spirituality Archives

July 4, 2012

No Such Thing As Independence

Dear Inquirers,

The word “independence” by definition in the dictionary says it means: not controlled or influenced by others, not subject to another’s authority, not influenced by the thoughts of others, not influenced by the action of others, not dependent upon something else for existence or operation, not relying on others for aid or support.

IMPOSSIBLE!

How could I possibly be not influenced by other people, or by actions or ideas I’ve heard. How could I possibly not rely on anything for support or aid?

I mean, really. There is not one thing that I do, think, or have that was built without influence from others.

My perception of the world is influenced deeply by all those people around me who are existing, doing their thing, talking, behaving, breathing, living.

My very existence in this body is dependent on some force of life running itself that I have no idea how it works, or why, or what really keeps it going. The heart beats, the brain thinks, the breath goes in and out.

We get so interested in independence….and it doesn’t really exist!

Something sounds really wonderful about it, though. If I were entirely independent, beyond all influence and control, what would I have?

The imagined state of total independence and why it sounds GOOD:

I do whatever I want
I don’t need anyone or anything
I don’t have to work
I’m thriving, I have everything I want
I can say or think whatever occurs to me
I feel free
I come, I go as I wish
I’m OK with everything, I don’t mind what happens

The interesting thing is, with doing The Work and questioning only what is being thought….this state of “independence” becomes more and more true.

And what’s funny is, with this so-called independence, there is more and more surrender to the condition of absolutely dependence on Reality, God, Source, What Is.

More and more dependence on going with the flow, not fighting against anything, giving up having it MY way. More and more being able to ask in any moment “Am I sure it needs to go the way I think it should go? Or can I be fine with how it is, can I find the humor?”

Less and less holding anyone or anything else responsible for influencing me, controlling me, causing me pain.

The whole thing is a big paradox; independent sounds good, dependent sounds bad….but really it’s all about what we’re independent from or dependent on.

Life shows us what we’re still trying to get independent from. Something happens, someone bugs us, and POW, we get all mad or scared.

The fabulous news is that we get to choose. It doesn’t seem like it sometimes, it seems like we’re just riding the PAIN TRAIN of reacting against or for something.

But we do get to choose peace….we have this much independence (and maybe that’s the only independence).

If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace. If peace mattered to you more than anything else and if you truly knew yourself to be spirit rather than a little me, you would remain nonreactive and absolutely alert when confronted with challenging people or situations. You would immediately accept the situation and thus become one with it rather than separate yourself from it. ~Eckhart Tolle

The incredible thing is, when you become “one” with the situation or the person you are resisting, when you see the beauty in them, or you stop fighting the situation (like cancer, no money, someone dying) then oddly enough, there is Independence.

And there is nothing you can do about it.

June 25, 2012

I Can’t Handle This Moment

Dear Inquirers,

Ages ago, when it seems I was almost a different person (yet I remember it well) my relationship with food was horrendous.

My relationship with money was also confusing….it appeared to come and go and I felt so small and powerless in it, I could hardly think about it. I mainly focused on other relationships that seemed more important (like food).

My relationship with other people was also worrisome. I loved some of them, but found others repulsive. I didn’t like getting too incredibly close to people….it felt dangerous and disturbing.

Really, my relationship with ME was confusing, worrisome, dangerous, horrendous. It seemed like I was unpredictable, mean, critical, and that I actually would harm myself.

I would have a feeling or thought arise that seemed too big, too emotional, too frightening, and I would automatically think I couldn’t handle it. My attitude toward the feeling or thought was that it must die. I would attack it and do anything to get rid of it or get away from it.

This created that troubling and terrible relationship with food and eating. I would have thoughts like:

Eating would feel so good right now
I am such a pig, all I think about is food
I could stop anything else I’m doing and start to eat, I could go to the store and buy everything I ever wanted, everything that looks yummy
I am so selfish, scared, angry, bitter
The only thing that will help me right now to calm down is to frantically eat all I want without control
I’ll binge now and stop later
I will never get over this
My relationship with food proves I am a stupid, immature, undisciplined, unenlightened person

The thing is, I flipped back and forth between desperately wanting and berating myself for wanting, like a ping-pong ball.

I never really looked at what was going on, slowing the whole thing down.

I never questioned the thought “I can’t handle this moment, so I need to eat. Eating would improve this moment”.

This could be the same with anything I’ve experienced that I feel totally compelled to do, like when I smoked cigarettes or drank alcohol….or obsessively planned out ways to make money, or work my way up the ladder in a job.

