loving what is – Page 5 – The Work of Byron Katie with Grace

August 7, 2012

You Must Not Want It Bad Enough!

Stephen Mitchell, the author and translator of many ancient mystical texts (and married to Byron Katie), writes about non-action in his forward to his translation of the Tao Te Ching: A good athlete can enter a state of body-awareness in which the right stroke or the right movement happens by itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious will.

All of us have this kind of experience in our lives, when things came together without our “trying” to make it happen. We know we want to be “over there”; for example, on a trip to a distant country, at a different point in our career, to change the shape of our body, to stop smoking, to reach peace in a vital relationship, to be on time, to win the competition.

And one day, we are there. Why now?

The thought that I can Do Something and Will myself to go in a certain direction, or will someone else to go in a certain direction, is very difficult to give up, especially if we are the type of person who loves discipline and structure.

Sometimes the sense of a lack of will power is the reason people hire life coaches or health coaches or personal trainers. They say things like “I’m gonna hire that coach so they kick my butt into shape” or “I need some accountability”. There is the person who is the whip-driver and the person who “needs” to get whipped. Power is perceived to be missing from the whippee. Something needs to be done. Things are very serious.

The deal these two people make often assumes that the person getting coached needs to make their will stronger, and to destroy some other loser part of themselves.

winners never quit and quitters never win
no pain, no gain
I’m going to get there, or die trying
get MAD!
you must not want it bad enough!

Have you noticed that the more you push, cajole, fight, twist, criticize, battle or attack something, the more energy it takes? The more you try to build up power inside yourself using force, the more tired you feel, or more unhappy, or more doubtful, and endlessly dissatisfied?

It does not feel stress-free, peaceful, or fun.

I remember giving up diets forever. They never, ever worked for me anyway. I got as thin as possible and it excellent physical condition, and then there was more effort, and a sense of being imprisoned and having to be alert at all times, cravings and anger at certain foods.

I wanted true freedom. Honest freedom. I wanted to be like I was when I was a child, when I barely remember food. I wanted my natural will, the way it was, to be effortless. I wanted to not have to work on my will power at all, to not think of myself as so lacking.

I had a lot of painful beliefs and thinking to question and Un-Do in order to get back to an uninhibited life around eating and my body. They were base-level core painful beliefs that were not true, like “I am unlovable, my appetite is too big, my feelings are too dramatic, I am greedy.”

Most importantly, I noticed that all of those kinds of thoughts about being fierce, aggressively holding the line, getting mad, or thinking I should be forcing myself to success were the opposite of loving and kind, and not the way I wanted to live.

If I could do it with food and eating, anyone can do it. I took my behavior and thinking to the extreme edges, which helped it all crash and burn. Total surrender. Total loss. Complete failure.

When it is not so serious and you give up fighting, instead of losing, you might find that playing comes alive. Joy, excitement, open to anything. Willing to have a body that does what it does.

“The best athlete wants his opponent at his best. The best general enters the mind of his enemy. The best businessman serves the communal good. The best leader follows the will of the people. All of them embody the virtue of non-competition. Not that they don’t love to compete, but they do it in the spirit of play. In this they are like children and in harmony with the Tao.”~Tao Te Ching #68

I want my aggressive big-appetite self to step out into the open, I want to enter and understand the mind of my obsessive self that gets fixed on things like an addict, I want to be open and supportive to every inch of my amazing body, I want to play with food and eating, explore my cravings, biting into yummy things and then moving on to something else the minute I’m full. In harmony with what is.

August 6, 2012

Let The Nightmares Be There

Fear can get triggered by running into a scary person we haven’t seen in years for whom we have unresolved feelings, having an accident, being in an earthquake, surviving a war, over-hearing an uncomfortable conversation between strangers in a store, noticing a disturbing photo, seeing a violent movie.

Without a willingness to stay and look at the thoughts, even though they are so full of fear, they just repeat themselves and keep flashing the images. We have nightmares, trouble sleeping.

Yesterday I watched a science fiction movie. There was one theme I found very disturbing, one set of “bad guys”. They really creeped me out.

