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What my Kewpie Sisters Taught Me About The Mojo of Jomo

in Approval, Body or Aging, Identity, Noticing, Power of Connection, Remembering, Surrendering

220px German Kewpie With Heart Sticker

I just spent the weekend in the Kansas City celebrating a landmark birthday (one with a zero in it), along with a dozen other women who are exactly my age. Hint: we’re all from the first wave of Baby Boomers. Okay. Seventy. We call ourselves the Kewpie Sisters. Because that is what we are, alumnae of Hickman High School, home of the Fighting Kewpies. For real. Would I make this up?

We gathered smack dab in the middle of the flyover zone. The group of women who came together was as diverse as this country, held by a common bond of caring that is far stronger than “the great divide” we keep hearing about. But we didn’t have time to talk about that. We had better things to talk about.

Mostly we laughed and shared our common memory banks to reconstitute teenage versions of ourselves. Then we reflected back, mining the experience and offering up the perspective that we have collected in the last 50-plus years. What showed up was something I believe is called Wisdom in some people’s minds, including my own. At this time of life, it’s indescribably satisfying to be able to share the take-aways from life’s apparent setbacks and challenges. And I always love honoring my curiosity about what I don’t know (which, when it includes the mystery of life, is a whole lot).

Gone were the social roles, the need for acceptance that seems to come with the teen years. My own strategy way back when was to join every activity and choir and group available except women’s sports, and I’m not even sure we had those teams in the Stone Age.  But my major motivation was this: I just didn’t want to miss out on anything.

This habit hasn’t changed all that much since my adolescence. Twenty years ago a friend diagnosed me with FOMS, the “fear of missing something.” In recent years the acronym has morphed into the pop psych meme FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out. So my ears perked up when my friend Vicki talked about being in a state of contentment, being satisfied with her “ordinary” life. This is a woman who has raised four children who are global citizens, who has traveled extensively to keep in touch with them for many years. So when she mused that she was done with travel it got my attention.

I still have a few airline miles to cash in and a few travel goals that will keep me busy as long as I’m fit enough to pursue them. BUT, I completely resonated with her description of a satisfied life. More and more, I’m opting out of things. It’s been a gradual process, hardly noticeable except inside myself. I started to see that often when I choose to not slip into the loop of doing or the belief that I should do more, have more, be more…my mind settles down. I breathe. I watch the birds. Or the trees. I move slowly, like the “old person” I never wanted to become. And it’s blissful. How could I have ever known, with all my joining and searching and moving around, about the surprising quiet joy of this time of life? Ironically, in my determination to not miss out, I’ve been missing something far more subtle and sweet.

Mojo of JOMO. The Joy of Missing Out. The name came to me at the reunion. And then, returning home, Vicki sent me a link to a blogpost referring to another forty-something’s post on this same topic from a couple of years ago. So I guess Baby Boomers don’t always get to be first. As a matter of fact, perhaps this is the great learning of what I’m claiming as the True JOMO Years. Finally, at long last, we get to miss out on being first, the leaders, the trendsetters and rule breakers. It’s about time. JOMO to me includes the relief of giving up all old identities, including that one.

Several questions and wonderings arise. What did I actually miss when I was so busy strategizing how to not miss out?

A life lived with openings for whatever shows up, comes the answer.

There’s so much to be gained when I’m not busy chasing what I might be missing. What new openings are created when I don’t do, when I don’t fill my time with all the tantalizing offerings before me? I get curious.

Today a friend posted these words by the 87 year-old sage Ram Dass, one of the respected mentors of my generation: “Aging has its own beauty. It is a beautiful stage for doing inner work. You have a chance to not be so dependent on social approval. You can be a little more eccentric. You can be more alone. And you can examine loneliness and boredom instead of being afraid of them. There is such an art and a possibility in aging…”

Once again, he nailed it.

 

Image by Scottdoesntknow [CC BY-SA 3.0], from Wikimedia Commons

Singing For Life

in Noticing, Power of Connection

Music tree

This spring I returned to sing in a choir of my Homies called Jubilate!

