The other day, I had one of those moments where I noticed….
….”OH. I’m here. Without thought. Just here.”
Even though seconds before I had images in my head about all kinds of things with a voice offering advice: go make those copies for Breitenbush, do laundry so you’re ready with clean clothes, I hope he’s doing OK with his cancer treatment, I hope she’s going to find peace with her mother, I need to email them, I wonder what she’s doing right now, I need to reply to him, set that up, do this.
The mind is so fast and full. Jam packed with possibilities and ideas and plans.
But as something draws your attention through your day….who are you without your thoughts about it?
Who am I without my thoughts?
Dang, what a crazy question…but what a wonderful, fascinating, exploratory question.
Don’t I need my thoughts? Wouldn’t I be some kind of weirdo without thoughts? Or dumb as a post?
As a memory steps through your mind, the image of someone’s face, or a scary picture, or the idea for a task, or your calendar, there’s a response in the body, in emotions perhaps (or sometimes, oddly, there is not response at all).
Who would you be without believing the image, picture, response was true?
Kinda cosmic, right?!?
But WOW.
It’s lighter, it’s even exciting, it’s relaxing, it’s a willingness not to take whatever you’re bumping into so seriously, including the pictures floating through your own mind about what your encounters mean about the future.
Turning the whole entire experience around: Thinking is not required. I don’t need to think, to “have” thoughts, or even “good” thoughts in order to be safe, secure, alive, successful, or happy.
Holy Moly.
Thoughts appear. Then, I notice they aren’t present, I’m simply observing. I also notice I’m sleeping sometimes–no thinking going on during sleep. I notice I also “lose my train of thought” all the time, and everything’s apparently fine.
Life goes on. Without a thought about it.
As I observed this wonderful and weird phenomena of noticing the absence of thought, the beauty of something just being here, I decided to make a Peace Talk podcast Episode 132.
(These things just appear, I have no idea what’s going on).
What’s here, without our stories?
“The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.” ~ Tao Te Ching #1
Much love,
Grace
P.S. If you want to listen to the ten minute Peace Talk episode, head over HERE.
With your stressful love stories….trouble. Without your stressful love stories….who would you be?
A Grace Notes reader emailed me the other day with a fantastic question.
“I also want to ask you about the phrase “who would you be without that thought?”….I’m glad you didn’t use that here. I struggle with that phrase as it seems too philosophical for me to grasp, manage, decipher. Please help me with that phrase. It gets me stuck every time….it feels too big, too much….BE. It can easier grasp what would I think, feel, believe….Any ideas here? LOL.”
I so love her honesty and request for sincere help.
I have to admit….
….I’ve had the same kind of confusion about answering that fourth question in The Work.
What do you mean “who would you BE????!!!”
Dang.
I’d be someone else! Not me!
But after years of working with this thought, I’ve got some *awesome* suggestions, some of which might help you enter the space of this question.
First, the answer to this question in some situations does feel as far away as the other side of the Grand Canyon.
If I’m really upset, if I’m troubled and angry and terrified….
….it’s hard to even imagine being without my stressful thoughts.
They’re all screaming full blast at me, I can hardly hear anything else.
You know what I’m talkin’ about, right?
But I love that in this moment now, when I’m doing The Work and wondering about my reaction and my suffering…..
…..I am remembering a situation from the past.
In the very moment that I’m remembering, I’m quite safe.
Look around.
Just notice first, you are very safe when you have memories. It’s safe to remember this situation, because it’s over.
These pictures in your head, of the way that person behaved or what they said or what email they sent that scared you, aren’t actually happening RIGHT NOW.
Good to know. Good to notice.
I’m interested in cleaning up my past imprints, all the things I pushed inside myself and have stuck there, and now….I’m taking a look.
So I let the movie play.
I see that person vividly in my mind, doing what they did, saying those mean words.
I notice how my stomach starts to feel sick right here in the present moment, but I also notice again (over and over again) that the actual event is over. It’s not happening right now.
You can let yourself have the support of noticing this, in this moment, as you do your inquiring work.
Now….I take a look at this question “who would I be without my stressful thought?”
I imagine actually being someone or something else. You know how I thought I’d be someone else, not me?
Well….how might someone else be, without this same stressful thought?
It’s simply good to notice, without berating or criticizing yourself, that other humans have likely had your same thought, and similar experiences, and they’re OK now.
They might be very OK. They might feel free, even if horrible things happened to them.
These are actual examples of being without the stressful thought.