So, what thoughts are present that I can work with? I know the only way to deal consciously with these thoughts is through identifying them, identifying what I’m resistant to, to what I am against.

there is horror and violence in this world
the sickness and terror some people experience through war, torture or violence is unbearable
people shouldn’t make violent and depressing movies
the capacity for evil is just as great as the capacity for good, this is terrifying
I can’t stop thinking about that scene, that situation
I am driving myself crazy, my mind is not being helpful
I need to shut my mind down

Through inquiry, I ask myself the question “who would I be WITHOUT the thought that I need to shut my mind down?” Who would I be without the thought that I need to avoid any violent images and scary movies and never think about frightening moments in my life or terrible things that have happened to humans throughout history?

I notice I’m afraid that if I didn’t have the thought that I need to shut my mind off, my mind would just run rampant like a runaway train going bonkers and heading for a dreadful destructive ending. If I really didn’t have the thought that this mind needs to calm down, slow down, shut itself OFF of the nightmare images….then I’d have them all the time 24/7 and life would be hell.

I would NEVER find peace.

Really??! I look again. Am I sure the mind is only interested in turning up the volume on violent imagery? In nightmares? In torturous thoughts? That left to its own devices without being SHUT DOWN, it would explode with constant stressful thinking without end?

Not the most positive attitude towards the mind.

Here’s the mind, being itself, trying to work out the weirdness of violence (or whatever it’s doing) and then another thought, part of the same mind, that it should stop itself and shut itself down.

Kind of harsh, I notice. Kind of violent.

I love realizing that if I didn’t WANT to shut my mind off, it might calm down all by itself. That it would recognized all the images are not real.

Just maybe, the mind is always heading towards balance and a resting place. Maybe that is its natural condition, and I don’t have to worry that MY mind is some sort of monster of self-torture that I have to fight against.

I realize I’ve had the thought often that I need to shut something down. This has been my thought about other people, events, ideas, circumstances. I’m afraid that if I didn’t have the thought to control something I don’t like, that I would be totally passive and lie down on the ground in apathy or despair. Plus, the thing that needs to be shut down would go crazy multiplying itself and going completely OUT of control.

But living the turnaround, I find, is much easier. “I do NOT need to shut my mind down.”

I let it be as it is. This is only Thinking. Being afraid at the moment.

Stephan Bodian in his book Wake Up Now writes about this mind and its apparent busy thinking. He writes that Tibetan master Thrangu Rinpoche said “The reason you find nothing….when you look for your mind, is that the nature of your mind is insubstantiality, emptiness.”

Phew. The mind is insubstantial. Very changeable, twisting and turning and getting revved up then slowing down. That’s what it does.

And what if you did not believe that you NEED to shut another person down (like to stop communicating with them, for example) or that you need to shut down a possible bad event happening in the future, or that you need to shut down any chance of losing money, losing your job, losing credibility?

How relaxing it is not to have to apply that kind of lock-down energy towards anything. I enter the I-Don’t-Know reality.

Humility, beauty, love, peace and joy appear. I picture the violence, I see the images of people I’m afraid of or hurt by, I see “terrible” experiences, and I move beyond all these, strangely, by not being so terrified of them, by not being against them. I see that I am not just my Mind. There is something else broader here.

There is a place inside me that is not bothered at all, that doesn’t need to shut down anything. Spirit, mystery.

“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.”~Eckhart Tolle

As Adyashanti says, “let everything be the way it is.” Just leave it alone and allow it to be exactly the way it is. Those people who bug you, that situation you keep remembering, those weird science fiction monsters that eat people when they’re still alive. Even your precious, busy mind.

Leaving everything alone is better than the alternative. And more grown up, more successful, more peaceful in the end. Try it and see.

Love, Grace

August 4, 2012

A Cup Of Tea Experiment

Byron Katie has a wonderful exercise in her book I Need Your Love–Is It True? that I adored doing the first time I read it. Here is the exercise:

“Think of someone you want to impress, or whose love you really want, or who you’re afraid of displeasing or who you think has power over you.

Now imagine having a cup of tea with this person. Imagine that during this time, you don’t make the slightest attempt to influence his or her mental life. Imagine that all you want is to let them have their thoughts, their tea, and their experience.

What does it feel like to sit in the presence of that person in this way? What do you notice about how it feels to be you? What do you notice about the other person?”

I pick a spiritual teacher who has a huge following, someone many people admire and receive help from about very deep and profound issues. I admire their work enormously. Many people all over the world know their name. I can hardly imagine having tea with them.