It’s a different experience than chanting as a yogic practice. But it’s a practice still, singing harmonies with these women of all ages and stripes, songs about heart, about spring, and about what it means to stand up for what matters. This practice reminds me of what’s important, especially right now, when times can be pretty dark.

Last month we serenaded the local Marchers for Life, where about a tenth of the population of my town showed up. When we started I barely managed to squeak, flooded as I was by the tears and the beauty of all the layers of past and future that came together in the faces I saw. When I got home, it turned into a poem of impressions, a poem that could remind and inspire me. For Life. For Love. For these times.

 

One Foot In Front of the Other, and Lead with Love!

A choir of 30 women, named for jubilation,

We sing, sway, clap, and dance to the river of determined

Marchers for our Lives.

 

Arms linked, signs as varied

As their new bodies, their life-worn bodies, and in-between.

Pink flowers with the names of the fallen.

A skinny tween-aged girl carrying her advice:

Use Ur Indoor Voice. Don’t Yell at Us.

 

The songs, the river, the people keep flowing,

Never Turning Back.

We are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting for, we sing.

Won’t Let Nobody Turn us Around,

 

Mind holds a prayer:

May I remember this.

The constant constant constant beat

The never-ending flow of

The pulse that holds it all. The refrain:

It is time now, and what a time to be alive

In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love

Following the Glimmer, Not the Glitter

in Confusion to Clarity, Noticing

glowing embers

Midwinter at my home means a fire in the wood stove, a stew or soup bubbling on top, and a hover of crows cawing and landing in the meadow behind my house. Fitting subjects for contemplation. Like a crow, I’ve spent a fair amount of my life grabbing the next shiny object. I’ve collected experiences, workshops, credentials, books, and teachings like any good spiritual materialist. No regrets. Sometimes there’s been a huge pay-off for my curiosity, and sometimes I’ve gotten myself in some pretty tight situations. All of the resulting course corrections have taken the form of a learning curve. But at this stage of life, something a bit more subtle is operating.

Instead of grabbing onto the glitter, I’ve been leaning with curiosity into the glimmer and also suggesting my clients learn the difference.

When I get a little quiet with myself, my mind begins to imagine all the exciting and glittering futures it could create. This is when catchy YouTubes and online classes take me right into the sink hole. Next I wonder where the time has gone and how I’ll ever find the time to read the next self-help or spiritual book. And whatever time I’ve scheduled for writing or self-reflection is over. Carpool time, dinner time. Once again the taste for glitter has taken over.

But…when I remember that I’m not a crow, that I have a choice of where to put my attention, I’m more likely to spot a time-sink wormhole and bring myself back to what truly soothes and uplifts me. I’m more able to listen for something else, for a slight uplift in my body. If I slow down and look, there’s sometimes a cinder left from the past, some longing or inner curiosity. I can ask my heart to find it. Remembering the fire I built to keep away the chill, I can blow on the glimmering coal.

Staying curious, I watch for the glimmer to grow. Sometimes a slow, steady flame is ignited, and sometimes it’s an ember that dims and becomes an ash. I notice where it sparks, find some appropriate kindling by taking the next step. Only that one. After that I watch with curiosity, see what happens next, what resonates in the heart and the gut as true. After that, I keep it simple. I take the next small step that occurs to me.

I continue to watch, find a little piece of kindling, gently blow. On and on. Keeping it simple, I watch for life to show me the way. Then perhaps I sign up to sponsor that child in Nepal; perhaps I make some calls to a policy-maker, perhaps I take up tango or salsa.

It’s a subtle art, much less dramatic and stimulating than the shiny object approach, but instead of being stuck in tight places of my own creation, instead of being over-committed to everyone else or to the wormholes competing for my attention, over time I have a glowing life that sends new sparks and glimmers and offers new possibilities. But, best of all, I have a place to warm my hands.

The Lingering Gift of the Flu

in Body or Aging, Noticing, Surrendering, Wordlessness

Virus

I’m just emerging from the profound depths of this 2018 flu. I’ve developed a battalion of illness-fighting forces over the years, and it’s been decades since I actually experienced the full ride. But this month the little virus buggers wanted to set up shop, and they had their way with me.

