999: Soul Work

At a local Austin gathering, once a month people tell stories around a theme.
This is the first and hence, only, story telling evening I've attended but the
use of a catch all theme
reminds me of Sun Magazine's amazing section
called Readers Write.

In Readers Write topics like
Late at Night,
Second Chances,
Mothers,
the Beach
Blood,
the Office
Teenagers
Sunrise,
Close calls,
Taking Chances
and many more, bring an amazing array of responses from all over the world.

Sun magazine is worth subscribing to.
Zero advertisements.
Great photos.
And Readers Write.

And in Austin, talkers talk. They tell stories.
This month the theme was emptiness.

People came at it in all different directions,
usually some variety of finally giving up:

giving up and actually doing the 12 steps
giving up the image you were trying to hold up for your family
giving up the myth that "this love" will solve it all

The stories, coming from real people and their real lives,
all showed us all in the audience parts of ourselves that we might
not have publicly displayed as the brave story tellers did.

And there was emptiness, the theme, being danced around,
a tiptoed up next to,
but to my mind, never given the gold prize of freedom
it deserves.

Many of the essays in this blog have extolled the virtues of the Byron Katie work,
and some of the essays have shown how the 3rd question:
How do you react/ feel and live when you attach to the thought
and
the 4th:
Who or what would you be without the thought,

are
One: a crash course in Buddhism
Two: a brilliant use of the brain's major function: perceiving differences,
to get us out of the hell of our beliefs
Three: a chance to experience emptiness as ....

freedom,
bliss,
happiness
peace
peace that passes all understanding

you can't really name it,
but we can all feel it, one
belief/ story/ thought/ concept at a time.

Let's say you had a "bad Dad."
who:
Hit you. Yelled at you. Criticized you.
They come in different styles.

And you felt, and maybe still feel, "hurt, angry, cheated, defeated"
whatever when you attach to the story: My Dad should have been nice to me.

And then you look at your Dad without that thought,
without any thought of who or how he should be.

And what happens.

You are empty.

He is still a jerk/ asshole/ mean / whatever,
but what happens to you from the inner silence
of no thoughts to be saying he should be any different.

This is all we need to become free inside.

The present that spills out like an ocean
once the words we use in our head to define and shrink the world cease.

A thought here:  "a shrink" could be a stupid word for someone who tries
to expand our lives,
and then again,
if we shrink our belief  demand of the world down to nothing,
and are free,
then what.

Try it.
Find something bothering you,
and live without any words and thoughts about it.

See what happens from that emptiness.

You might discover who you really are.

(More soul thoughts over at Waking108.blogspot.com  )