I notice first, without the need to impress in any way, that my body feels much calmer, more relaxed, open. I notice I look directly at this interesting person, and they are looking at me. I notice thinking about myself at first that I have nothing really to offer…..and awareness that I thought I should have something to offer.

I notice thinking that I should ask them some questions, perhaps about my personal spiritual practice. It seems sort of ridiculous, though, without wanting to impress or displease or be attended to.

If I were really not making one single drop of an attempt to influence this person, I notice silence, and maybe joyful questions coming out of this silence. I would ask the questions, if they arose. I notice feeling a smile come to my face, so delighted.

If I really were not trying for anything, everything is paused. I notice, there is not really a ME here that needs anything at all. Strange, emptiness. Perhaps neither one of us speaks.

And I stay with myself, neither trying to please or not trying to please. Just there. Moments of thinking “wow, this person I have so admired, right there in a chair across from me”. Yet, I am here, no need for anything, without trying to “get” something from them, including recognition.

“As you identify less and less with the “I”, you will be more at ease with everybody and with everything. Do you know why? Because you are no longer afraid of being hurt or not liked. You no longer desire to impress anyone. Can you imagine the relief when you don’t have to impress anyone anymore? Oh, what a relief. Happiness at last!”~ Anthony deMello

What a magnificent way to live in that moment, having tea, seeing everything around this “me” that apparently is sitting in a chair, with eyes looking out. Table, cup, sky, sounds of birds, smells of flowers, tea, cooking.

Who knows, in this delighted, grateful, relaxed place I might hear THEM ask ME some questions. I notice they really love being here with me, without anyone trying to impress anyone else or help anyone else or accomplish or achieve something.

Without the thought that I need to influence, be remembered, gain anything……I am leaving everything alone, leaving it the way it is. It’s actually hilarious. Here comes laughter!

I would love to hear what comes to you when you do this exercise! Please head for the blog post of this same article at Grace Notes at Work With Grace and share what you imagine, what it feels like, what you notice and learn. Can’t wait to see what you post below!

August 3, 2012

Money Is Safety

What a fabulous class yesterday with the Money, Work and Business telegroup. We questioned the belief “money is safety”.

Now, I’ve done a LOT of inquiry work on money. My desperation for more of it, my sadness at losing it, my dismissive scoffing at it, like I could care less.

If Money was a person, they had every reason to stay far away from me in the past. I was really nasty about money, it did not seem to bring out the best qualities. I hated that I wanted it, it was just so uncomfortable to actually WANT something that much. I hated that I seemed to need it.

Diving in to the intricate mysterious world of all my beliefs about money, one thing I had to do was look with open eyes and a magnifying glass at it all.

WHY did I want it so much? I mean, really?

Well, one reason is this idea that having it creates safety. So, in other words, if I have money, then I am safe.

Safe from what? Here are some common beliefs, maybe they are the same for you:

with money, I am safe from being neglected when sick, injured, or old
with money, I am safe from having physical pain get worse
with money, I am safe from starvation, thirst, being dirty
with money, I am safe from boredom, from missing something fun
with money, I am safe from loneliness, meaninglessness
with money, I am safe from being stuck in unhappiness

It’s simple to find examples of people with loads of money who experience all these things sometimes….we can see that money doesn’t keep us safe from “bad” times. It’s also simple to decide to NOT really deal with money, to step away from it and not care about it (or pretend not to). Yet, it still seems stressful.

The turnaround to the opposite belief that money is safety is the concept “This here right now is safety”. This is interesting, this is considering it all in a different way. Right in that place where you MOST believed that with more money you would be safer….could it still be possible that you were safe?

There I was, without money, hungry. I wanted to eat (you can translate this to “I wanted to go on that vacation, I wanted that dress, I wanted that pedicure, I wanted to take that workshop”).

Can I be here, wanting, without the money, and remain safe? What’s the worst that could happen? That I ask for what I want and someone says NO?

“If you were willing to ask only ONE percent of the population for what you want, and have them all say NO, you’d be willing to listen to 70 million NOs. How many times do we ask for something and when we hear the first, second or third no, we feel defeated? It’s like the world is full of wells, and we allow ourselves to go thirsty because the first couple we find are dry.”~Benjamin Smythe

I notice that money isn’t safety. Having money is a protection device for me, so I don’t have to ask, I don’t have to receive, I don’t have to feel how much I want something, I don’t have to interact with humanity, or the unknown future.

