Tag: meditation

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Relationships Are Easy

Being really truthful about my judgments towards others is one scary thing to do. The first time I wrote a worksheet on someone I personally knew, I thought I should probably burn it or put it through the shredder later.

If people knew what my real judgments actually were…there many dangers:  they might leave, they might not like me anymore, they would see me as a jerk, they might get super angry, they might question my judgment. If I hurt someone’s feelings, then to be a better person, I would need to fix it. I would need to make them feel better. Or back out of the room slowly never to be seen again!

Having relationships used to feel difficult. I had lots of beliefs about what good relationships looked like and what people were supposed to be doing in them:

  1. be nice (which could mean smile, ask questions, listen, speak in a calm voice,  refrain from arguing)
  2. take care of the other person (bring them things, ask if they want a cup of tea when you’re making yourself one, change your plans if they need “help”)
  3. show them you care about them (give them cards, hug them, call them)
  4. tell them how wonderful they are and shower them with praises
  5. give them gifts
  6. offer to fix things or help them out in their tasks
  7. tell them how nice they look or act
  8. listen to them speak, no matter how long they talk, don’t interrupt
  9. laugh at their jokes

Of course, I was supposed to be like this with others, and they were also supposed to be like this with me. That’s how I could tell I “liked” someone, if they did the things I expected “good” people to do, and if they did what I really enjoyed (I like it when someone laughs at my jokes).

But there is nothing like getting everything out that you really think about someone on paper, writing down all the things you see, feel, want, need or observe about someone else. It gives your craziest, meanest, nastiest thoughts a voice. They are there anyway, so might as well let them out. On paper.

Having wonderful relationships is not difficult at all since I’ve questioned all my rules about them. I gave up my expectations and hopes about relationships and what they should look like. Ahhhhh, what a relief. I dropped my stories where I really hoped someone would be different than they were.

One side benefit is that I dropped my own stories of how I should be in a relationship. Oh the freedom!

It’s easy to be in relationships with people now. And actually, the people who confuse, sadden, annoy or anger me the most have been my greatest teachers. The more I question my thinking about the people who apparently cause me the most pain (and
who do not follow the rules on the list above), the easier and easier it is to be with all people, any people, any time….even the ones who frown!

And I also see that the list above? Even though it’s not necessary to have any kind of list, I find that people wind up doing these things that are on the list without really trying. When they question and investigate their motivations and  their thinking, when no one is trying  to “act” nice if they don’t feel that way, when no one is trying to get any love, appreciation or approval from anyone, VOILA, people are very kind, including me.

At the end of March the next teleclass “Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven” starts on Tuesdays! We dive into the biggest judgments we have about people who have really bugged us. Come join the freedom train…it’s fantastic in a group! Discover your true nature.

Love, Grace

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Some Radiant Pig

Charlotte, the wonderful spider who saved Wilbur’s life in Charlotte’s Web wrote the following words in her web:

Radiant. Humble. Terrific. Some Pig.

But Wilbur feels pretty normal, mediocre, and not very extra special. Certainly not “radiant”.

Radiant is defined in the dictionary as “sending out rays of light, bright, shining, glowing, beaming health, intense joy and happiness”.

None of us really feel that way all of the time. Maybe we’ve only had this feeling a few “peak” moments in our lives. Some of us have a hard time imagining feeling this way, ever.

It’s funny though, how I used to think my ultimate goal was to feel this way ALL THE TIME. Like, if I really got myself together emotionally, physically, spiritually….I would be experiencing bliss. And I would be healthy, intensely joyful, and rays of light might actually even beam out of me while I walked down the street. Enlightenment!

It would NOT be feeling bleak, dark, heavy, dull, gray, unhealthy, intense grief or unhappiness. If I felt THESE things (the opposites) then of course it meant I needed to get somewhere else, do something else, change something, read a better book, quit my job, meditate more, attend workshops, go to therapy, change my diet, earn more money, get a boyfriend, get single, get rid of my ego, discover my attachments and delete them, get married, get divorced, buy something, or move.

Feeling uncomfortable feelings of any kind = something is wrong with me = I need to find “it”, whatever it is, that will make me feel better. And it’s off to the races!

