mini retreat – The Work of Byron Katie with Grace

February 22, 2018

You have no need for the belief “I have to” to get something done (+ this weekend mini-retreat)!

Oh my gosh gosh, it happened. Another Peace Talk Podcast Episode 136 on the pesky and horrible thought (when you believe it) “I Have To…” Find it on itunes here.

This Sunday, February 25 in-person Living Turnarounds mini retreat! Welcome one and all. It doesn’t matter what kind of experience you have in The Work, all you need is an interest in questioning your stressful thinking.

We have a cozy cottage, comfy chairs, tea, and worksheets. We meet 2:00-6:00 pm in northeast Seattle. Please pre-register and find out more right here.

The dates for the rest of this year have been updated. Come to one, come to all, your choice. I tend to forget to announce these half day retreats until right before they happen. Ahem.

February 25, 2018
March 18, 2018
April 22, 2018
May 13, 2018
June 10, 2018

For me, there’s been nothing like sharing time in The Work with caring like-minded folks who also want to question their stressful beliefs together. I get so inspired.

What is it about gathering together that offers something different to our inquiry?

I’m not talking about only a half-day group like this one. But all the other pairings and support, too. Like having an ongoing facilitation buddy, attending a meet-up, going to an intro night on The Work, participating in a retreat or course, going to the 9 Day School with Byron Katie, joining the Institute for The Work.

I find, just like meditation, we ultimately do it on our own, yet if we’re together there’s a structure, a shared energy. I’ve never had the experience of silent sitting at home that I do while on meditation retreat when hours are dedicated to sitting in silence and contemplating the experience without needing to do the usual tasks involved in life.

Isn’t that strange, in a way, that it can be so different being with others do something you really do all by yourself?

Because everyone else is agreeing to do this together, I do it too. I stay. I’m in the chair. No question about getting up and leaving and doing something else to avoid what is, or argue with what is, or complain about what is. I’m staying until I’m truly open to what is.

There’s an interested paradox here, however.

The deepest and most desired transformation, it seems, is when we are on our own–no one else in sight–and we remain seated, stay present, question our thinking, discover awareness is possible without any input or outside guidance required.

Isn’t this what we all truly want? To be our own personal wise advisor? To not have to go anywhere to find peace?

To find out that the most interesting, exciting, loving, supportive, clear person I could ever be with….is me?

Then, whatever we do and wherever we are, whether in a strange unrecognizable place, or our own living room, or in a noisy crowded street, or with a group of friends….

….no matter where we are, we’re with the most beloved and beautiful friend.

One of the things I most love about The Work, is that my stressful, uncomfortable, troubling, nasty, mean, vicious or violent thoughts are the ones that help me hear my inner compassionate advisor.

They are the loud voices that lead me to the still small voice.

Who would have thought the stories and yelling and panic that caused my suffering are the ones that bring the deepest awareness and awakening?

Strange. But true.

And so much help along the way by gathering with other people (still true) and sharing this inquiry. Exploring together is such a gift. It says “you are not alone”. It inspires connection and insight. It’s a practice arena that shows if I can do it with others holding my hand, or accepting me, I can do it.

If I can do it with others, I can do it with myself.

So if you find yourself willing, interested and drawn to connecting to your most inner wise compassionate advisor and awakened one within (yes, that one is there, always) then join me for a half day retreat, or the longer spring retreat coming in May (four days of The Work heaven)!

I’d love to spend time with you sharing the inner world we usually don’t think of as share-worthy (LOL). What freedom to find we’re all on the same journey, discovering peace.

“If you don’t know that who you authentically are does not suffer and has no need for beliefs, you are practicing believing that the separate self is real and that suffering is inevitable.” ~ Cheri Huber

Spend some time with others practicing un-believing how separate you are.

I love how Byron Katie says you have only two choices: believe your thoughts, or question them. There’s no other option.

I’d rather question them.

Even if you live on the other side of the world from where I do–find a partner, connect with people, call the Help Line (it’s free), come to retreat somewhere, anywhere.

Practice questioning. It’s more fun than believing. At least it sure has been for me. (Understatement of the century).

Much love,

Grace

April 25, 2016

deep divers inquiry–why does it work?

Today I’m headed to the distant reaches north of Ottawa, to a cold (snow flurries recently reported) remote area to participate in Orphan Wisdom School with the good Stephen Jenkinson.

I’ll be taking my trusty laptop and sharing with you some of what happens there for me, especially when it comes to the power of self-inquiry and being on this beautiful and crazy planet. Who knows what will happen. Stay tuned!

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	Grace Bell facilitating – notice the new gamer headphones, extremely hip. My game is inquiry, apparently.

During the past year, I’ve been doing more and more mini retreats, something I offered for the first time several years ago: a short intense half-day session doing The Work with a small group.