“When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad…” Tao Te Ching #2

Sometimes there is wanting…..and without believing that it is not safe, wanting is fun. Wanting is an exciting adventure, without fear. I act without expectations, trusting that the amount of money I have is just the right amount, for this moment.

Without “enough” money, I ask for a job, I ask if I can stay with you for awhile, I ask if you will lend me some, I ask for some food. I notice my surroundings and the sweetness of the world. I notice it doesn’t matter if I have the money or not.

I laugh in the joy of it all. Safe.

August 2, 2012

You’ve Been Spared

One of my favorite all-time thoughts to look at, and to question, is “he left me”….”she left me.” The sadness, heart-ache, and desperation people feel when thinking this thought can be enormous.

Without questioning it, many of us think wildly about WHY someone left. Was it me? Was it her? What did I do? Where did it go wrong?

It’s not a happy situation. Someone was here, and now, they are not here. Someone was a close friend, a lover, a companion, a work mate, a neighbor…and now they are far away, we speak less often, we never see them….perhaps they have died.

The whole premise behind the thought, following the thought, is that in this “leaving” there is fear, loneliness, grief, anger, despair. It means something bad. It means there is Something Wrong.

The mind loves to find out what’s wrong. Oooh boy! A PROBLEM! (Hands wringing with glee).

My father died many years ago. One of my first realizations with investigating by using The Work was to question “he left”. It seemed like he wasn’t here anymore. No body anywhere. I had been sad for so long about this.

Isn’t it amazing to turn this entire experience around, upside down, to the complete opposite. A person has “left”. Off they went to another place, another relationship, away from this life. I turn the feeling around inside myself and see if there is Joy present in this situation. What if this is a good thing? How could that possibly be true? Can I look, just to see?

Byron Katie has a wonderful comment she offers to people who are upset about someone or something moving away from them: “You’ve been spared”.

Sinking in to this, it is not about finding all the faults you could ever list about that other person, who is no longer present. Although it can be a place to begin. Did you really love and adore absolutely everything about that person 100% of the time? Noticing that you didn’t can be a little step towards willingness to see this all differently.

But don’t get trapped there. Attacking the person who left takes energy, attachment, focus….and continued suffering. We get stuck doing this.

My father was an incredible man. Kind and loving, thoughtful. I had no thoughts about difficult qualities I was now spared from. But still, how could it be that there were advantages to his passing, just at the moment he did?

Truly considering being spared from that path means I come back to the center of myself, being here with me….all me. Person gone, even a beloved being who has died. No imaginary stories about how it would be better if they were here in person.

You moan, “she left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always widening rings of being.
~Rumi, from “A Community of The Spirit”

It would be a little weird if my father just kept living, since apparently what happens around here is that we’re born, we’re tiny babies, we grown into adults, and then we die.

I mean, when would be the “best” time for him to move on? I’m glad I didn’t have to make that decision.

And how about all the other people who have supposedly “left” during my lifetime? What has been important about those partings?

I get to live back in the center, the mysterious unknown, here with myself. Trusting all that is. It’s a Friendly Universe. Adventure, Possibility….seeing what is next. My conversation is with God, with Source, with Reality, the way it is.

My father leaving? It was time for me to make peace with a career, to know that I was enough, all by myself. I went to graduate school. I decided to have a baby. Major life decisions became very clear and simple.

Other people leaving? No more drama. Freedom to come and go as I please, silence in my home, doing all the things I love to do without anyone else’s influence. I go to a movie, I’m the one who picked it. I eat some food, I’m the one who cooked it.

Empty space, open to all kinds of possibilities. Total JOY with my own company. Noticing that I am such a fun person to hang out with, no one else is necessary. At all.

“If you open yourself to the Tao, you are at one with the Tao and you can embody it completely. If you open yourself to insight, you are at one with insight and you can use it completely. If you open yourself to loss, you are at one with loss and you can accept it completely.”~Tao Te Ching #23

Love, Grace

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August 1, 2012

Neediness Is Gross

Dating. Pure torture for many. Especially when the mind starts giving it’s opinion, and the thoughts aren’t exactly fun, kind, or gentle.