Suffering is the idea that something needs to be different right now. This could be ANYTHING.

So in this moment I allow my mind to think about what it would improve or change to make things better, and then I can ask myself is it really true that if this changed, it WOULD be better?

There is nothing wrong with wanting to heal, improve, change, clarify, get balance, feel peace. It seems that stress arises when we have no balance, when we become “against” something, when we have a big reaction.

Realization is already here. All that is necessary is to get rid of the thought ‘I have not realized’.~ Ramana Maharshi

All that is necessary in the moment I move into feeling compelled to eat, drink, smoke, watch TV, work, surf the net, is to question the thought “this moment sucks”.

Join me in examining all the less-than-perfect moments on the topics of eating, sexuality, money or relationships in July (see the schedule below).

Love, Grace

Visit me at www.workwithgrace.com and pass along this blog post to anyone you know who might enjoy it. They can sign up for the list on my website!

Horrible Food Wonderful Food – Fridays July 13 – August 31 Noon – 1:30 Pacific
Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven – Thursdays July 12 – August 30 8:00 – 9:30 am PT
Our Wonderful Sexuality – Tuesdays July 10 – August 28 8:15 – 9:45 am PT
Money, Work and Business – Weds July 11 – August 29 5:00 – 6:30 pm PT

The Hidden Gift in ANY Relationship June 27 – July 1 in the glorious Breitenbush Hotsprings Resort in Oregon! $350 for one person tuition, plus room and board. Bring a second person for $100 tuition (plus room and board).

Grace Bell, MA, Certified Counselor WA

Certified Facilitator of the Work of Byron Katie

website: www.workwithgrace.com

email: gracebell@comcast.net

phone: 206-650-1230

skype: graceebell

facebook: www.facebook.com/WorkWithGrace

twitter: ByronKatieCoach
blog: www.workwithgrace.blogspot.com

June 23, 2012

Stop Believing In Abandonment

Hello Dear Inquirers,

When I first found The Work of Byron Katie one thought I had was…how could this be so simple and actually “work”?

What I meant by wanting it to WORK was I wanted to feel happy, resolved, peaceful. I wanted to stop thinking the same thing over and over and over again about a person who bugged me or a really difficult experience. I wanted to stop hating myself for making mistakes.

One concept that came up when I wrote down all my painful beliefs about someone was “he abandoned me”.

Yesterday I sat with a wonderful client who felt discouraged about primary relationships in her life. When she thought about partners she had, all the way back to her first boyfriend, she had the same kind of thought “he rejected me” or “he abandoned me”.

She said she would rather be burned, get into an accident, go through gigantic physical suffering, than experience the pain of breaking up with someone again.

I have a woman who I really don’t know extremely well who I worked with on a project in the past. She told me a few years ago “you are not being collaborative, you are not friendly”. She took notes, literally, on my lack of collaboration to present to the person in charge, and also pointed out that I was NOT a detail person.

You would have thought she had said to me “DIE, you scummy piece of junk! You horrendous disgusting excuse for a human! I hate everything about you! The world is worse with you in it!”

A little dramatic.

And all about ME. How dare she criticize me or have a problem with ME? I am such a well-intentioned, nice person! Jeez!

That little phrase “how dare you…how dare she….how dare they…”

If that comes into my head, I know I’m getting on the Blame Train and building my Case Against Them. I’m on the Train To Nowhere But Hell!

And in that moment that I get on that train, I’m actually abandoning everything. I’m abandoning myself, I’m getting super defensive, I’m abandoning them, I’m abandoning the whole truth of the situation.

I notice that it REALLY HURTS.

So eventually, with this repetitive thought that other people have abandoned me in my life, a wonderful facilitator finally suggested to me that a turnaround of this idea is “I AM SET FREE”.

Right in that moment that I believe someone “abandons” me by criticizing me, or “breaking up” with me…..

Maybe in that moment I am being set free, I am totally strong enough to live life without them, I am getting unhitched from being hooked on them like a trailer behind a car.

In that moment that I used to call “abandoned” I am being presented with great possibilities for the future, I am entering the world of emptiness, joy, space!

“How do you know when you don’t need people? When they’re not in your life. How do you know when you do need them? When they ARE in your life. You can’t control the comings and goings of people you care for. What you CAN do is have a good life whether they come or go.” ~Byron Katie

So, the dear woman who told me I wasn’t friendly enough and I wasn’t a detail person was there because I needed to hear that. She wasn’t abandoning me, she was giving me some truly excellent feedback. No big deal.