You get to notice that you, too, are a human and therefore capable of also living your life without the suffering you’ve endured in the situation you’re thinking about.
If you can believe a thought, you can un-believe it too.
If you can’t even imagine being a human, without your stressful thought, then I love imagining what it’s like to be a tree, or a cat, or a rock.
How do these entities in nature, these alive existing organisms BE, without thought?
How does a tree feel, even if someone is yelling at it?
And….as this amazing reader suggested….
….I consider slowly how I would feel without my stressful thoughts? How would I move? What would I do? What would I notice, without this stressful thought?
How would I walk down the street? How would I do my laundry? How would I drive to the gym? How would I hang out with my friends….or family….without my thought?
How would I stand there, in the person’s presence (who I’m doing The Work on) without my thought?
You get to use your imagination.
If you think you don’t have a good imagination….
….who’s imagining that story from the past, into the present right now?
Your imagination is excellent. You just need to give it some new options you never thought of before.
Some fear-free options, some funny options, some humorous options, some life-affirming options, some neutral options.
You don’t even need to know what to do.
All you need to do is wonder what it would be like to be sitting in a chair, remembering a stressful situation, without running away from it or getting super worked up, or falling into pure reaction.
If you want, you can take a week to wonder how you’d feel without your stressful thought.
You can see which aspect of being you love to consider the most without your thought? Do you like to wonder what you’d do, or say, or feel, or see without your thought?
All of this wrapped up together creates who you would be.
And I love breaking it down into bite sized pieces, not a huge big wide heady philosophical question that seems far away in outer space.
“In Life, the transformation occurs in the process. This is, no doubt, why the ego-identity maintenance strategy is so focused on preventing us from ever getting started or keeping to a program of any kind…..The process IS the outcome.” ~ Cheri Huber
Good news.
Wondering and imagining what it would be like to be a fly on the wall in your stressful situation, or a flower, or a rock, or a tree, or a person, or then, YOU….is all you need to enter transformation.
Nothing more required.
Much love, Grace
P.S. Tomorrow….Online Retreat on Love Stories. Come with any love story that feels painful. Only $37 for 3 hours. We’ll do The Work, and practice using our imaginations, and hearing from each other, what it might be like to be without our thought.
Register HERE. Don’t let funds hold you back–if you want to join, write me (just hit reply).
Yesterday in Year of Inquiry we continued this month’s topic….
….Other People’s Suffering.
This is a great trigger for so many people, and it certainly has been for me.
My kid falls down and breaks his wrist, and I wasn’t there, but when I find out about it on the phone, a cloud of wild adrenaline zings through me, my mind races into a fury….
….I should be there now!
Quick, emergency! Horrors!
I drop everything and scramble to get there ASAP, in this wild, frantic whirlwind of fear. Driving fast. Feeling guilty.
What about a moment sitting with someone you love dearly, and they begin to speak about their deepest fears, and perhaps cry, or express despair?
Several people in Year of Inquiry noticed this experience with mothers and fathers.
These influential people called parents….
….they are suffering.
Bam. I am suffering. The minute I think they are.
Again….there’s a feeling of emergency, or deep sorrow, or anxiety, or a compulsive movement to fix it, to be helpful.
A dear mentor of mine once shared that she sat at her father’s deathbed and he said “my life has been such a disappointment” and she couldn’t stop thinking of this for years after he died.
Someone else is upset, suffering, feeling horrible, suicidal, depressed, unhappy in life.
Immediately, these thoughts are stirred up within me:
I have to do something…anything, to stop this.
Life is dangerous.
There is no clear way to solve this “problem”.
This could get worse.
I can’t handle this.
This is terrible.
Who would you be without your worried or sad thoughts, in the presence of this person?
Who would I be without the belief that this person’s circumstances are truly terrible? Without the belief I have to DO something? Or that it could get worse?
What if I didn’t crunch in and believe so totally that I can’t handle this (or they can’t) or that this is a problem?
Woah.
Strange indeed to not think of a broken wrist, or a very disappointed person, or death, or sadness as a terrible problem.
What if it wasn’t?
I notice all these things happen in reality….sadness, anger, disappointment, broken bones, illness, death.
Could it be possible to be with all these things, watch others go through these things, and NOT suffer?
Stunning to imagine.
