Thursday: May 4, Chapter 3: Clarity in Thinking, Three Kinds of Business

CLARITY IN THINKING: MY BUSINESS/ YOUR BUSINESS
Another fun person on this planet Earth, is a gal who goes by the name of Byron Katie. She is one of those amazing souls who suffered, suffered, suffered, ten years of depression, alcoholism, obesity, raging, chain smoking and so on. Then, in a depressed funk, lying on the floor of a half-way house, feeling unworthy of lying even on a bed, she “woke up.” Being from Barstow, and of no spiritual background, she just “woke up” to a clarity of the wonder of life without the burden of her thoughts about life.

We’ll go into this more as we go. For now, one concept she came up with to help herself stay clear was this. There are three (three!) kinds of business in this world: my business, your business and God’s business.

God’s business is the Earthquakes and that sort of thing.

Your business is what you think, feel and do.

My business is what I think, feel, and do. And sense.

So, someone I live with comes into the house and gives me a glaring look. Hmm. In the world of patterns and habits I can think, something is wrong with me. Or that something is wrong with them. From a clarity of thinking perspective, this glaring look is that person’s business. If I choose to let it bother me, my business. The clarity of thinking obviously helps my clarity of emotion and peace of mind, but the first step is just, as Katie says, “getting the bodies straight.” The person giving the glaring look is over there. I’m here. The glaring look, their business. How I respond to it: my business.

Someone doesn’t call me back. Their business. I get “upset” by this. My business. I take it personally, my business. I wonder what’s up, my business. I complain to another person about this, my business. I don’t call again, my business. I do call again, my business. Now we are into action, too, but the clarity is what is happening here. The other person did or didn’t do such and such. Their business. I do or don’t do such and such. My business.

Children love this. Your Mom is angry, whose business is it? They love realizing that this is Mom’s deal, that they don’t have to think it’s their business. They get upset about Mom’s anger, whose business? Theirs. They like having this distinction, this freedom.

This begins to make life a lot easier, when other people’s stuff goes back to be other people’s stuff. Even the past, crappy parents and whatnot. Whose business was it that they were crappy parents? Theirs. Now, we might have picked up habitual responses to their behavior, and that’s what the work of getting free is partly about, but when we come back to our own business, we see that only one person has the business of getting us free from the responses and habits we created around their nonsense.

And that one person is just us. Simple, sweet and clear.