And the people who I apparently don’t ever see or talk with anymore, who are not in my life as they once were….wow. They offered just the right dose of detachment so I could come back to myself and love my own company.

Those abandoning-people gave me the most incredible gift. To stop believing in Abandonment.

Love, Grace

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April 25, 2012

Leaving Everything You Know Behind

This morning I was reading letters and responses that people have written to an author named “Sugar” which were printed in a magazine called The Sun. One of my favorite magazines of all time. Well, the only magazine I’ve ever continuously received and read each month for many years.

Someone had written to this woman named Sugar wondering if it was OK to NOT be speaking to her dad. This woman had HAD IT with her father.

Most of us have had the experience of wanting to shut down communication with someone else when we disagree or argue with them, or feel very hurt by them, or just too scared of them. It just seems like too much, too hard, too stress-producing, too uncomfortable, too painful.

I myself have had this experience, not so long ago even.

There is no right or wrong way to be around stopping talk with someone, of course, each experience is unique. But I liked how Sugar answered this writer. Sugar said “I will tell you about my own situation with my own father” and she told that story.

The story went like this: father gets mad, daughter gets hurt, daughter gets mad, no communication for many years, daughter reaches out, father gets mad, no communication again for years, father reaches out, daughter gets hurt, father gets mad, no communication again.

As I read the story, I realized that I expected the daughter and father to reconcile, to talk, to fall into each others’ arms at the end.

But it didn’t go that way. It doesn’t always go the way we like. Sometimes people need, apparently, to not communicate with each other. I’ve been the one myself to say I need a break, I can’t do this, I need to be quiet for awhile.

Doing The Work is like laying every idea I have down about what would be MY idea of a good outcome. It is seeing who I would be without my stories. It is leaving everything I know behind. It is opening to the wide sky, the vast earth, the limitless mind.

One of my favorite recordings, that I listen to every few months, is the haunting and beautiful poetry by David Whyte. A dear friend sent this one to me again recently, so I knew it was time to hear it once more.

Communication, silence, waiting, re-connecting, silence. Who knows how it will unfold, but it is all Love in the end. All of it.

In this high place

it is as simple as this,
leave everything you know behind.

Step toward the cold surface,

pray the old prayer of rough love
and open both arms.

Those who come with empty hands

will stare into the lake astonished,
there, in the cold light
reflecting pure snow,

the true shape of your own face.

David Whyte Tilicho Lake

Much Love,

Grace

April 24, 2012

More! Less! Now!

The Tao Te Ching from 64 “…the Master takes action by letting things take their course. He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning. He has nothing, thus has nothing to lose…”

But I want “this” to be faster, bigger and more! Like my business, my bank account, my bicep muscles, my dance moves, my wedding, my children.

And I want other things to be slower, smaller and less! Like the flu, cancer, my neighbor’s noise, bills, natural disasters, problems, my journey to death.

I have found that questioning these concepts one by one, page after page of concepts I’ve written down, I find it pretty amusing the way my mind is so interested in piping up around what there should be more of and less of in my world.

Letting things take their course is revolutionary to this voice that loves to evaluate and diagnose everything it sees.

But wow, is it worth it.

One thought I had recently was that I should have more money. I chuckle to think of this thought right now….but if someone knocked on my door within the next five minutes and said “would you like some more money?” I would probably say yes. If there was no catch.

How amazing, though, to really ask myself, is it true that I want more?

I ask this in my teleclass on Money, Work and Business…and it’s an exercise I’ve heard variations on before in studying money and our beliefs about it: What do I really want more money for? I mean really? Security? Peace? Freedom? Joy? Power?

What do I want more of anything for? Or less of something for? And if I want it to be bigger or smaller than it actually is, if I’m not relaxing and letting things take their course, all I get is the Not Relaxing part.

It turns out things always take their course. I don’t get a vote.

This does not mean I have no importance, I have no influence, that all is random chaos and it’s terrible, meaningless.

In fact, when I find who I am without the thought that I need something to be MORE or something to be LESS, for anything to run a different course than it’s running, at first I catch a glimpse of excitement.

If I let myself really see who I’d be without the thought that I want more money, all afternoon, all the next day, and let my mind work with this idea, this imagination, this picture…

I see how all I really thought I wanted that money would give me is either already here, or perhaps impossible. I don’t have to go “get” it. There is no security that can be guaranteed by money, there is no peace that money brings, or freedom, or joy. I cannot keep it or pin it down. I have no control over it. Money does nothing, is nothing but a story. I can’t even keep it, if I had it I would put it out there again. It comes, it goes…it runs its own course.