While I was fighting them back there was struggle and stress. But then I remembered to ask one of my favorite questions of myself: How might this be a good thing? “It’s over. Give up the fight,” came an answer. After that, such a deep surrender. An opening. Peace. The mind stopped its incessant solving and strategizing. I simply couldn’t think that anything needed (or even could) be done. There were no appointments to be keep. No calls that needed to be made. No battles to be fought (or thought).

And what was left was breath, silence and spaciousness. The body had aches, fevers, coughs. Yes. And I can’t say that it was pleasant, but some other part of me could see that this existed inside something else, something vastly deep and powerful. Something that I could trust to either kill me or heal me. Suddenly nothing about it was personal.

I was already aware that sometimes these viruses take no prisoners and make no sense. So the breakthrough surrender wasn’t like a magical New Age carpet ride of positive thinking. I’m old enough to find evidence of my own ultimate fate all around me. A woman I know died of the flu three or four years ago. She was in her late fifties, fit and full of life force, on her way to Hawaii with her first grandchild and her children. There was no sense to it.

During the worst part of the flu, I remembered her. And instead of fear I experienced a deep understanding of my own powerlessness in the face of the most mysterious of forces. Without the words to frame it, there I was (or wasn’t) again. Simply a deep and powerful state of surrender and vast space.

It’s been a couple of weeks since this realization, and now I feel a lot like I did during my pregnancies. Once the morning zest (aka coffee) wears off, the tiredness comes…and goes…and moves around. I’m focused on catching the old habit of “pushing to overcome,” because I have somehow believed that this is the same as thriving. I don’t want to lose this new perspective.

There’s a different sense of things now, just at the edge of the fatigue. Something big, ineffable, irrefutable. A softness. A deep willingness to trust in the way of things.

It’s not altogether unfamiliar; it’s a way of being and living that I have sensed around the edges before. I’ve used words in an attempt to describe it. And I’m using words now. But ultimately words are no match for the peace. It’s an experience. And that has no words.

What’s left of the flu is a felt sense that I used to call fatigue. But now it feels more like gratitude.

How a Long Marriage is Like the Grand Canyon

in Radical Kindness

As of this week, I’ve been married forty years to the same person.  Okay. Not the same person.  He’s changed.  I’ve changed.  And it’s not the same marriage.  It’s changed and we’ve changed. In many ways, it’s been more like a series of two or three marriages,.

When new friends ask what wisdom we have to share. I ‘m struck dumb. Those of you who know me understand what an unusual occurrence this is.   Looking back there’s the same feeling I had when I first set my eyes on the Grand Canyon. It’s just too big to grasp.

Generalities fly through the air. Kindness, rooted commitment.  Then specific words come to mind:  communication (learning what that means and how to do it better), acceptance, tolerance.  But mostly there’s a parade of images, single frames that become a whole, like flipping a book of line drawings that create animation. Viewing my own mental snapshots of these two young strangers and watching how shared joy and grief and pain has changed them together and separately simply boggles my mind. Read More>>

Getting Traction, as Opposed to BEING in Traction

in Getting Unstuck

When I’m caught in the web of my Frequently Recycled Thought Loops, it’s like being in traction.  I’m strung up, and I have a very hard time moving. And I’m in such a trance to the fruity loopy thinking that I won’t budge until I can see the predicament. Often I need to simply sit down with a pen and paper and write down what I’m thinking so I can slow the whole loop down and see my way out of traction.

Doing this, I find a different kind of traction.  I GET traction to get unstuck.  Once I can find a painful thought, I can begin to inquire (usually using my favorite 4 questions a la Byron Katie.)  And if I’m too locked in the loop (or strung up in traction) STILL, I can get someone else to help me find it.  I love being facilitated as much as I love facilitating other people. As I find the place of traction, my mind gradually gets unstuck all by itself, as it comes to understand itself. And sooner or later (usually sooner) I’m unstuck.  And if I’m not, I know how to find another thought and move deeper into the process.  Join me as we all get more unstuck. Using some traction to get out of the traction of our thinking.

