95: What others do, and our reaction to “it” another way around: 3 kinds of business

What others do, and our reaction to “it” another way around: 3 kinds of business

What brains do best is learn. They learn by making distinctions, noticing differences, being aware of ways that reality is not the same, ways that this apple tastes different than that pear, or this book makes us feel different than that movie, or this person enriches our life and that person not so much.

The Byron Katie work takes advantage of this, this using of the mind to heal our lives by inquiring into our own thinking, and to undermine the mind’s tendency to drive us into bad and unhappy and often even miserable feelings.

We’ve seen how the four questions is using the mind to ask and search instead of just being a victim to the average and often very unsatisfactory ways of thinking about and reacting to things.

Byron Katie helps get question three clear by sometimes making these distinctions: my business, your business, God’s business.

Earthquakes and big storms: God’s business.

Other people do what they do. Say what they say. Feel how they feel. Their business.

We react to this. Our business, our reaction,

We have ideas and thoughts and rules and opinions about what they do or say. These ideas and thoughts and rules and opinions and the consequent unpleasant feelings: this is our business.

What they do or say is What Is. It’s what they do or say.

But, when we really, really think they “shouldn’t” then we go inside ourselves and have the kind of reactions that question three helps us get clear.

Think about this.

A lot.


Someone does something.

That’s just What Is. It’s their business. Their path. Their life.



And when we make it our business to think it should be different, we have the list of consequences we get when we write our list for question three.

They act.

We react as a victim or a counter-attacker. We suffer.

And is that to say, we SHOULDN’T feel bad?

Nah, we can feel all we want, but once we stop believing our reactions, we can start to see the pain and confusion that the other person is almost surely suffering. Then we can feel for them, instead of just getting defensive.

By staying in our own business, we might actually be able to be of use to the formerly aggravation / infuriating “other.”

So enjoy your day and see when any and all unhappiness derives from being in someone else’s business and discover if coming back to your own business brings relief and happiness.

Day Twenty-Two: Be of Good Cheer

TWENTY-TWO: BE OF GOOD CHEER
The present is always here

The present is always here. Today’s game is to be present, as is the game of every day. To be present in your body, noticing both arms and both legs and spine and breathing.

And to be of good cheer.

Walking in and out of your house, sense your arms and legs and spine. Notice your breathing. Be of good cheer.

Talking to people, even people we give the story of "troublesome," or "awful," (and of course, what's the turn around there?) be of good cheer.

Driving a car, walking, riding a bicycle: be of good cheer.

Making your food: be of good cheer.


Hint: slowing down, being present, not falling into the rushing to the next thing way of being, this will immensely help this game.

The game, even as you read this: be present in your sensing, and

Be of Good Cheer.

Now, now, now.

That’s the goal.

And what happens when we “fail,” and get in a grumpy mood. Well, to hell with the whole project, right? We suck, life sucks, this is too much positive thinking crap, doesn’t the writer know about mean ex-mates, and financial troubles and health problems, to say nothing of global warming and slavery and abuse of women and pesticides and all the other “bad stuff.”

Well, actually, the writer rides a bicycle, and borrows rather than owns a car, and tries to grow or buy local most of his food, and still: the game today is to be of good cheer.


And so when we find that we’ve “messed up,” which is to say, “forgotten ourselves,” and have drifted out of good cheer, so what? The world isn’t over. We get an A+ for just playing this game, so why not be of good cheer about forgetting and remembering again. What a miracle to remember the present.