It can quickly lead a person to decide to give up dating altogether. Just too stressful.

However, if looked at as an open experiment…dating can be absolutely fascinating. And an opening into the world of mystery, surrender, curiosity, and getting to know oneself in a most intimate way. It’s just a bonus to get to know someone else in the process.

In Our Wonderful Sexuality this morning, we questioned the belief “he is oblivious to my needs”.

Oblivious is a fabulous word. In the dictionary is it simply defined as “not aware of or concerned with what is happening around”. So, oblivious to MY needs would be that he is not aware of my needs, not concerned with them at all.

Hmmm. If he is not aware of my needs, what could I do? Oh! I could talk! I could say “I need some water, I need you to move over, I need to be home by 10”.

But needs are so gross. They show….neediness. Being “needy” is bad. Needing nothing is better. Being needy show dependence, immaturity, high maintenance focus. People don’t like other needy people.

One of my all-time favorite strategies, quite unconscious in many ways, has been to Not Need Anything. Including food. If neediness was bad, well it certainly wasn’t going to be shown by me, that’s for sure. No one will ever accuse ME of neediness!

The problem is, that no matter how much you would like to do away with that pesky sensation of hunger, or the need to go to the bathroom, or the longing for a partner, or the wish that someone would like you, it will grow bigger and bigger until you HAVE to respond. Or die.

And being Against Neediness is signing up for a fight. I am against, resistant, opposed.

Doing The Work and examining your thinking, your feeling, the way you live in any given situation (like being on a date) you hold this precious moment and all your uncomfortable thoughts with respect.

Something in your mind starts to believe “I need someone who will pay attention to me, she just seems so oblivious…”

You can question so much there. Is she in fact oblivious? Really? And if she appears to be, is that really so bad? It’s kind of nice to hang out with someone who doesn’t zone in on everything I say or do. What are the advantages of this person being just the way they are?

Anthony deMello writes that where he came from in India, people started believing they needed transistor radios to be happy. Until everyone started getting transistors, they were perfectly happy without one. “That’s the way it is with you”, he says, “Until somebody told you that you wouldn’t be happy unless you were loved, you were perfectly happy….You become happy by contact with reality. That’s what brings happiness, a moment-by-moment contact with reality.”

“If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.”~ Byron Katie

Move away from judging “neediness” in you or in others. Move away from focusing on the absence of people noticing your needs, or being so sure you don’t have your needs met. It burns when you think there are needs here and that they should be met in YOUR way that you approve of, or someone else’s way that THEY approve of.

When you move away from the stressful beliefs about needing, then when you get hungry, you simply say “I need some food”. If the person you ask doesn’t have any, or says no, there are a billion other people available to ask. Keep going.

Love, Grace

July 31, 2012

My First Bulimic Episode

I was 18 years old and knew I would be attending a small liberal arts college so far away from my family home that it took 26 hours to drive there, or several hours by plane.

I knew the date I would be leaving home, in 3 weeks. Not going to this small academic college would have been an option, I suppose, but a terrible one (in my mind). In our family, people go to college. It means success. My father was a professor, my mother had an advanced degree and spoke fluent Spanish.

It never occurred to me that I might not want to go. People fail who don’t attend college. They work at low-income jobs for the rest of their lives. They don’t meet new friends who are also on a path to success.

I already had several years of practice in not understanding or expressing my own feelings. What I felt, I believed, was not important, and actually, would lead to disaster. My beliefs about Feelings went something like this:

people who cry or sob are way too dramatic
people who are angry need to control themselves and hold it in
“losing” ones temper means you are not mature or patient
people with big feelings are childish, disrespectful, and self-centered
having anxiety is a sign of weakness
people who have “negative” scowls instead of “positive” happy faces will fail in life

Unfortunately, I had already encountered anxiety, anger, irritation, sadness and any other feelings most human beings feel as they live their lives….along with learning what I was supposed to do with them. Which was generally NOT SHOW THEM.

When you have such judgment towards showing feelings….then when you have one, it takes energy to hide it, but you do everything you can to make sure you succeed.

The groundwork was perfectly laid for me to be drawn to use something, anything, to regulate myself.

My parents had a celebration send-off dinner for me in our back yard. Many people were there, although I can’t remember who, now that over 30 years have passed. What I do remember is that there was a ton of delicious homemade food, and I ate. That was the one thing that looked appealing.

