the truth.

I feel so much more genuine from doing The Work. And if I get scared in my interactions with someone, I can question my thoughts.

I do get scared, I do want to be “northwest nice” to avoid conflict, I do get sad…but when these feelings come along I have The Work. And what d’ya know….no more unkind and not-so-nice behavior goes on in secret in my life outside of the view of the public. No black-out drinking, no smoking, no binge-eating, no over-exercising, no self-hate.

I feel kind to myself inside, and this feels REAL. Byron Katie says that what you are is “love”. This is your natural state of being.

This means catching yourself when you’re being mean to YOU. Including criticizing yourself for being “too nice”.

Love, Grace

Posted on

Vaccuuming Truth Comes Out

People often ask me what kind of changes have occurred in my life from using The Work and questioning my thoughts.

One of the most powerful first steps for me, which took about two years to really register inside myself and sink in, was asking the question “IS IT TRUE?!”

In the past, there were quite a few things that weren’t “right” and could be “improved”. Some days there were only a few things that needed improvement, like the weather. Other days, my life was in shambles and I needed more time, more money, more attention, more success, and while we’re at it if someone could just vacuum my living room, things would be better.

Enter the question “is it true?”

When I first learned this question my inner voice didn’t even get it. I didn’t even know that if I thought something, I could question it.

I would see that there was dirt and dust on the floor. My mind would think “that needs to be cleaned up”. I would feel angry, annoyed, there is no time, why didn’t someone else do it, I need a housecleaner, but I don’t want to pay a housecleaner, and I don’t have enough money anyway…..it would gallop wildly along like a stagecoach gone wild, horses flying down the trail. And it all started with a little thought about vacuuming. I would feel STRESS.

If someone had asked in that moment of stress “is it really true that the floor needs to be vaccuumed right now?” I would have looked at them with a big puzzled look on my face.

What do you mean: Is it true? I just got through saying “my floor needs to be vaccuumed” and the reason I said that is because IT IS TRUE.

Look at it! It’s dirty! What kind of person doesn’t see how dirty the floor is right now?! What’s wrong with you, are you blind??!

The difference in my life now is this kind of moment doesn’t have much fuel or life. My mind still loves to come up with an improvement plan. It seems to enjoy ideas about how to have a better future.

But it fizzles out quickly. I have the question “is it true?” inside me. If I don’t remember to ask myself the question, I have a most incredible, wise and loving fiance who asks me if I want to do The Work.

I have sisters who are really thoughtful, who have all done The Work. My mother does The Work (she’s even taken two of my teleclasses).

If I have a stressful reaction to something or someone…I’m surrounded by wisdom, everywhere.

That first question is amazing. If you really get to answer, without any outside authority of any kind, only YOU, what an incredible question IS IT TRUE? Can you absolutely know, 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt if what you’re believing in a stressful moment is TRUE?

I can keep talking about the changes I’ve experienced just from this first Question 1. Now I’m surrounded with powerful people all of whom love that question and help me remember it every day.

Now if I see the floor, and see the dust and dirt, I simply go get the vacuum and I notice I love vacuuming, it’s one of my favorite house-cleaning jobs. It doesn’t have to mean  anything about my finances, my energy level, whether I could afford to hire a house cleaner, and whether someone ELSE in the household should have noticed before me and already vacuumed.

I noticed first, so I get to do it first. I follow the simple directions.

The freedom is incredible….find out what is really true for you.

When you need the help of a group, other people around you who know you need to answer that question for yourself….join us in a teleclass.

With love and your own person truth,

Grace

Posted on

Evil Violent Other People

Today in my sexuality teleclass we looked at some of the most painful, violent, gruesome, horrifying judgments we can have about some of the things we hear about, or have experienced, while living on this earth.

These are the judgments we have about the darkness, the real human “hell” of violence, rape, murder. This would be the dark side of sexuality…..

Those “worst people” out there who are evil, destructive, and terrifying. The ones who do unspeakable things and cause awful pain.

We’d rather not even think about them. We wish they would go away and not exist. That they would be destroyed. And we feel really, really separate and different from them. This is a true moment of “duality”. I can totally separate myself from those other terrible people.