What is here, is peace, joy, silence, love, security, freedom, a great hum of unknown. Just here, with me listening. Can you hear it today?

“The master has nothing, thus has nothing to lose.”

Much Love, Grace

April 23, 2012

Sneaky Little Rascally Mind

The mind can be so tricky, slippery, sneaky! That rascal!

I thought this today as I remembered Cheri Huber’s quote “you cannot be non-violent if there is any part of yourself that you are in opposition to”.

Then the thought comes in “oh boy, I have a bit of work to do still, I notice I am not perfectly THERE all the time, all self-accepting and non-oppositional”.

This sneaky little thought is actually an opposition in itself. I need to change, to adjust, to fix something. I need to be just a wee wee bit more purely non-oppositional.

How very, very strange it is for the human mind to consider having nothing to do, nothing to fix, nothing to change, nothing to say, no new way to be.

I can hear the thoughts getting nervous right now, like a hen house at night when there’s a fox creeping around. What would become of us! We’d all go to hell in a hand basket! Life would be meaningless! Nothing to do? Nothing to fix? No! Impossible!!! Cluck Cluck Cluck!!

If I stop trying to improve my business, I’ll sit around all day watching Puppetiji on youtube
If I let go of protecting myself or I don’t set good boundaries, I’ll get hurt
If I really don’t think I need to do anything, I’ll be worthless this lifetime
If I let go of all control, I won’t have a schedule to follow
If I don’t oppose my fat butt, then I’ll never exercise
If I don’t oppose the dandelions in my yard, I won’t pull them up
If I don’t feel like going to work (that boring job) then I’ll lie on the couch all day and eventually, I’ll starve to death (which is bad)
If I don’t oppose those wealthy people, they’ll take over even more and I’ll never get what I want

This effort to control things, to control yourself, takes a lot of energy. And it believes underneath it all that you can make a mistake, other people can make mistakes, and very bad things can happen unless you get a handle on yourself!!

Cheri Huber writes “Pay attention. Self-hate is slippery. It will even say things to you like, ‘you shouldn’t believe the voices of self-hate. If you are still believing them, there really IS something wrong with you!”

We believe that if we exert enough control and stay “good” people then we’ll have a good life. If we have a bad life, then we must be doing something wrong.

What if we really let go of control…even in our thinking, and found that life moves and ebbs and flows and creates without our personal control or lack of it.

What if we opposed nothing and let go?

Katie says, if you put your hand into a fire, do you have to decide to move it? No. When your hand starts to burn, it moves.

Maybe we don’t have to dictate to ourselves how we’re going to behave today, what we’re going to say or do, or plan. We will sense easily how to be, and our nature is very loving. It doesn’t want to get burned.

What if it’s possible that what lies beneath your opposition is a life force stronger than you could imagine? What if you won’t lie there like a log if you let go of all control and planning?

Katie writes in Loving What Is “people new to the Work often say to me, ‘but it would be disempowering to stop my argument with reality. If I simple accept reality, I’ll become passive. I may even lose the desire to act’. I answer them with a question: Can you really know that that’s true?

Much Love, Grace

April 21, 2012

Grateful For The Ones Who Hurt Me

Do you ever say to yourself “If it weren’t for those mean, nasty, rude, bossy, critical, judgmental, fuming, volatile, emotional, crazy people that have been in my life, I would be having a GREAT TIME here on planet earth!!!”

Have you ever noticed how this sentiment enters…sometimes in such a subtle, quiet way?

If only those people would not have hurt me, bothered me, influenced me, attacked me…I would be OK.

If only that person hadn’t cut me off in traffic, if only that store clerk had been more cheerful, if only that ticket vendor had been faster….I would be better off than I am right now.

Walt Whitman wrote “Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?

Today as I do the Work and remember the people I’ve done the Work on I become aware that these moments of great feeling, even when full of stress and sadness and anger, have been some of the most important interactions of my life.

One of my favorite poems I share with you today:

Suppose that what you fear

Could be trapped,

And held in Paris.

Then you would have

The courage to go

Everywhere in the world.

All the directions of the compass

Open to you, except the degrees east or west

Of true north

That lead to Paris.

Still, you wouldn’t dare

Put your toes

Smack dab on the city limit line.

You’re not really willing

To stand on a mountainside

Miles away.

And watch the Paris lights

Come up at night.