I ate, and ate, and ate. It was like I couldn’t stop and it didn’t matter anyway….My first full-blown Binge episode. And then, excusing myself to go up to the bathroom and disengage from the intensity. Horrified at my lack of control. Hearing all the guests voices floating up in the summer air past the open window. Feeling such pain in my stomach and wondering how I could possibly have eaten so much that I was nauseated and my stomach hurt. Desperate. Wanting to sob, wanting help.

That evening, I decided that I would accomplish the task that I had imagined for quite awhile, I would force myself to throw up like the people who ate poison accidentally. I had never heard the word “bulimia”. But that’s what it was called, I later learned.

Thus began a long and interesting journey of having to admit there was a “problem”. Something off. And discovering that my feelings were not only important to understand and express, but that they were the golden key to understanding what I was believing and thinking about myself, the people around me, and about life.

As Byron Katie says, any stress is a “temple bell” waking you up to something. As I’ve said before, my stress was like a set of large cymbals crashing together. During a nap.

“Express yourself completely, then keep quiet. Be like the forces of nature: when it blows, there is only wind; when it rains, there is only rain; when the clouds pass, the sun shines through…..Open yourself to the Tao, then trust your natural responses; and everything will fall into place.”~ Tao Te Ching #23

If feelings are present, don’t futz with them. Don’t fight against them, criticism them, call yourself “out of control” or attack others for having them. But feeling them with respect, curiosity, openness….this is opening to the Tao, no judgment, no resistance. Allowing them, they move, they teach, and the clouds part.

Love, Grace

Click Here to register for any fall class to learn how to do The Work of Byron Katie on these powerful topics in your life.

Horrible Food Wonderful Food – Tuesdays, Sept 18-Nov 13, 2012, 8:15-9:45 am Pacific (no class 10/30)

Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven – Saturdays, Sept 22-Nov 17, 2012 8 – 9:30 am PT (no class 10/27)

Our Wonderful Sexuality – Fridays, Sept 21-Nov 16, 2012 10-11:30 am PT (class one time on Thursday 10/25, no class 11/2)

Money, Work and Business – Thursdays, Sept 27- Nov 15, 2012, 8-9:30 am Pacific Time (no class 11/1)

Grace Bell, MA, Certified Counselor WA

Certified Facilitator of the Work of Byron Katie

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July 30, 2012

Seeing The Light Without Looking

Only a few minutes after waking up this morning, I began to sort minutes and time mentally while still lying down in bed. Let’s see, it is now 7:04 am. When I rise, in 2 minutes, I will begin the list of ideas and activities. Some concern about leaving the house by 8:30 am. Flashes of thought, images of staying on track.

Oriented towards the immediate future. What will happen next. Mind busy with planning.

Then at perhaps 7:05, or perhaps simultaneously sort of mixed in with the future focus, memory of a fascinating speech I listened to on YouTube by Sam Harris on the absence of Free Will yesterday afternoon.

Then the mind thinking about itself right now, interested in what is beyond this “thinking” place. Aware of emptiness and vast space, here all the time. The question “who am I?” and the questions “what is going on right now…what is this whole thing, this life?”

Here comes another memory flash, it’s still 7:05 am. I recall reading an article many years ago about a spiritual teacher who asks a very troubled teenager to find who or what she really is, in the overall center of herself.

The teenager says “what the hell are you talking about?” So the teacher says, “OK, point to your leg”. She points. “Point to your elbow”. She points. “Point to your nose”. She points. “Point to Whoever or Whatever is pointing”. The teenager smiles really big and says “OH! I hadn’t thought about that before! Cool! OMG that’s been here the whole time!”

I myself, the reader at the time, kept thinking “what did she see exactly?” Because it looks like a huge, vast space to me. I can’t exactly point to it. And it also evaporates and has no edges. And my mind seems to be very, very small in comparison.

At 7:06 I decide I want to get up and do some computer research, before writing, on what other people say about the vast, empty space thing.

There are a lot of teachers and speakers, workshop leaders and trainers. Classes, retreats, programs, degrees, speeches, books.

So much information that it is impossible I would ever be able to take it all in, read every book, work with every idea or approach, meet every fascinating human, listen to every one of them speak.