But who would I be without the thought that that evil perpetrator deserves to die, that he should not exist, that I could never understand him or her?

What am I showing myself and showing the world if I am talking about those terrible people with hate and fear, with violent words, and keeping them so separate from me. What am I doing if I keep announcing that the terrible person over there is my enemy, is nothing like me, and I will never get close to them.

Loving what is does not mean I think that what humans do is always acceptable. It doesn’t mean I lie down on the floor and let people step on me or walk on top of me. Loving what is, I have discovered, means I don’t turn against the terrible rotten other people. I’m not AGAINST them, resisting them, wanting to kill them.

Katie said this once; “A teacher of  fear can’t bring peace on earth. We’ve been trying to do it that way for thousands of years. The person who turns inner violence around, the person who finds peace and lives it, is the one who teaches what true peace is. We are waiting for just one teacher…you’re the one.”

YOU’RE THE ONE.

Today can you think of your enemy and ask only the simple question, “who would I be without this thought that this person is my enemy?”

I notice my shoulders relax, I stare out at the gray clouds, and I feel such compassion for all the people suffering….for anyone in the middle of a violent moment towards someone else or towards themselves.

We’ve all been violent, even if it’s only with our own thinking. What would it be like if I didn’t think “this shouldn’t exist and it should be crushed”.

I know I’d start with being much more open. Who knows what can happen from there. The most amazing stories of healing.

The power of the group doing this kind of intense work together, really exploring how we might work with our inner violence, is incredible. We give each other ideas, just by listening to each other’s work.

Thoughts we believed we would never let go of, stories we thought we would never forgive….start melting away.

You are the teacher you’ve been waiting for!

I can’t wait for the next teleclasses….and by the way, think about coming to Breitenbush in June. It will be amazing!

With love and appreciation, Grace

Posted on

Third Degree Burn

Many of us have been burned.

I mean literally. We know what it’s like to have this thing called “heat”
where something that is very hot meets with our skin or body
and it burns. The skin is altered, it changes, there is seering pain….
and we now know never to go near that hot thing again in the same way.

If someone gets severely sunburned once, they often put on 70 Sun Block
in the future…..but only when the sun is shining.  It would be crazy to
wake up every morning and put on 70 Sun Block when outside it was
winter time.

When someone has experienced a third degree burn, the most severe,
it’s pretty unlikely that they might be just walking down the street and run
into a huge firey explosion. That would be VERY RARE.

But our minds will return to images of terrible fires, meteors hitting the
earth, loud explosions, or the burning house over and over again, and fear can enter
the body just remembering the incident.

Often people write of emotional pain in the same way as getting a terrible
burn. We even say this…”I GOT SOOOOO BURNED”.

The ones that are third degree emotional burns feel so damaging, permanently
painful, devastating….like there is no recovery, no chance of feeling whole
and good again.

Without the Work, and the possibility of questioning whether or not your
story is absolutely true, you can run a painful experience in your mind
over and over and over again. And over and over. And over.

Enter The Work. When something is really scary and frightening that I’ve
gone through, the first thing I can ask is…am I safe right now? Am I getting
burned right in this very moment? Is there fire anywhere near me?

Well, ahem, clearing-throat…I guess the answer would be “NO”.

“But I feel so terrible! My life is ruined! I’ll never be the same!!!!”

Question #1: Is that actually true? Is your life actually entirely ruined?
Are you still breathing? Are you sure you feel terrible in every minute
of every hour? Are you positive that never being the same is the worst
thing that could happen?

I mean, do you want to be the SAME, really??

Wow, what if that thing that happened that was such a BURN was
something that GAVE ME NEW LIFE. Something that helped me
love more, something that helped me see how I was OK even though
I lost “everything”, something that helped me feel compassion, to
feel less afraid of my fellow humans, to feel more connected to
joy.

Every time I’ve been burned….healing has happened.

The power of the group to help question stories and find the joy again
is FANTASTIC. Come join a spring group to discover the truth about
all your stories of being burned.  You can leave your 70 Sun Block in
your first aid kit, you’ll be safe.