“The primary thought is a thought of me. This thought of me, which is nothing but a thought, never could be anything but a thought or image. The me or I is constantly commenting on what is. Is it good?Is it bad? Do I like it? Do I disagree? Do I agree? How do I attain that? How do I get that? Or even…’I am enlightened’, or ‘I am not enlightened’. The thought is about the moment. The thought is about me, then my relationship with the moment. An imaginary character having and imaginary relationship with what is. It is called suffering….But without a thought, there is no commentator. Without thought, there can’t be a problem. Unless the mind comments on what is, and then creates a problem, there is none.” ~ Adyashanti
Even if you don’t “get” this entirely, and notice your mind has thoughts….
….what if even this was OK?
I turn the thoughts around about suffering:
I have to do nothing.
Life is safe.
There is no problem, and no clear way to solve it anyway.
This could get better.
I can handle this.
This is wonderful.
Could these not be just as true, or truer?
Is there anything else present, besides the commentator going on and on about what is?
I notice….yes.
So much is happening besides thought!
A great pulsating feeling of life, aliveness, sounds, sights, smells, touch. Wind chimes outside, mail truck driving by, heart beating, legs stretching, eyes gathering letters (reading) shadow and light forming on the wall outside, bustling life, a world alive and something here a part of this life force. A far greater expanse of awareness than whatever I see as “me”.
And in that past difficult situation, with a son who has a broken wrist, people were there to help, his father was present, emergency room doctors put on the cast, everything unrolled the way it does, and this “me” was not necessary.
Is it ever?
Wow.
“The mind is a couple of degrees removed from what is immediate. But as soon as I come back to the immediacy of all this, how still it is, how pervasive it is. I am still, silent, pervasive.” ~ Ross Oldenstadt
Quite a few years ago, I spent a weekend with a man called Dr. Hew Len.
He was a gruff no-nonsense teacher of peace. No fakey fake. No nicey nice.
I happened to get to sit down next to him at the same restaurant during the lunch break on the first day.
I told him I felt awful about my rage, especially with my teenage daughter.
He said “clean.”
That was his primary teaching, his offering of what one could practice to feel free. That’s what we were learning about in his weekend workshop.
Clean your mind, stop reacting, say “I love you”, take 100% responsibility for what’s happening around you.
No questions, no stories, no explanations.
He was awesome, I loved him. And he said that if you wanted to talk and talk, even talk a little bit, you were full of BS.
This weekend I’m in another personal development retreat (I know, I know, I seem to be in a lot of these lately…we’ll talk about that LATER)!
I was reminded of Dr. Len when the workshop leader said all your stories, talking, yapping, suffering….
….all just data, just machinery, projection, comparing to the past, worrying about the future, limited.
Not the real YOU.
I thought about what question four in The Work of Byron Katie always points to: who or what would you be without your story?
Without believing your thoughts, your feelings, your judgments of other people? Without grabbing what you see, hear, touch, smell and THINK and instantly being so sure it’s all absolute reality?
Who would you be without being so sure there’s something to be worried about, or terrified of, or even happy about?
I know it’s kinda crazy.
Instead of looking at what is and believing in it, this is imagining who you would be without those thoughts…
Just get quiet and see, today.
You might think you can’t, you might think “I don’t know how to be without my thoughts!”
You don’t have to be without your thoughts altogether…that appears to be impossible.
You just have to click into the sense of not being a believer of them. See what else is here, besides thinking and stressing and reacting.
Hold still a minute. Don’t talk.
Dr. Len gives it to us without any sugar on top:
“You have given up yourself, your pureness of heart, for trash. Can you imagine giving up a pure soul for trash? This is what we do moment to moment….But if you’re at zero, everyone else will be at zero. And you really are at zero. That’s who you really are.” ~ Dr. Hew Len
You are so big, so amazingly powerful, beyond all your thinking and fears and judgments. You have done nothing wrong to have them, so don’t go getting mad at yourself.
Just be and imagine.
Dr. Len calls it zero. A big fat zero. Nothingness. Flat line. Space. Resting. Silence. Emptiness.
Don’t be scared of what it’s called.
You are not defined as your body, you are not your environment, you are not your relationships, you are not your mind, you are not your thoughts, you are not your emotions.
All these parts honorable and fascinating, nothing wrong with them.
But wow, you are all this and much more.
I LOVE YOU!
Isn’t it fun?
“Without a story of being limited, you’re infinite. There’s nothing more joyous than that–to know that you’re all things and new each moment, and that all of it is projected. People think that limitlessness is terrifying, because they don’t have inquiry. But it’s no more terrifying than sitting in your living room.” ~ Byron Katie