So quickly the mind moves, I notice the thoughts enter, those rascally little busy ones always looking for New and Improved…..”I need more information” or “I must Get This” or “I should be aware of the vast-empty-space thing at all times” or “my life would be even better if….”

“Without opening your door, you can open your heart to the world. Without looking out your window, you can see the essence of the Tao. The more you know, the less you understand. The Master arrives without leaving, sees the light without looking, achieves without doing a thing. ~ Tao te Ching #47

There’s the mind, chattering away. There’s the Silence, always present.

No need to read anything, turn on the computer, do something, go fast. Being in the Tao, the middle, the space, the quiet…nothing matters. No trying necessary. Letting go.

Mind talking away, assessing, analyzing, doing its thing. Functioning like a little machine buzzing in the corner. Not that important, in a good way.

This Silence, Love, Peace has been here the whole time.

Love, Grace

July 29, 2012

Go Towards The Dark

The study of Addiction; how it happens, what we mean by it, how we know we’re addicted, and how to find peace beyond it, is an interest humanity has had for centuries.

At a basic level, Addiction can be defined as a compulsive urge to escape the present moment, to escape feelings that rise.

A wonderful author and psychologist who has worked with people recovering from addiction for 30 years, Frederick Woolverton, describes any addictive process, no matter what the substance or activity, as an attempt to avoid internal darkness.

I remember Adyashanti saying at a retreat once that we’re all addicted to our thinking, we are all Addicts. We’re all addicted to distracting ourselves, forgetting about ourselves for awhile. To getting away from that pesky dark, emptiness we notice.

OH DEAR. Does this mean I have to go towards the darkness? Like, not AVOID it? But. That’s scary.

In our Horrible Food Wonderful Food teleclass this week a thoughtful participant offered the troubling concept “I need to control my emotions”.

I used to live with this belief under the surface of every interaction I had with others; going to work, studying, being with my parents, talking with friends.

All would be fine if my emotions were in check, if I didn’t actually feel anything dramatic, powerful, intense…if I didn’t feel scared, angry or sad. Then life was easy. Things were peaceful, simple, pleasant, fun or exciting.

But OH NO if I felt any fear over about a 2 on a scale of 0-10, or any sadness over a 4 on that same scale, or any anger more than a 1 on the scale of 0-10….then the need for a substance to help stop the feeling would come along. I couldn’t seem to close off the feeling on my own. “I need to control my emotions…I need to shut this down.”

How did I control my emotions? Why, by eating of course. Stuffing, shoving, cramming food in with a vengeance, with a force that was VERY ANGRY. I would also smoke cigarettes, having a quiet moment with them instead of actually expressing my deepest feelings to a human.

Drinking alcohol also served a purposed in changing feelings and thoughts. It would derail sadness and fear, kind of like switching theaters in the middle of an intense and troubling movie.

The problem is, while it appeared that I was doing everything I possibly could to control my emotions, they would pop up like geysers at Yellowstone. I’d run to plug up the fountain of emotion spewing out, only to have a new one pop up the next day 100 yards away.

It was a lot of work to avoid feeling big feelings, to avoid internal darkness.

Fortunately, the addictive process offers an unsatisfying and temporary solution. It also has really painful side effects….like horrible physical sickness or spending lots of money. There is no lasting peace whatsoever. It makes people wake up to wanting another way to live.

I found that through exploration and study of this amazing process of addiction, of giving myself a break from the attempt to control what was inside of me all the time, to be willing to stick with the internal darkness that haunted me, and to speak honestly to other people about it….the addictive processes stopped.

The good news is that just a drop of Willingness to be aware of what is happening inside of you, of being open to it instead of afraid of it, puts you on the path towards ending the annoying cycle of glimpsing darkness and trying to run away from it.

“Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain…you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain.”~ Eckhart Tolle

It can feel really difficult at first, when the addictive process you’re in doesn’t actually work anymore. When you stop using the substance or pattern, you may feel panicky or raw, or super-hyper sensitive. Your pain may now be sitting there totally exposed.

You may decide to look at the opposite to the concepts you’ve had before about your emotions. “I need to stop controlling my emotions, I need to feel everything, I need to share what I’m feeling authentically, I need to face my greatest pain…”

You may have to trust others who have gone before you….even if they’re saying “Go Towards The Dark!”