I start to seek, patrol, hunt, sort, analyze, gather, discard, blame. In that state of really feeling uncomfortable, it’s reeeeeeeeaally hard to stay and wait.

Pema Chodron writes and speaks about staying instead of starting to seek outside of yourself when something goes amiss. She says “whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to “stay” and settle down. Are we experiencing restlessness? Stay! Discursive mind? Stay! Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What’s for lunch? Stay! What am I doing here? Stay! I can’t stand this another minute! Stay!”

Staying right there in the middle of the uncomfortable feelings and writing down what you’re feeling…whether rage, despair, terror or all the variations of these in between, this is my favorite way to stay. It’s the first step of The Work. I question my concepts of what I think I need or want to do in order to “get away” from this feeling or situation or person or predicament.

I love one of the things that Adyashanti, one of my favorite teachers, says “enlightenment is standing on your own two feet”.

Actually, the ultimate favorite teacher I have is my own Self. The one who answers the questions.

Wow. I never thought I’d say that. Kind of makes me feel Radiant! Without the actual light beams. Just normal, regular. mediocre me. Kind of like Wilbur, a regular pig. Who lived.

Much love, Grace

P.S. Speaking of RADIANCE: There is a wonderful one-day event in Seattle

on Saturday, April 21st, 2012 next month called RealizeYourRadiance. I will

be presenting on healing a troubling relationship with food and eating using The

Work of Byron Katie. There are many wonderful presenters. Check it out here:

 

www.realizeyourradiance.com

 

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Natural Somersault Fun

Have you ever noticed your thinking going into the thought “what if I never _____?”

That state that feels like I am on a merry-go-round of doubt about not being successful, happy, accomplished, secure, satisfied.

What if I never write a book? What if I never make “x” amount of money? What if I never see Tahiti? What if I never heal this relationship with food? What if I never get married again? What if I can’t forgive someone?

The other day in my teleclass Our Wonderful Sexuality the thought we worked together was “I want them to think I’m special”.

Katie has a little story in Loving What Is, her first book, about how a child is playing on the playground doing somersaults and enjoying themselves, and then someone sees the child and claps, and people shout “wow, fantastic!”

The child then becomes more interested in doing the somersaults so that they can then attract a clapping audience. The clapping becomes more important than the original simple, blissful activity. That felt good to get attention! I want it again! I want MORE! When they think I’m special it is FABULOUS!!!!!

Of course this is not an all-or-nothing situation. Sometimes the strategy of the mind is to decide “I am NEVER going to want anyone to think I’m special. I am above and beyond all that”. In which case, when I’ve been in that mode, I’m low key, stay in the back row, and wind up not being genuinely myself either.

Have you ever heard of the game ping-pong? How about schizophrenia!?

All those things I’m worried about not happening (what if I never____?) are usually things I think that if I did them or had them, I would be happier, more peaceful, more loved, secure….I would be BETTER off than I am now.

So what’s wrong with NOW? I write it down and inquire. No book, no big bank account, never seen Tahiti, not a raw vegan (I do like burgers and french fries), divorced, mad at that person still whenever I think about them…

What is fabulous about not having any of these things? Why is this a good thing? What are the advantages?

Wow, what if none of those things really matter. This is not the “giving up” kind of not mattering where I decide I don’t care defiantly…this is really knowing it actually doesn’t matter! WOOHOO!

I notice I love to write every day, I see I have no debt and my bank account goes up and down like the tide but I’m never hungry, I start researching Tahiti on the internet, I find out I love eating seaweed, I get engaged to be married for a second time, and I remember that the person who I think I’m mad at…they are not here right now, and they are defnitely one of my biggest teachers.

Then I can just be happy, and I notice I do somersaults.

Much love, Grace

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Questioning Death

Byron Katie says that it’s not necessary to question your wonderful, happy stories. Your inspiring stories, your joyful stories. Those are working for us, we don’t worry about them. The Work is about looking at painful, stress-producing, terrible stories.

Still, one of Katie’s wonderful questions (and other philosophers and teachers as well) is “who would you be without your story?” It’s a pretty huge, wide open question. I find that both the “good” stories and the “bad” stories are becoming less easy to define the more I do The Work.

Some of the most amazing changes for me have come out of having cancer, recovering from an eating disorder, being in love and out of love, losing all my money and many of my possessions, or someone close to me to “dying”.