People come from all walks of life, and I’ve offered them online and in person.

This format morphed into mini-retreats-for-one, where a client and I meet for three hours whether in person or on facetime or skype or facebook video call. The amount of time feels luxurious and incredibly powerful and helpful.

The number of people taking this option has exponentially increased, maybe because it’s such a sweet deep dive. It’s amazing to have the time available to really go beyond the traditional once per week 50 minute sessions in many healing professions (this way isn’t always ideal for everyone).

I wanted to make sure you knew this was an option for you. If you’re concerned with anxiety, eating issues, a really difficult relationship (or lack of one) or trouble at your job, career, a co-worker, it can be awesome to sit with your mind and a facilitator for 3 whole hours.

What I didn’t expect was that people who chose this format for meeting….would want to come back two weeks later for another mini retreat. As long as I have room and space, I’ll do this for the significantly smaller fee than the usual rate for solo sessions (3 hours for mini retreats right now = $225).

So why is this way working, I wondered?

I didn’t even think I had enough 3-hour chunks in my schedule to find space, but they keep appearing to open up just right, for example for a condensed version of inquiry on weekends, or evenings when it’s only 5 pm my time, but 10 am for the inquirer in their time zone.

And why is it working for the inquirers who love to take the time and space to work this mini-retreat way?

I see these five reasons why:

1) there is time for the inquirer to express the presenting “problem” which is a person, situation, condition, a feeling they don’t like about their lives….so they feel heard.

2) with a few questions and further investigation, a MORE critical or worrisome or frightening problem often appears. A childhood memory comes forth, a moment with a parent, or a very stressful time in life with change. These come into focus….like we’re detecting the true source of the trouble, the proof or evidence of suffering they’ve carried with them sometimes for years.

3) The inquirer gets to contemplate and meditate on the Judge Your Neighbor questions very deeply (not the way we usually do things on our own, at least I sure didn’t). When these beliefs are identified, then you’ve got your direction. I do the writing for the inquirers, they sit still and give all their attention to simply answering the questions, nothing more required. (If you want to see the Judge Your Neighbor worksheet questions, they’re right here).

4) We inquire into stressful belief(s) using the four questions. We relax and take a short break if needed part way through for just 5 – 10 minutes (or not). We let The Work run the session.

5) The inquirer is left with clear Next Steps. Other situations or scenes to explore and investigate. We’ve taken time to start at the surface, and then look into the fog, clearing out the cloud cover and finding it’s safe to go deeper.

Another way to spend more time slowing down to discover what really disturbs you is to take a small class with others. Meeting once a week for 6 or 8 sessions is such an awesome way to anchor your time in inquiry (and spend less, but also learn from hearing other peoples’ inquiry work).

Whichever way you enter inquiry, I personally think the mind finds it too slow.

Can’t this go faster? Can’t I just get a quick one-sentence answer to life? Can’t someone tell me how to calm down and chill?

Well….maybe that’d be nice….but not really, no.

It just doesn’t work the “fast” way. You don’t really want it super fast, anyway–you want the truth, not some quick answer, right?

Really, the only way I ever found to enter peace was to look into what caused me, personally (it seemed) to move OUT of peace.

I had to tell and question my story, to respect my story, to honor my story for being like a two year old. I had to give it the time it deserved because it was the only one I had.

As I look back at myself doing The Work, and all the incredible inquirers who appear in my life for facilitation….what I see is we all have to start at the very beginning (like Maria in the Sound of Music). We look at the difficult, stressful stories of suffering we’ve been living out, sometimes for our entire lives.

But now, we get to wonder….is it true?

“So in the beginning, to deeply inquire about anything, you have to care about it. You have to care enough to allow it to get inside that shell. What do you really care about? What pulls you into here and now, this minute? What is the most important thing to you? For real inquiry, it is important to be asking about something you sincerely care about. The question needs to be personal, not about a spiritual teaching or something that’s outside of your experience. It needs to be something that’s coming from the inside.” ~ Adyashanti

Are you ready to join a small group or have your own one-to-one solo session(s)? If so, I’d love to work with you. It’s the greatest honor I have in my life….exploring what we truly, honestly care about and finding out what’s actually true, for ourselves.

Much love,

Grace

P.S. Relationship Hell To Heaven is a 6 week telecourse starting Weds, May 4th. We meet 9-10:30 am Pacific Time, and all you need to begin is a willingness to clearly notice what your stressful story is about ANY relationship in your life (mom, dad, brother, sister, neighbor, spouse, boss) and dig into the beliefs you have about that person without editing yourself. What an awesome place to do it, in a telegroup. You’ll start to feel less embarrassed about your thoughts, you’ll be inspired by others, you might even feel normal, and free, and discover solutions you haven’t thought of before. Register here. Join me in the Peace Movement.