It’s worth it.

Love, Grace

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Horrible Food Wonderful Food – Tuesdays, Sept 18-Nov 13, 2012, 8:15-9:45 am Pacific (no class 10/30)

Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven – Saturdays, Sept 22-Nov 17, 2012 8 – 9:30 am PT (no class 10/27)

Our Wonderful Sexuality – Fridays, Sept 21-Nov 16, 2012 10-11:30 am PT (class one time on Thursday 10/25, no class 11/2)

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July 27, 2012

The Body Games

A very common experience of being in the human body is to criticize it, think it needs improvement. This body is too old, too round, too slow, too sick, too scarred, it hurts too much, too fat, too ugly, too wrinkled, too bumpy, too imperfect.

Olympic athletes are those of us humans who are zoning in on maximum human capacity for precision, speed, grace, power. By comparison, this group appears to be out there on the edge of the curve, the closest to perfect. Everyone shows up at the same place to compete, to do their absolute best. To win.

The thing is, it’s called the Olympic GAMES. But to a lot of people competing, or watching, it might not be a game exactly. At least it’s not fun. It’s REALLY SERIOUS.

I remember reading when I was a kid about the original Olympic Games being a fight to the death. That does seem quite serious.

Looking at our bodies for some of us becomes extremely life-and-death oriented. I see the flaws, I grip against that picture. I hate it. I decide to fix it, I’ll do anything to bring it up to More Perfect.

Samsara is the word in Sanskrit used for the activity of humans perceiving reality with an agitated or unsettled mind. A continuous flow of birth and death, never ending. Like being trapped in a strange and very creative dream where life repeats itself in different forms endlessly; suffering, achieving, ecstasy, devastation. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

The idea enters for many of us, just like the ancient religions, that it would be nice to get off the treadmill of happy-sad, good-bad. To get past it somehow, feel peaceful and non-reactive to everything.

This includes this body. It gets injured, it changes, it ages, but I long to accept it anyway, to not be affected by its changes like when I’m believing it’s a matter of life or death and it’s freakin’ Very Serious.

But that’s easy to say, not so easy to actually do. Right?

I heard Adyashanti speak once of Samsara as being Closed.

Samsara is a movement AWAY from what is actually happening. It means I don’t like it, I want it to change, I find it unpleasant….I’m against or I want to avoid this person, this thing, this event, this situation. I want to avoid having an imperfect body.

To be truly open to this body, to let go of wanting it to be different…wow, that’s an amazing feat. But possible. Very possible!

In fact, even being willing to let go of wanting it to be different, is an amazing thing to experience.

I remember discovering that I imagined that if I didn’t have the thought that my body needed improvement, then it might become worse. Uglier, repulsive, sick, inadequate…dead.

I believed I had to keep the thought that the body needs to be improved, or else DISASTER. No winning the GAMES! Not even a chance.

What I found, however, was that the body runs itself in the most amazing way, without my improvement plan, without my criticism, without my harping, my judgment, my energy, my hatred, my anger, or my control or planning. This body lives, without me living in Samsara with it.

My critical thinking is not actually necessary for the body to be wonderful as it is. In fact, less thinking about the body has led to greater enjoyment of it.

Kind of like the world. It runs without my opinion. And I find it’s more peaceful the less I give an opinion, the less I judge it and criticize it.

The more Open I am to each moment, to every person I encounter, to the image I see in the mirror, the more power I actually have to facilitate change, beauty, clarity. Now how funny is that?!

The more I see it really as a GAME, a fun game, not a serious matter of life-or-death, the more I accomplish, the more I create.

“Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking. Center your country in the Tao an evil will have no power. Not that it isn’t there, but you’ll be able to step out of its way. Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself”~ Tao te Ching #60

Governing this body, I spoil it with too much mental poking. Criticism and comparison is all around in my consciousness, in the magazines with picture of models, in the news with pictures of amazing athletes. But I can step out of the way. I don’t oppose this body, I don’t attack it for being the way it is, and the hatred of it disappears.

At the moment of the performance, in the Olympics or otherwise, I am so much more in the flow without poking. I only get there by questioning what I think is true. By not believing it is True that this body isn’t good enough, all is empty around me, unknown, mysterious. A Fun Game.

Love, Grace