Radical Kindness

Living an “Inquiry Kind of Life”

May 7, 2012

in Byron Katie's Work, Creating Community, Inquiry, Radical Kindness

Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.    ~ Rainier Maria Rilke

I’m an impatient sort. So I’ve been living my way into answers right now. Fascinating insights.

To do this, I’ve taking a class the last six weeks that has rocked my world. Funny thing is, it’s one that I led. And it’s hard to write that without it sounding like PR. Which it definitely isn’t.

What does it mean to live in inquiry? You’d think after walking this path for the last ten years I’d have a simple answer, but this feels new, like I’m just beginning to find out. So far the world seems far kinder, simpler, and more compassionate to me. I like who I am when I actually LIVE the answers that come when I don’t believe who I am without my story.

This teleclass is one that came along after I stated publicly I was no longer going to offer teleclasses.  It’s been much like a late-life baby, but this birth was much easier, and the results have been a delightful surprise. An alchemical concoction of deep and intimate inquiry with folks from around the world, the experience has widened my world and my opened my mind.   I’m even thinking of having another baby…next fall.

We’ve been dipping into the Four Questions and the Turn-Arounds of Byron Katie each session, with a focus on how we can take our insights into the next week. At how we can live into the questions and our answers.  It has been deeply transformational for me to be to witness such radical honesty and practical wisdom at work in each of our lives.

I have the impulse to offer some quick and easy questions in blog form, some quick tips that readers can take and bake at home. But the process has been far more profound that this.

I can offer this: a testimony to the powers of “warm observation” of yours own sweet self, foibles and all. When I truly understand that I don’t have to believe everything I believe about the world or about myself, I’m free to “live into the answers” with warm curiosity. I can see for a time where I cause myself misery and what’s on the other side of that.

Tagged as: Byron Katie, Inquiry, Investigating the Mind, Questioning the mind, Radical kindness, Self-care

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Law of Distraction

March 22, 2012

in Questioning the Mind, Radical Kindness

I have nothing personal against the Law of Attraction  Except for the painful shadow it casts when it becomes your direction-finder and distracts you from what needs to be learned or done about your current reality.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s much to be said for hope and belief and positive intention.  Leaning into life’s possibilities, as a way of walking the planet, offers joy and curiosity.

But imaginative envisioning is half of an equation, and it can be a distraction to sit in wishful thinking when a lot of life perspiration and determination.  It’s really true what they told us when we were little: Almost everything that has any worth and personal value requires work, and that sense of accomplishment is its own reward.

The darkest shadow of the Law of Attraction is the way it seems to trigger the belief that if bad things happen, I must have done something wrong. I’ve worked with more than one client on that belief. People with migraines, cancer, bank foreclosures due to a health crisis. All of these real life situations are difficult enough without blaming yourself for attracting the situation. And blaming yourself is a logical step to take if you believe that you’re creating your reality.

One of my teachers (Byron Katie) once said she was less interested in attracting what she loves than she was in loving what she has. What a simple shift! It’s way kinder, too.

Lots of my clients think that loving what they have would mean they’d never do anything, change anything. Not true, in my experience.

What I’ve found is that all it means is that I’m not distracted by my mind. When I’m at peace with the life I have, I’m free to move to change it with an open mind and a clear heart. From fullness, I welcome more. If I’m ill, I find the bed I’m in perfect in the moment. I don’t make myself sicker by making it my fault. If I lose my job, I can find an opening from which to do what is next to do. I’m not caught up in blaming them or (worse) myself for reality. I’m light on my feet and open to the next chapter. I do the next thing. And reality shows me what it is. There is great kindness in this simplicity.

Tagged as: Byron Katie, Crafting clarity from chaos, Investigating the Mind, Radical kindness

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A Personal Prescription for Happiness

March 5, 2012Getting Unstuck

I love a good fight. Whether I’m “fighting traffic, fighting the Battle of the Bulge, or having a disagreement (aka “fight”) with my husband, I know that somewhere in there is my “prescription for happiness,” as Byron Katie describes what happens when you turn a painful belief around and discover what’s there that you might have been missing.

He should be more sensitive? Once I can really see how that deep belief causes suffering in my life, really close-up and personal, the little slights and unkindness it creates, I’m more than ready to let go.

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Emotional Weather Front

March 2, 2012Inquiry

There’s an old saying here in Oregon. “The only people to predict the weather are fools and newcomers.” Guilty on the first count. It’s March 1st, and I had planned to wake up to warm spring breezes and beds of daffodils swaying. Instead I get this blanket of pure white beauty tucked softly over the hills. Lovely. But hardly what I planned. Fooled again.

