Tag: ten barriers

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Exclude nothing, welcome it. The astonishing practice of The Work.

Have you ever experienced the feeling like you know The Work of Byron Katie is transformative, you’ve tried it, you’ve done it, you’ve been in workshops on The Work, you’ve sat with Katie in person, you’ve even gone to The School for The Work….

….and yet, something isn’t jarring loose? Something keeps on keepin’ on, it keeps repeating itself, you keep feeling bad about the same thing, you don’t really get how to address your particular relationship(s) or issue?

It can’t be so simple, can it? You can’t just “question your thinking” and change your life, can you?

Yet we’re drawn, constantly, to inquire once we’ve been bit by the bug of the power of self-inquiry. To wonder about if what we’re thinking is actually true is amazing!

What if everything I’ve ever been terrified of isn’t actually true?

Wow. Exciting.

But even though I’ve known and deeply experienced and been fundamentally changed and impressed by The Work, I haven’t always felt the power of it.

I know how to do The Work, but….(we have our reasons we don’t do it, or we think it won’t work….)

The grooves and habits we’re in are perhaps deep, and practiced for many years (since childhood)!

Over the past ten years I’ve worked on my own thoughts about the following topics, and worked with so many people who were suffering about the very same situations.

  • Doing The Work on someone who really angers you, where you felt resentment or even rage for being betrayed, ignored, hurt.
  • Doing The Work on money, or loss of your job, or feeling anxious about your survival because of the volatility of money or your career.
  • Doing The Work on addictions, like going to the fridge for more, more, more when you’re clearly not hungry, or drinking to where you don’t remember what you said, or smoking cigarettes when you thought you already quit.
  • Doing The Work on love, sexuality, couples, marriage or divorce
  • Doing The Work on getting cancer, hurting yourself physically, aging, or not being attractive enough.
  • Doing The Work on the pain of being alive, on mother, father, sister, brother….on everything we learned or experienced when we were tiny things.

If you wonder about hitches or blocks about doing The Work, like thinking it’s not as big a deal as it seems, or it’s just not so light and easy, you may enjoy listening to the live immersion webinar today.

Come join me for an investigation of what typically blocks us when it comes to this profound and transformational self-inquiry.

We start today, Tuesday, August 22nd at 8:30 am PT: Ten Barriers to The Work and How To Dissolve Them. (2 hours) Click HERE to register. Bring a pen and paper.

At the very end, and I mean truly after 90 minutes of only focusing on barriers to The Work and wonderful exercises to help crack them….I’ll talk about Year of Inquiry for those interested in the one year program starting soon (live calls start the week of Sept 15).

But if you aren’t drawn or can’t attend this live webinar….don’t worry.

I’m here with you in The Work. No one needs a webinar to do The Work. The Work is something you can do, free of charge, by answering four questions and finding turnarounds.

All you need to do is identify one particularly stressful thought today. Write it down.

Then hold it up against the four questions. Keep repeating it over again, as you wonder about every question, and every answer. Then find your turnarounds….all the opposites to your stressful belief.

If you have a special and particularly difficult stressful thought, hit reply and let me know what it is and if you’ve worked it before. I’ll write about it in a Grace Note soon.

“When the mind begins inquiry as a practice, it learns as a student of itself that everything is for it. Everything adds to it, enlightens it, nourishes it, reveals it. Nothing is or ever was against it. This is a mind that has grown beyond opposites. It’s no longer split. It keeps opening, because it’s living out of a fearless, undefended state, and it’s eager for knowledge. It realizes that it’s everything, so it learns to exclude nothing, to welcome it all.” ~ Byron Katie in A Mind At Home With Itself

Let’s do The Work. Because nothing could be so wonderful as to not be against what happens.

Much love,

Grace

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It can’t be gained by interfering (+ Friday Immersion Webinar + BWBK)

Tomorrow: FIRST FRIDAY open free inquiry jam for everyone and anyone. 7:45 – 9:00 am Pacific Time. Join HERE. You’ll see your options for connection when you visit this link about 20 minutes before the session begins.

Then….also tomorrow, Friday July 7th from Noon-1:30 pm PT one of my favorite courses to offer: Ten Barriers To ‘Getting’ The Work, And How To Dissolve Them. A little different every time, and I will record it for all of you who can’t attend. To attend join me HERE. At the very end I’ll share and answer your questions about the Year of Inquiry, which is now accepting registrations for fall.

And if this wasn’t enough for our hungry inquiring minds, I absolutely loved the Opening Day to Summer Camp For The Mind yesterday morning. Tonight is the second option, Thursday Opening Day Summer Camp 7/6 at 5:30 pm. Three hours of a little mini-retreat for you virtually. This is audio only, you listen and write and listen and write and share if you’re drawn to give feedback or comment….or if you’re bravely up for doing The Work out loud.

I get amazed at how 3 hours goes by so fast. Such great questions from everyone, even from the very first steps of filling out the Judge Your Neighbor worksheet.

Sometimes at the very beginning of a mini-retreat, or stepping into a session of The Work, we have a few stressful thoughts. One of them can be….where do I even begin when it comes to The Work?

There’s so much to worry about, right?

Look at this list!

Kids, money, job, car, house, tasks, reading, gaining knowledge, creating, taxes, diet, cooking, laundry, vacuuming, aging parents, schooling, success, disease, disappointment, terror.

Yesterday, I had people start with a little quiet, to write in a short list what they felt most disturbed by in their lives. Not too long a list, not too short.

