the purpose of "bad days"

suffering is either an addictive junk food,
or a very precise kick in the rear:

wake up, suffering says,
you are fighting Reality

looking around at What Is
look inside at your demand/ complaint/ whine/ judgment

see the difference

feel the suffering?

try this:
stand over here
stand in your belief
really, really believe reality should be, or should have been different
write down a big fat list of how
that makes you feel
in emotions
in body
in actions
in breathing
in being present

now,
move
stand over here,
a new place
and see what it's like
without the story
about how reality should be different
no story it should be what it
is
no story it shouldn't be what it is

just observe, taste, experience
reality

how is that

and if suffering gets you to compare the two
stand in the two places

it did a good job
for you
didn't it?


have a happy fourth
i'll be travelling all that day,
ferry from Orcas to Annacortes
shuttle from Annacortes to Seattle
plane from Seattle to Austin

this is good

Okay now: the importance of love, part 2

Sorry about pictures. blogger won't let me pull them up.

and oh, well.

loving what is, is a big big wonderful ball of liberation.

What does love have to do with anything?

Without it: we are in war with What Is.

With it: we can enjoy what is in front of us.

We can smile when someone gives us a hard time.

We can feel someone's pain, and not feel that we have to be in pain.
We can sit back and feel that person, if we do the Anat Baniel Work,
feel the nervous system, feel the breathing and bones and organization,
and help that person feel more alive, free, happy, at ease,

breathing better,
feeling more present
feeling free to do and be in new ways.

Options to be ourself:

this is what loving ourselves provides.

Options to be yourself:

this is what loving you brings.

And if love goes back and forth:

learning and growing
and
becoming.

Good for us all
if we can hang out in the world of
Now
and
Loving
What Is.

What do you think?
Questions and ideas, gladly received.

Chris

Day Seventeen: The Work of Byron Katie, Question #1

A sort of “death” needs to take place to achieve real happiness and emotional freedom. The Byron Katie work offers simple, though life and heart changing, tools to achieve this. Today the first question: IS IT TRUE?

Other people sometimes drive us crazy. Sometimes we drive ourselves crazy. Sometimes the world seems “awful,” “unfair,” or just plain “too hard.”

Good. All this unhappiness is Reality’s gift to us.

And a grand incentive to learn and master this path of undoing emotional suffering and bondage: the Work of Byron Kaite.


The work of Byron Katie leads us back to the one person who can make us happy or unhappy--- ourselves. It does this by suggesting that we:

Judge our neighbor.

Write it down.

Ask four questions.

Turn it around.


Today’s work/ game / play/ learning is this: notice all our thoughts that are of the ilk, “So and so should be different.” Write these –in one sentence form -- down on paper. Cut to the chase: puteither a should or a shouldn’t in the sentence. Like “X should be nicer to me.” “Z shouldn’t be so angry at me.” “T shouldn’t ignore me.” “My Mother/ Father/ Brother sister should have…”

Write them down. This is judging. This is writing it down.

And ask the first question after you write it down: Is it true?

Don’t get too fancy, and work at opening your heart and mind to this distinction: true vs. an opinion. If I hold out a rock and let it go, my opinion makes no difference in the truth of gravity. If I have the opinion that X should be nicer to me, that is not the same kind of truth. It’s what I want. Other people might agree. Agree that I am “right,” and X is “wrong.” Oh, well. Their agreement or disagreement, though the source of much gossip and social backbiting, doesn’t make my opinion true.

Spend the day noticing your thoughts that want others to be different, write down the should/ shouldn’t sentences about these “wrong” people, and then begin to come to freedom by asking, Is it true?

This work can be “gotten” from the Website: thework.com, and from Katie’s books, all of which are wonderful on CD listening form. Find the books and CD’s also at her site.

day 103 , emotions as actions, so let's move toward free

this picture is New Year's Day, a bunch of us nuts went in the lake for about 20 seconds

Emotional freedom

Let’s play with options.

Let’s play with feelings.

Take someone you still aren’t that crazy about. Find some things “wrong” with them.

Imagine doing the Work, the four questions, the turn around. Maybe even do the Work.

But here’s the deal: play with your feelings toward them.

Try out anger, and fear, and amusement, and enjoyment, and curiosity, and love, and distain, and admiration, and respect, and scorn, and loathing, and being charmed by them.

Give yourself emotional elbow room.

You aren’t a robot, but people often have such stuck reactions to people.

Be free.

Be complicated.

Enjoy your options of feelings for lots of people today.

Be angry but do not sin

THREE: EMOTIONAL WAKING UP
Be angry but do not sin.

This is from the Bible, which I don’t read, except sporadically, but when I’m visiting Gunnison, Colorado, I go to the church of my host, my old high school buddy, Mark Ritter. And in one of the reading today, from Ephesians 2:26, was this bit of pleasant and useful wisdom:

BE ANGRY, BUT DO NOT SIN. DO NOT LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOUR ANGER.


What does this mean?

Somehow this invites us to be real, since human beings all get angry, and to distinguish between having and feeling and even being a little or a lot shaken up by our anger and acting it out.

Distinctions.

That’s the basis of upgrading ourselves, via learning, via the brain, via making real connections: learning differences that make a difference.

Be angry: feel it.

Do not sin: don’t punch another, swear at another, use the “tone” on another. Don’t even gossip behind the other’s back.

Just be angry, and if you want, find our where that really came from. And guess what: not expressing it and acting it out, keeping it inside ourselves gives a hugely better chance that we’ll wise up and discover what is really bothering us


Later the Work of Byron Katie will be offered as part of our 108 days feast of opening to an aware and happy and useful life.

For now though, today’s work, part one, is the feel our anger and annoyance, and not act it out. Even in our heads, even the going over and over and over about how wrong/ bad/ stupid/ inconsiderate/ etc. the other was.

Just feel the burning.


BE ANGRY BUT DO NOT SIN.
It could mean being curious about what is bothering that other person.

It could mean simply (simply!) coming back to the present of sensing arms and legs and spine and breathing and feeling / sensing what the anger “does” to us physically. (The quotes are to imply, we could more honest say: “What we do to ourselves by believing the thoughts that make us angry.” More on thoughts and anger/ upset/ emotional pain when we come to the work of Byron Katie).

For now: don’t be too good. Admit, feel, taste our own anger.

Be wise and don’t act on the anger.


And the second part of today’s awareness and waking and transformation project:

DO NOT LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOUR ANGER.

If you live with someone, before you go to sleep, get clear with them so you don’t even have the anger any more.

How to do that?

Lots of ways. We’ll start with this: ask, without demanding, for what you want. “I wish you’d talk in a nicer tone of voice to me.” “I wish you’d spend more time with me.”

No complaining.


No attacking.
No demanding. (The difference between request and demand is huge in a relationship and will be the game/ exercise all on it’s own some day down the line.)

Just ask.

Think about this, and practice ending your day clear and no longer angry today.


This is a big lesson: first, to distinguish between anger and not acting on it, and two: to let the angry rest before you get into bed and sleep. There are certain religious communities that set out to be truly Christian, not just word Christian, and this is one of their main practices: to clear up all anger toward anyone else in the community before they go to sleep at night.