The last couple of days the weather has brought other surprises. Sleet. Heavy winds. Chilling to the bones. I didn’t like that surprise. But one thing that Oregon has taught me is not to take the weather personally.

I’m noticing the same thing about feelings. We humans have these pesky emotions that seem to come through just like weather fronts. When we don’t take them personally, each one of them leaves a particular gift or shows us something we need to see. And then it moves on.

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It’s the Glue

February 23, 2012Byron Katie's Work

I recently heard of a Tibetan Rinpoche who said “it’s not the thought. It’s the glue.” Body and mind shouted, YES!

I’ve spent a whole lot of time in the last seven years looking for THE thought that would bring freedom, finding thought after thought that opened the doors of truth. Painful beliefs have a way (only always) of not being true.

But, dang it, some of those doors are pretty determined to slam shut again. It’s as if there is a very viscous and sticky substance that allows them to open just enough to get a peek of possibility, but then pulls them closed. So I’ve been getting curious about that glue, poking a stick in it and then pulling it out and seeing what happens, as I sit in my own inquiry.

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Subtracting Insult from Injury

February 5, 2012Byron Katie's Work

Instead of adding insult to injury, I’ve been learning to subtract. Three weeks ago I broke my collarbone in the middle of the night on Day 2 of a long-anticipated tropical vacation with my husband. I slid on some slippery Mexican tile and catapulted down three steps to land on my collar bone. At three a.m. on a Sunday morning. The story of How I Spent My Vacation starts with that event, with riding a ferry from the island to a hospital and harnessing myself into a splint for the next two weeks.

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Dipping Deeply Into the New Year

January 3, 2012Coming Home
Honey dripping from a dipper

It’s pretty darned hard to miss the flashing ads and headlines that remind me, and all of us, that this is the time for resolve, discipline, will power. My own natural desire to get more in touch with my healthy body through diet and exercise at this time of year always finds plenty of support from the culture around me. I don’t mind riding that wave. But anybody at my gym will tell you that the new spurt of activity lasts about six weeks.

What makes it stick is when I dip deeply to discover what’s been in the way of change. I’ve discovered for myself that any resolutions for the new year just don’t take unless I spend some time thinking about where I’ve been, getting my bearings for what’s ahead.

Because the unquestioned past seems to have a way of becoming in the future.

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Not Forgetting

July 28, 2011Getting Unstuck

This poem has been on the marquee in my town for a long time. A wonderful mantra. I’m so glad it’s there. Because it’s so easy to forget. Remembering. That’s the trick.

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Building a Kinder World

July 26, 2011Getting Unstuck
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There’s a line in the recent Sherlock Holmes movie that grabbed my attention.

“Give me some evidence, Holmes. With a little mud I can build bricks and from there I can build a case.”

I’m struck by how often we use the evidence we have to wall us into a world view that isn’t kind to us or the people around us. Someone cuts us off in traffic and we take it personally. Our kids are acting out. Proof we’re a bad parent. And so it can go, if we believe our case that we’re failing or not measuring up, somehow.

What I’ve been discovering as I work with my own mind and assist others in inquiry is that there’s another choice.

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Shifting the Lens

May 17, 2011Getting Unstuck

There’s a color commentator in my head who spins me this way and that with a play-by-play of how I’m operating in the world. I call her Ethel. Ethel touts all the stats she remembers from the past and predicts the future.

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Baja: A Whale’s Eye View

March 28, 2011Creating Community
Whale's Eye

I just arrived home from a pilgrimage to the birthing lagoon of the gray whale in Baja. I had heard rumors about mother whales there who introduce their calves to humans, much as we take our offspring to meet other species. This image had lived in my imagination for several years, increasing its ranking in my bucket list. But my watery imaginings didn’t begin to match the experience of being in their presence—the power of a whale’s eye view.

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“Exploding Head” Remedy

March 2, 2011Confusion to Clarity

Last week I co-hosted a cross cultural dialogue with Balinese visiting San Francisco. The focus was on Tri Hita Karuna, the ancient principle of balancing relationships with community, spirit, and nature. When I asked a beautiful Balinese singer to share. she said,

“All this talking and talking makes our heads explode.”

Then she led a long, lovely chant. A sense of connection with each other, with the world, with spirit, saturated the room. We were singing our world back in balance.

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The Space Inside Stuckness

January 31, 2011Coming Home
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Sometimes I find myself slipping into an old robotic pattern, a certain contracted stuckness. This trance-like state of being shows up in different ways: reading late into the night and awakening tired, heading to the snack cupboard instead of going on a walk. Leaving a little late for an appointment and then rushing to get there, forgetting my goal of staying present in my life. As if this added drama gives me a life of purpose. I slip into a way of moving through my life as if I’m wearing blinders. There’s very little space for different choices. After all, that would upset the robot with blinders.

