Tag: mindfulness

Posted on

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

Posted on

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

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

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

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