You do hopefully just the right amount of writing to open the door to what wants to be investigated, for you.

Maybe you write down the names of people who bug you. Or who you don’t feel forgiving towards. Or who you feel hurt you. Or other issues you’re bothered by in your life–like your body, a sickness, an unpleasant surprise.

Here’s a key that’s really helped me over time to get into my inner world and my own work: It almost doesn’t even matter what our situations are. The FEELINGS are the important key.

I feel bad about…..

I feel troubled about….

I feel sad, worried, angry, scared, furious about….

Anything uncomfortable is a moment worthy of inquiry. Either lightly disappointing, or absolutely terrifying.

Your feelings are the brilliant compass, or the fog horn, that tells you something’s up. Something needs your attention.

I didn’t used to feel this way, truth be told.

If I was uncomfortable, my first order of business internally was to figure out when I could get to safety, how I could distract or change my feeling, how to fix the situation, and how to feel better ASAP.

Look directly at the feelings and the situation?

No thanks. 

I never realized I could question my assumptions. Like, the biggest one being that the situation is an actual problem.

I always just assumed it was. Of course it’s a problem! I’m upset! That proves it is worthy of upseted-ness!

Ahhhh, my little grasshopper, says the wise part of ourselves from somewhere perhaps distant, or over the horizon….’Are you sure that if you feel uncomfortable or troubled, you have a problem?’

I was already out the door, knowing I had a problem on my hands. I was already eating something, or gossiping, or planning which movie I’d be going to, or smoking–because, I needed to take the edge off the feelings. FAST.

It was an emergency, after all.

That’s what feeling strongly felt like.

I had a core underlying belief (which is one of the ten barriers I’ll talk about in the webinar Friday by the way that sometimes blocked my inquiry): Do Not Feel.

It hurts. Don’t do it.

How do you react when you believe feeling in a big way is bad, difficult, to be avoided, terrifying?

I spend huge amounts of energy trying to have a great poker face. Even on the inside. I personally developed wild eating behaviors, called disordered eating (no kidding) because of believing I must never be angry or afraid.

So who would you be without this very stressful belief that feeling big feelings is bad?

Wait. You mean….Huh?

But it IS bad. I hate seeing grown people go on a rampage, or act rude, or cry in public, or start yelling. It’s so….scary! I don’t like it when kids do it, come to think of it!

What if you didn’t know it was scary though? What if it was like the weather….sometimes cold, sometimes hot, sometimes stormy, sometimes wild, sometimes very still, sometimes wet, sometimes windy?

And yes, sometimes weather is a bit frightening. Although, I must admit, the more I’ve gotten comfortable with my feelings, the more willing I am to be in any kind of weather, without severe disturbance. I’m not chasing tornadoes, I’m not even thinking of them. There aren’t any in my neighborhood.

Who would you really be, without your belief that feelings need to be shut down, avoided, crushed, obliterated, cut off, controlled?

I’d feel them.

They’d course through me, sometimes with huge heart-breaking waves, or fist-gripping punches.

Then they’d fade away.

I remember Eckhart Tolle speaking once about big feelings, as he watched two swans attack each other, fight, and then move away from each other. He noticed they both shook and shook, as they glided in opposite directions, as if the fighting was spasming through them and out of them. Then their bodies settled down and relaxed.

Maybe it could be the same for us.

Turning the thought around: It’s safe to have big feelings. It’s dangerous to NOT have them, or to suppress them. It’s good to feel.

How could this be truer?

Oh so easy for me to find, now.

It allows me to address the upset directly, to wonder what’s disturbing me, to explore the inner landscape, to be a part of the human race–someone with reactions and perceptions and a mind worthy of listening to and questioning.

My feelings were what saved my life–they were so distraught and getting so twisted up inside, I had to disconnect from the “normal” path, and get help. They brought me to inquiry.

Becoming more open and familiar and loving towards my own feelings made me someone who could sit with other people having their feelings, and not be afraid. I don’t even have to know what to say, or do. I can just be there.

“It is what you’re believing that is the cause of those feelings and emotions. It’s so important to get in touch with how you react when you think this thought. All of the sudden you have a gifting of emotions to wake you up.” ~ Byron Katie

Even if you’re not sure what you’re believing that led to your troubled feelings, you know at least you’re thinking something. Remembering something. Worried about something.

The feeling is the clue. And with The Work, you can discover what’s behind the curtain–that stressful belief, waiting to be investigated.

Join me tonight for Opening Day, and if you want to come on board the Peace Train, to find peace towards your feelings and your thinking….Summer Camp for The Mind is a great place to share inquiry. Find out all about it HERE). We meet for our shorter 90 minute sessions every week day from July 12 – August 18.

“True mastery can be gained
by letting things go their own way.
It can’t be gained by interfering.”

~ Tao Te Ching #48

This includes feelings running through the body. Letting them go their own way. Not fighting them, the way I did all the time.

Instead of interfering with force…..try The Work.

Much love,

Grace

P.S. I am so excited my hands are clapping because Saturday is Being With Byron Katie. Instead of a webinar or telesession, we’re gathering in person together to watch Katie for 4 days (or however long you can join us) to be in silence and The Work and watch the retreat via streaming. Still room for 2 more, just hit reply if you want to come. Amazing group of people. I can’t wait! If you are dying to attend and you can only do it with financial help, please let me know. Find out more or sign up right HERE.