Octogenarian Observations

in Radical Kindness

This week I’m leading a service to celebrate the life of a dear friend and an inspiration, Connie Foulke.  An ardent teacher, parent, and community leader, Connie was one of my reference points for how to live a good life for over thirty years.  A while ago she organized a group of “young friends” (most of us were only in our late 50’s, after all) for lunch and tea.  Our honored leader even gave us a name:  the Pleiades, and she requested we each choose a the name of one of the stars of the constellation, research the mythology behind it and select one that fit. After all, Google was a wonderful invention that would help us out.  Connie was that kind of thoughtful. That kind of thorough. She was what used to be called “a class act.”

When I turned sixty  I flew back to Kansas City for a gathering of high school friends who were also celebrating that passage.  I asked Connie to give some advice to those of us twenty years behind.  She was rather frail at that point, and I expected her to dictate  a couple of lines over the phone.  Not Connie. What I got was a call, four or five days later, that I should come and pick something up. When I opened the bag Connie had left for me, there was  a double-sided page of thoughts in an ornate old English font, printed on fine parchment-style paper.  The title was “octogenarian observations.”

I’ve been inspired for a year by her well-honed life, and her careful advice. I thought about excerpting this and sharing it in pieces because there’s so much wisdom that it’s hard to digest in one sitting.  Then I decided to post it as it is, in its entirety.  It’s such a testimony to a brilliant mind, a wise heart, and a generous heart.  Not to mention a model of conscious aging that I continue to find helpful. Here it is:

Octogenarian Observations

Laugh a lot, even when it hurts.  You’ll feel lighter for it.

Forget the feeling that you’ve forgotten something.  If it’s really important, it will eventually sneak back.  If not, so what?

Listen to classical music.  It will soothe your soul and envelop you in peace.

Consume quantities of chocolate!  There is never too much.

Dump people, possessions and practices you don’t want or need any more.

People:  “Remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.” (Nikki Giovanni)

Practices: give up compulsions.  For example, if you don’t enjoy sending Christmas cards, quit.  I did two years ago.

Love and enjoy your children and grandchildren on your own terms.

Be grateful!

Drink plenty of water.  It is good for your innards and keeps you active with frequent journeys to the bathroom.

Take the phone of the hook if you want to nap or read undisturbed.

Wear whatever suits your fancy, new or old.  But comfortable.

Use lovely perfume and enjoy your own scent.

Take your favorite jewelry out of the box and wear it for your own enjoyment.  (You didn’t acquire it to keep it in the box.)

Nap frequently and enjoy your dreams!

Damn the clock.  Keep your own time.  Get out of bed when you feel like it and stay up as late as you wish.  (But to be on time for appointments and engagements that involve others.)

Spend time on crossword puzzles and Sudoku to challenge your brain and enjoy the success of solution.

Eat quantities of fruits and vegetables, especially local produce.

Travel–actually, via TV or film, or in remembrance of things past.

Sometimes hang out with young people; their energy and enthusiasm may be contagious.  It is surely uplifting.

It’s OK to need a little help.  Use a cane or someone dependable to lean on.

Peruse old photo albums and vicariously enjoy fond memories.

Look at the clouds, the sunrises and sunsets, and MARVEL over creation.

Occasionally retreat into your shell and look at the iridescent nacre inside, like highlights in your life.

Believe in what’s good.

Vote for Obama; he’s the hope for the future of our beloved country.

Finally, as Micah said, Do justly, Love mercy, walk humbly with thy God.

Anchoring

in Radical Kindness

On my bedside table there’s a brass anchor and a candle.  It serves as a reminder of my need for stabilizing as I question and learn and grow.  A reminder of those things that hold me to the earth and bring me back to myself and the present moment when my mind begins to wander, as it has a habit of doing.  Here’s a quick list:  my dog, a warm shower and clean clothes, sitting quietly in the morning, deep and sustaining breaths, holding hands with my husband, and a dear friend’s face.  The more I look for examples, the more I find.  And it begins to look a whole lot like a list of gratitude.