March 29, 2016

Eating Peace: Talking To The Voice That Makes You Want To Eat

There's another way to approach eating peace that climbing on and falling off the wagon — There’s another way to approach eating peace that climbing on and falling off the wagon

I really loved sharing how to move off the Control Wagon yesterday….that is, the tendency we have to always think we need to control or change or manage our food or ourselves in order to feel happy with eating (or any compulsion, for that matter).

It is possible for everyone to find freedom in eating.

But granted, it does take some time. And it’s a different approach when we throw out the old yo-yo methods of being “on” or “off” a plan.

Listen and watch the slide show here to find out the four steps I shared to enter peace rather than the torment of looking for the right way to eat and not finding it.

Feeling like you can’t stop something you yourself engage in, is so weird, right?

But instead of feeling angry with this part of you that wants to eat, what if it was a voice with a very important message?

Awareness of the message changes everything.

“Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

If you want to set aside a 3 hour mini-retreat to explore and meet the voices that want to eat….I’ll be offering a rare session this Saturday afternoon (Pacific Time) from 2-5 pm. For a small group, we’ll be taking a deep dive into the experience of emotional eating or graze eating….the kind of eating we later feel so unhappy about and wish we’d stop doing.

We’ll visit this compulsive voice, this mindless urge, through writing and inquiry exercises that will help us speak directly with the parts of us that seem to want to eat so badly.

We’ll take a look at what’s really going on, more than just the desire to eat.

This is my favorite exploration in life….to investigate the impulse to grab, ingest, think, eat….

….and end the battle through understanding and awareness.

I hope you’ll join me! If this is something you’d like to try, sign uphere (it’s $47 for the 3 hour online retreat). You’ll need a computer or phone with a speaker phone or headphones and a quiet space for yourself. You can choose to just participate without speaking for the entire time, or do The Work out loud, either way. The program will NOT be recorded.

I hope it will make a huge difference for you on your journey to eating peace.

Big peace,

Grace

October 5, 2013

Mini Retreat To Help Answer The Questions

Just yesterday I was telling a physical therapist working with me about what I do for a living.

We only had a few minutes…I had to distill down self-inquiry, The Work, investigation of reality in 3.5 minutes or a few short sentences.

I was lying on my back on a table, and she was leaning on my leg with my foot up towards the ceiling, stretching out the hamstring….the whole leg was shaking.

I told her that the idea was to consider a situation that creates stress in your life…there could be many, but you think about just one.

(The stretch was almost killing me, but not QUITE).

She nodded.

Then, I said, as you think about that one situation, I told her to identify a stressful concept that you really believe is true.

She stayed with me so far. And kept pushing and leaning on my leg.

“Like, the thought ‘he shouldn’t have said that!'” she asked?

Perfect!

Then I said, OK, so here are the four questions you then ask yourself, about that stressful concept.

1) Is it true? 2) Can you absolutely know its true? 3) How do you react when you think that thought? 4) Who would you be without that thought?

Her eyes grew wide, and then she said “HOLY COW THAT IS REALLY COMPLICATED, I mean, those are HUGE QUESTIONS! How can you even answer that??!”

I laughed! Yes, so true!

She told me to sit up and we were done. Appointment over!

Bam, she was gone.

These are indeed big, wide, expansive questions that almost seem crazy if you’ve never asked them before.

I loved that moment, aware of how spectacular the fourth question is, asking who you would be without believing that thought?

Most of us have never even considered this before.

And yet, we CAN answer these questions.

Just thinking about how you would answer them, simply considering them, is a huge step in itself.

Seriously, my journey started with looking at the first question: Is It True?

I made a face like I smelled something bad when I first heard that question.

WHAT?

You talkin’ to me?

Yes, I am.

YOU can answer these questions. And see what happens.

If you’re totally puzzled, and it’s easy enough for you to come to a Saturday afternoon in Seattle for four hours of contemplating these questions, letting the process sink in, practicing moving all the way from beginning to end of The Work…

…then come on over to a lovely afternoon of inquiry on October 19th.

That is two weeks from today, exactly.

Only two more mini retreats this year: 10/19 and 11/30.

Treat yourself to time to answer some REALLY HUGE QUESTIONS!

Amazing things can happen when you do.

If you live really far away from Seattle, then stay tuned. There are group teleclasses coming up….and the next YOI (Year of Inquiry) Group starts in January (limited to 12).

Getting It Now

“When I first encountered The Work I thought it was BS, to be quite honest. It seemed like some weird flip-your-thinking scheme and I couldn’t relate. But I kept running into people who mentioned The Work—all right already! I took a class with Grace and it’s never been the same. She is so patient, compassionate, and truly a living example of The Work in action. I flew across the country to do an in-person with her. I say try it, you got nothing to lose except your stress.” ~ Rhode Island

Much love, Grace