Last night I attended “Parent Night” for my 17 year old son’s driver’s education class. The teacher went over laws, how we parents should help with teaching our kids to drive, reminders of how the licensing system works.

And then he said “now we’re going to see a little movie about the dangers of inexperienced teens driving”.

Oh no…..I hate this story.

In the movie was film footage from a car accident where there were only teens in the car. I see the body of a boy lying face down on the street, I notice his big athletic shoulders and white t-shirt, and there is a pool of blood extending far around him as his body lies still. A fireman puts a tarp over him, the camera keeps moving. There are other bodies, too.

Today I see the movie scene again in my mind. It’s how the mind seems to work. When something is particularly troubling, it seems to repeat the image over and over again. I saw the film clip once last night and that accident scene lasted probably 2 minutes…but now I’ve shown it to myself  probably 1000 times in the last 15 hours, and I was asleep for 7 of those hours!

I even hate telling this story, I don’t want to make others sad, remind them of troubling situations, or admit that I felt like crying and sobered just by seeing that film. But I  can only be worried about telling this story IF I really think it’s TRUE that it’s a entirely tragic story.

One of the most profound experiences in human life is when people overcome very horrifying, dramatic, powerful, life-changing events. What do we mean when we say “overcome”?

For me it feels like the deepest awareness of surrender, of not having control. Difficult events happen. Things that produce profound grief, mental anguish, torment. I can’t sleep, I think about it over and over. I feel numb. Before I had the Work this repeated itself for years. I’d wonder about the meaning of life itself, how can such things happen? It is all so frightening and terrible. Death is shocking, and an accident is a tragedy.

First question: Is It True? My answer: Yes!

I pause…Can I absolutely know that it’s true that the accident I viewed was 100% tragedy? Can I know that they all suffered, or the parents suffered constantly, or that those kids should have lived longer?

How do I react when I believe that this thing was such an awful story, was so terrible? When I think about it, I am overwhelmed with emotion, pain, stress, anger, grief. I think about never driving. I am actually scared, even though nothing has actually happened to me, personally.

So who would I be without the thought? This is not a form of denial, I’m not  pretending the accident didn’t happen….just questioning what would it be like if I could even just rest in the moment of not thinking of it as 100% horrific.

What kind of action do I take when I realize I’m actually entirely safe right now?

How do I live when I realize that every day, people die, some of them in car crashes, and I don’t know why, and will never know why. Some of them are teenagers. Have I noticed that people of all ages die? Have I actually noticed that EVERYONE dies? I am arguing with Reality by saying “that shouldn’t happen”.

“When you argue with Reality, you lose…” suggests Katie.

Tears come, and I feel grateful for being alive right now. Grateful for all the amazing people who arrive at accidents and help clean them up. Grateful that I’ve seen my children live, so far, all the way to teenagers. Grateful that now, my son is going on this adventure in life where he is learning to move his body from point A to point B in a really amazing thing called a car.

Who would we be without the thought that death is terrible and frightening?

Much love, Grace

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Admit What You Think About Angelina Jolie

Today I read an article about how many people reacted to Angelina Jolie’s apparently very skinny shape at the Oscars. The article was suggesting that people shouldn’t tweet things like “Dear Angelina Jolie….eat something.”

I remember my starvation days well. It’s true that if anyone said to me “eat something” it would have made ZERO difference in my behavior at the time. I would have written them off as being crass, ignorant, and rude. How dare they say that to me!

Everyone was suspect, everyone was either against me, unaware, too nosey, pushy, judgmental, uncaring, or needy. They did not understand. I was in control, and not eating was practically the only place I felt any personal control over my life.

The amount of energy it took to deny my own hunger and eat so little left almost no mental or emotional space to do anything but focus on NOT eating. Interacting with others was something I wanted to spend very little time doing, it was pretty scary for me. I was too afraid of people. I was too afraid of telling the truth!

I didn’t want to hear the truth from other people either. It felt too crushing.

Now, I have such gratitude for the people who spoke up and said something during the years I was “anorexic” and starving all the time.