Just to be on the safe side,

You decide to stay completely

Out of France.

But then danger

Seems too close

Even to those boundaries

And you feel

The timid part of you

Covering the whole globe again.

You need the kind of friend

Who learns your secret and says

“See Paris first.”

—M. Truman Cooper

Suppose the greatest friends we have are the ones who have pushed us to enter Paris, helped us get there faster perhaps, didn’t even have to know our secret.

The Universe will give you exactly what you need to face your fears, to discover yourself, including all those people who were not apparently loving and kind.

Thank you grandpa, co-worker, boss from 20 years ago, dying father, eating disorder, former husband, alcohol, absence of all money, cancer, tobacco, car accident, suicide of friend, drunk friend, porn addict man, enraged man, the person who stole my luggage…..

Much Love, Grace

April 20, 2012

Never-Ending Stressful Thoughts

Doing The Work on the SAME THING over and over again,even if small, can sometimes feel discouraging.

I’ve worked with two lovely clients in the past week both of whom said: “I have looked at this over and over again, I have done The Work so many times on this same topic…..and nothing has changed!”

Some situations seem impossible. It seems like the stressful thoughts keep coming, the images, the memories, the trauma, the pain. “I have always been like this”.

I once had a Judge Your Neighbor worksheet that I had filled out on a person I was so angry with I felt like my head would explode. I almost couldn’t write what I needed or wanted, what should happen now, what shouldn’t have happened because I just wanted to scream “I hate him!”

But I had nowhere else to go. I had only me, and my painful thoughts, in the room. Drinking, smoking, eating, running, complaining, gossiping…these did not appear to work any more. If they did, I would still be doing them. I am not that spiritual and I have no control over any of it.

So I questioned every belief on that worksheet. I felt a little shift, and some insights, some little light bulbs lighting up (the size of those itty-bitty night light bulbs). But nothing BIG. Nothing dramatic or life-changing. The phone didn’t ring with the other person on the line apologizing for all their terrible mistakes, I didn’t feel happy.

But I did feel relief, and sort of empty. I didn’t know as much as I thought I knew before doing The Work.

Two weeks later I was writing the same worksheet. There were probably some of the same sentences written on it, at least it felt like it. I did the Work again. I was curious, there were some interesting moments in my thinking where I could answer the simple questions and find something different there.

Three weeks later, I was writing the same worksheet. That horrible person was at it again. I would just think of that person and feel fury! And great despair. I did the Work again. That time I felt light for a moment and went on to something else.

Then I had the privilege to be at an event with Katie herself and I raised my hand. I really needed to get to the bottom of this so I wasn’t enraged anymore. I didn’t want to think about this person for one more minute, I wanted them OUT of my mind.

“Katie, I am doing the same worksheet over and over on someone and my anger is NOT going AWAY.”

Katie said “How do you know you’re supposed to be angry? You are.”

It felt like the lid was taken off the over-blown air mattress and all the air was swishing out with a big hiss. I was aware in that moment of how I had a motive to become UN-ANGRY. I didn’t hate that person, I hated my own anger. I hated my own emotions, my own thoughts. I hated my own way of relating to this person.

I was in resistance, in WAR. I was doing The Work with the strategy of making a chess move in order to WIN and skip down the road afterwards.

Deepak Chopra says “If you try to get rid of fear and anger without knowing their meaning, they will grow stronger and return.”

I find that sitting with the most excruciating feelings and emotions; despair, rage, grief, terror….and starting to write, there is a way through the forest.

One of my most favorite spiritual teachers, Adyashanti, writes “Freedom is never freedom “from.” If it’s freedom “from” anything, it’s not freedom at all. It’s freedom “to.” Are you free enough to be afraid? Are you free enough to feel insecure? Are you free enough not to know? Are you free enough to know that you can’t know? Are you free enough to be totally comfortable, to know that you can’t know what’s around the next corner? How you will feel about it? How you will respond to it? That you literally can’t know? Are you free enough to be totally at ease and comfort with the way things actually are? That’s freedom. The other thing is the ego’s idea of freedom.”

I remember that person I did worksheets on once and I feel choked up with gratitude. That’s the kind of thing that happens with even stubborn people like me do The Work even when it seems like again and again the same topic. The War is over.

Much Love, Grace

April 19, 2012

Questioning The Pain Of Losing Someone

A wonderful friend of mine who loves to do The Work kids around about the fact that he has an old shirt that he uses as a rag to cry into when doing his inquiry. Kleenexes are just too small!