Grace

Posted on

I Have Enough Money

A man at the Cleanse was doing The Work on Money.

One of my favorite topics….

He was standing in the audience and raised his hand, and told about how he just wanted to feel really successful and have enough money.

Katie asked him to think about the WORST moment in his entire life where he had the least amount of money.

I have shared my worst moment before. What I say about that moment is that I had absolutely nothing left in my bank account. Maybe something like a few dollars and cents, so that the account still existed.

I had a stack of bills. One was for my mortgage which was due within the next few days.

The man sharing at the Cleanse had a moment, too. He was standing on the street in New York City and had just taken his last $300 and purchased what he thought was a piece of fancy electronic equipment.

When he opened the box, there was nothing inside. He had been conned.

That kind of moment, when you feel revenge, anger, fury at someone because you are sure they are at fault…I can sum it up in just about one word…..”KILL!”

At that moment if I were a samurai, I would take out my sword, like in the famous zen story, and raise it over the person who insulted and conned me, the person who was to blame. KILL THAT PERSON!

In MY worst moment, I blamed myself, which was just as horrible, maybe even more horrible. The bitterness, despair, and thinking I should have prevented this terrible moment with no money in it….”ouch” is too small a word for that moment. It’s more like a huge loud howl of fear.

Then Katie asked the man at the Cleanse, “what happened next?”

The man said he went to stay with some friends. We all burst out laughing. The man had a huge smile on his face.

In my worst moment, all that happened was I sat in a chair and made some phone calls.

Seeing this kind of moment for what it really is, has been incredible.

Katie asks “have you ever really needed any more money than you have had?”

The man at the Cleanse could honestly answer “no”. So can I. And I don’t need any more money right now in this moment either.

Our teleclass on Money, Business, Marketing and all those apparently tricky topics starts next Wednesday!!

Love, Grace

Posted on

Primal Scream Group Shares and The Work

One thing I love about The Work, is that it’s not one thing.

What I mean, is that it seems to incorporate into just about all types of therapies and practices and makes them better.

When I was in graduate school studying psychology, I learned about many famous therapists and their ideas about how to help humans stop suffering.

I also tried just about everything that was put in front of me (no, I’m not  talking about food…although as you know from my food stories that on a binge, I did eat everything in front of me….

but I digress, that is not the topic today).

I tried every kind of retreat, workshop, lecture, book, method, exercise, plan, orientation, spiritual practice that might help me understand life and live a better one.

All the way from Arthur Janov’s “Primal Scream,” that was popular in the 1970s where clients cried their guts out and screamed and beat pillows with a tennis racket.

To Freudian three-times-a-week talk therapy with a psychoanalyst. Good ol’ Freud with his talk about “transference”and childhood trauma and “projections”.

Carl Rogers was one of my favorite authors and therapists, and learning about his life and what he called “unconditional positive regard” with clients,  really hearing them, was so sweet, so wonderful to hear that this alone helped people transform themselves.

I loved sitting in a “gestalt” workshop once where all the teachings were from Fritz Perls and we role played like actors….the way Katie works with people, acting the part of that very person who is driving us nuts.

And I’ve spent hours in meditation retreats, listening to the incredible teachings of thoughtful, beautiful individuals who have worked with their own minds and questioned them (in fact I’ll be sitting again with a teacher called Adyashanti next month who is one of my favorites, he’s such a dear and wise man).

And the sharing in 12 steps! Revealing all the darkness, bleakest, rock-bottom stories of extreme suffering to other supportive and honest people who have walked the same walk!

Everything has had its sweet, perfect place. In every room, group, therapist, retreat, or workshop there is wisdom, learning….and there are also PEOPLE! And if there’s not a disturbing, boring, annoying, broken, sad or difficult person….then there’s the weather, or the traffic or the poor quality of the hand-outs! Ha! Voila! The four questions!

Now that I have The Work I notice that asking the four questions enhances every single one of these theories or modalities I’ve encountered over the years. What an adventure!

I love how we humans are thirsty for knowledge, learning, understanding, seeking, reading, analyzing….thirsty for peace. I love how the Work can bring it.

Love, Grace