I will never forget a fellow student in college who also ran cross-country on the team. I have no idea what her name was, and can hardly remember what she looked like. But one day at a meet she said to me “Have you ever been anorexic?” and as I looked at her in stunned silence (no one was supposed to ever mention this out loud) another team mate said “Don’t ask her that, jeez!”

I never said a word. But I remember it now, 30 years later. I KNEW at the moment that young woman spoke that she was noticing how thin I was and watching the way I rarely ate and worked out a lot in my running.

I was seen. I had a love-hate relationship with being seen. I couldn’t pretend I was invisible and slowly wasting away into nothing when that woman spoke up. I was noticed.

Around the same time when visiting home, my father came to me with a small plate of sliced fresh pears. He said “won’t you please eat something, sweetheart?” He had no idea how to be with his daughter who was so thin, he was sad and scared. I said “No!” and left the room. But I knew he cared and I knew he was seeing me.

Byron Katie suggests that anything said to her is something she needed to hear in that moment. If it’s said loudly, she needed to hear it loud.

When I was at the School for The Work once, a man stood and talked about himself being sexually inappropriate with a child once many years before. He said how ashamed he was and how afraid he was of others’ judging him for being so awful. Another man in the same room, filled with several hundred people, shouted at him and stormed out of the room, slamming the door so loudly behind him that the walls shook.

 Katie then said something like “there goes one person who doesn’t like hearing what you are saying and may be judging you for being awful.”But that was one person, the rest stayed in the room.

The experience I have with the Work now is that my past actually feels different than it once did. I am now grateful for those people who spoke up and said something….even if I scoffed at it at the time. It was part of  what I needed to hear, right at that moment, just in that particular way.

If you notice judgments rise about Angelina Jolie, write them all down.

See what you think is “wrong” with her and her body. Go ahead and write it! Watch your mind fill with what it means that she has that body looking that particular way.

When you do The Work, your own answers may surprise you. One of my favorite exercises in the Horrible Food Wonderful Food teleclass or weekend workshop is judging those other people out there with their fat or thin bodies. Let’s get the judgments out on the table, because only then can they be set free and seen, sometimes even with gratitude.

Much love, Grace

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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

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Big Honkin’ Feelings, Oh My!

One of my greatest discoveries in doing The Work and questioning my beliefs that caused mental or emotional stress in my life was what my underlying attitude was towards BIG EMOTIONS.

If you asked me what I really thought of big expressions of emotions and feelings, I was incredibly anxious. If someone yelled, talked excessively with “nervous” energy, cried or wailed, I criticized that person in my mind. I wanted to get away from them.

I said things to myself about people who were doing things like crying, yelling, raging, sobbing, wailing, panicking, moving fast things like “Jeez, they should get a grip, can’t they control themselves?

Is this really worth crying over? I wish they would lower their voice. This isn’t an emergency, what is that person’s problem! Get me away from them, quick! Run!”

I would look at someone crying hard, even when I first listened to Katie doing The Work with people, and think I might have to skip that recording because it was irritating.

I love how we get the most upset at the very things we’re most afraid of. I used to hold back all my tears, hold back my anger, got really silent and non-communicative and overall was TERRIFIED of having deep feelings.

One great way to feel more at peace with big feelings is to identify judgments on feelings themselves.

For example:

  • when someone is sobbing, it means that: they are needy, full of self-pity, a victim, trying to manipulate me, confused
  • when someone is angry, it means that: they will hurt me, they will break something, they are dangerous and destructive, they will hurt themselves
  • when someone is afraid, it means that: I need to help them calm down, they will scare me or other people (like panicking and yelling “fire” when it’s not true), they will do something stupid

It is hard for any feeling to live its life and pass through when there are so many judgments about it. The more I did The Work on other people and their big feelings, the more accepting and calm I felt about being in the presence of them.

Now the funny thing is that it seems like the amount of time I spend talking loud, sobbing, being afraid, feeling intense anger….is really short. I respect these feelings when they come along. I know they mean that I AM BELIEVING SOMETHING STRESSFUL RIGHT NOW. The judgment that I should be completely calm like a princess from a fairy tale at all times and under all circumstances seems to be gone.

I also notice, other people who seem to be feeling something big don’t bug me anywhere near as much as they once did. In fact, I welcome them. I know if they’re saying it loud, I must have needed the volume turned up to really get it.

Love, Grace

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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

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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

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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