And boy, we sure needed some old shirts today to cry into during the Relationship class.

Our topic was Loss and our assignment was to imagine losing something or someone very precious to us, very important, that we couldn’t bear to lose.

Everyone really went for it: they picked their child, their sibling, their partner, their parents.

I have done this exercise and imagined my children gone.

I once met a woman when enrolled in a class who had three sons who had all been killed, and I thought to myself “how could she even be teaching this class today?” It was like in my mind, I thought she wouldn’t be able to even cope, for the rest of her life, because of that experience.

It is so powerful to find out what these painful thoughts are about losing someone, as they are the biggest, worst, most horrifying versions of what we really believe about loss.

A lighter version about loss that still leaves some people reeling, is ending a relationship. An even lighter form of loss with someone we care about is having them move to another town.

What do you believe about “losing” someone?

In our class this morning one of the beliefs we questioned was “I want her to talk to me”.

How do I react when I believe that thought? I had images flash through my mind. I remembered being so anxious to talk with a man once who I was dating that I carried my phone into the bathroom. What if he called, and I missed it? I remember being aware of the power of that thought and how I was believing it so strongly, I had no peace, no freedom.

Who are you without the thought that you want more than anything in the world for that person to talk to you?

Without the thought I come back to the present. Woman standing in a bathroom, space all around….air, ceiling, floor. Woman who can now see what is present right here in this moment. Woman no longer interested in carrying her phone with her everywhere, even to the bathroom. FREEDOM!

If my children were gone, I would live. I would know because I was alive that I had more living to do here, and they did not.

The amazing thing is that with doing The Work and becoming freer of the fear of loss, freer of the idea that I have lost important people, my life seems so full.

Amazing to live in a world where people can come and go, live and die, and I flow with what happens. I can argue with this…but I will suffer.

Eckhart Tolle writes “To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them – while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.”

Much Love, Grace

P.S. The topic and awareness of LOSS when it comes to sexuality is just as powerful. So many experiences where people feel they have lost out, are losing out, will lose out when it comes to happiness and sexuality. We may be full for the class, but email me if you want to be on the waiting list and you may be able to start with us on Friday!

April 18, 2012

If I Speak Up It Will Be Terrible!

Several months ago I had the experience of wanting to cover up a growing feeling of anxiety I had with a friend. I’ve had this experience before, I can remember it as early as age 5!

If I show someone close to me that I’m anxious about something they are doing, they’ll either attack me or attack themselves. If I say I prefer them to stop doing what they’re doing, someone will get hurt….and it could be me!

And by the way, on top of being stuck between a rock and a hard place and busy helping my friend to not do any attacking, I shouldn’t be so judgmental!

One of The Four Agreements, written by Don Miguel Ruiz, is “Be impeccable with your word”. He says this includes using your word to point in the direction of truth and love.

What I had believed most of my life was that what I say, my words to others, should be nice, kind, gentle, well-received, and leave people feeling better than they felt before.

It’s really living out the teaching “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”.

I was mixed up about what “nice” is. I thought it meant that if I had an objection, or a preference, or a request, or an observation, or I wanted something different, or even wondered about something, that this wasn’t “nice”.

I found I was in a heap-o-trouble. The unspoken word between my friend and I caused great misunderstanding and confusion.

I love completing this exercise: “If I speak up, the worst that could happen is________.”

With my children, if I speak up, they will protest, yell, resist…and I’ll get angry
With my parents, if I speak up, they will be crushed and full of despair
With my friend, if I speak up, they will feel rejected and angry and stop being my friend
With some acquaintances, if I speak up, they will spread rumors about me
With my co-worker, if I speak up, he will say mean things about me
With my partner, if I speak up, he will be sad and I will be alone

Pema Chodron says “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”

Now after doing The Work for awhile, I see my fear rise up and I know there is something important present to look at. To delay may make it bigger.

I love how once we question the terror of speaking up, doing The Work also helps us discover who we really are, what kinds of preferences we actually have, what we want or desire, what we don’t like and move away from.

True freedom is being able to speak, without rage, terror, hopelessness shutting down the voice that needs to speak. Let the voice have its say on paper, then let your voice speak what it needs to say to others, with love and truth and impeccability. No worry about the future, or what will happen next, or what happened before.

The Tao #50: …“the Master doesn’t think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day’s work”.

Much Love, Grace

P.S. This is a fabulous topic that we’ll apply to Sexuality, join us in the upcoming teleclass that starts Friday! How amazing it is to speak up when it comes to Sexuality!!