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Help Me to Believe the Truth about Myself, No Matter How Beautiful It Is

January 21, 2011Aging with Grace
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This is the prayer we used to close my woman’s circle for the past 11 years. I had learned from the Sufis, but it was written by Marina Widerhehr. Last week was the group’s last circle. We shared “popcorn shapshots,” images of the precious and not-so-precious moments that have united us: the weddings, funerals, illnesses. The laughter and tears.

Since then I’ve noticed my own popcorn images: photos of me in the full bloom of my twenties and thirties. In the radiance of my forties and fifties. I noticed that only when I look at the snapshots from this distance am I able to see the beauty that I was. When I was younger my mind was way to full of the mosquito beliefs brought to me by my inner spin doctor. You’re too fat. Your eyes are too close together. Teeth too big. In a nutshell, There’s something wrong with me.

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Reflections after a Dead Puppy Christmas

January 9, 2011Coming Home

Every year at this time I ask myself the question. “Now where was I?” It’s as if I left “my life” for somebody else’s. Which just might be true, at one level. Always the holidays are full to overflowing with the unexpected. This year my daughter brought home puppies from a rescue mission that had gone awry and we set up an emergency vet clinic here, where we nursed and held half-pound infants, trying desperately to save them from the ravages of Parvo. Only one of 15 made it, and it was happily delivered on Christmas eve. In the middle of all this sadness, carols, games with friends, and the Beatles on Wii were islands of laughter.

Which brings up the big savior: dark humor. I’ve lived long enough to keep in mind the story in family history WHILE going through the tough stuff. This will be the Christmas of the Dead Puppies, and we will laugh. Soon.

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“The Sun in Drag” on a Rainy Day

November 12, 2010Lessons of the Seasons

As the rains set in here those of us who live in the Willamette valley know that we’re in for a long haul of (mostly) soggy weather. Unless I forget what I love about it, I begin to fight with this reality. For some time I’ve kept a list to remind me of the subtle beauties of the coming season. A partial list: subtle mists on the hills, rhythms on my roof, quiet time to dream, cozy evenings tucked in warm flannel.

When I forget these “favorite things,” there’s always poetry. One of my favorites for the season is from Hafiz, a 14th Century Persian poet. He reminds me of the source of sun, lest I forget. We’re all just the sun in drag.

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Tolerating Peace

November 2, 2010Getting Unstuck

I’m learning to tolerate peace. I’m shocked as I see myself writing that, which takes me right out of peace. You see, my identity is so wrapped up in being a Peacemaker that it’s a Giant Step to admit that peace very often in my inner life has often been missing.

I’ve been a Peacenik my entire adult life. My credentials are impeccable. I became an anti-war activist when I discovered the realities of the Vietnam war. I organized an anti-nuke installation using little tree-farming cones to demonstrate insane levels of nuclear warheads in the early 80′s.

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My Life as a Sea Anemone

September 30, 2010Confusion to Clarity
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Sea anemones are among my favorite sea creatures. Fortunately Disney’s crew didn’t make them into a character in Little Mermaid. It would be a grave injustice, They don’t like the press.

They’re lovely just as they are, in their shy beauty. Colorful, vibrant. Content to stay in one place and ingest new nutrients. They stay perched and open and lovely until their space is invaded, and then a quick poke sends them into contraction and protection.

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When the Outside Messes with the Inside

September 13, 2010Confusion to Clarity

I was just so proud of myself a month or two ago. I was fairly convinced that I’d figured out the major puzzles of my life. Or at least one major puzzle, the tendency to put stuff in my mouth when I wasn’t hungry.
I honestly believed that attending Geneen Roth’s residential retreat and living the Women Food & God Way had brought such a bolt of enlightenment that I would never eat compulsively again.
That was before I started moving everything out of half of my house for a long-anticipated remodel. Before I began traveling and celebrating the freedom of summer. Before I started working on a book project, or at least before I experienced my favorite procrastination technique.

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Returning Home to My Wise Body

September 9, 2010Radical Kindness

I just spent more than a week at the Oregon coast, a place I usually feel instantly at home. Being on the ocean simply returns me to source. It’s a short cut for me.

So when I decided to go there to get started on a book I’ve been wanting to write, I expected a vacation. It was a vacation, all right. I vacated my body and moved right into my head. The mental work of framing my ideas and beginning such a large project had me set up housekeeping in the world of the mind, which happens to be what I was writing about. I got a good start on the book, but I’ve had a series of headaches from the mental strain. Not an accident, I think.

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