What’s on your list?  What brings your mind back to what’s important?  Find out. And let the list grow.

Touching Your Tribe

in Radical Kindness

Again I’ve returned to my garden oasis to name and count the pearls from my last adventure, a trip to the first-ever Martha Beck Coach’s convention, where the keynote speaker was Byron Katie.  I hold both these women in high esteem, so this was an indescribably inspiring and enlightening experience for me, personally.

But one of the most moving things about the experience was in-person, 3-D connecting with people who I had only known through teleconferencing, or e-mail, or personal coaching by phone.  There’s a powerful intimacy of getting to know a client from a distance, by phone and email.  So actually getting to see, to hug, to talk to people who I had already felt that I knew so well was a powerful experience.  I was amazed at how the physical body of the “essential self” I had come to know enhanced the connection I felt with them.

I was blessed to touch and to be touched by this, one of my tribes.  I’ve had many tribes in my life of community.  I feel deeply connected to my family, my town, my friends from throughout my life.  All of whom I met in the “real world” of being in the same place at the same time.  But this was a totally different experience.

As I follow the bread crumbs to my life here, I want to leave a trail back to that tribe, to remember and honor the other tribes in my life. So once again a return in my journal to my list.  Join me.

List the tribes you belong to.  Be specific and thorough.  Don’t leave out the Farmer’s Market or your yoga class.

Which group would you like to nurture? Which would you like to see die a natural death?
How would you like to deepen the connection with the groups that are left? Make a list.  You can initiate anything you like.

What would get in your way?  Make a list of the thoughts and begin to question them.
Would you like to invite someone to coffee? Who?  Allow the faces or names to arrive.  Choose one and reach out.  Next week do the same.  Create your tribe.

Nurture it frequently.  How will you sustain connection?  Facebook , a card, a walk or a phone call?  Again, your choice.

Create your tribe, touch and be touched by it.  A great and radical kindness for you and for all of us here on the planet.

Reminders to Self While Viewing Pearls

in Confusion to Clarity

I love the time after any trip, when I return home to (borrowing from TS Eliot) “see the world with new eyes.”  Now that I’m out of the forest and into the routines I call my life, I see my loved ones, my garden, my friends with such gratitude.  I love savoring this time, slowing mind down, checking it out to see what’s different.  I have a habit of making notes and lists in my journal, a kind of trail marker the next time I get a little lost (or my eyes get “ old” again).

Here’s what I notice after this trip. Even though the stress of some of those around me has escalated, my mind has remained calmer. Last week a participant at the retreat referred to Deep Soul Diving..  So this time my list looks like a string of pearls, distilled loveliness  that serve as a reminder to myself about my latest the journey into my  inner world.

Slowing down the mind allows it to open, revealing its treasures. When mind gets questioned and  is allowed the time to answer, this closed oyster opens enough for the pearls to be seen. Now that I’m home, when I remember to go slow the hummingbird, the summer breeze, the spider in the corner , take me directly to my heart.  I can return to a sense of spaciousness any time I notice, and when my mind is too cloudy to see how, I can ask some questions and wait to be surprised.

No new thoughts. As they say in Bali, “same, same.” Every time I work with someone inquiring into their thoughts, I discover my own. So the one in front of me gives me what I need to find myself.  We seem to be recycling the same thoughts:  my body isn’t right, my kids would save themselves grief if they’d listen to me, talk show radio hosts are Satan in drag.  It’s all in me too. Same, same.

Time Can Expand. Riddle: When is two and a half days not two and a half days?  When I slow down to go fast! I notice a spaciousness to time even now that I’m home from the dive.  Note to self:  now is a good time to stare at the ocean, sit with the dog, slow time down.  Even for a few minutes.  Now.

Gratefulness for the miracle of the human heart opening. When I get real with myself and the folks around me, the world changes.  I develop a deep appreciation for sound of the heart opening.  Each time I experience this within myself or with another, I am blessed.

This summer, give yourself a little time after a vacation or trip to see your life anew. Bring out your souvenirs. Make some lists.

How is your world different, even a little, than it was before?

• What moments would you like to keep in your memory?  The toddler with ice cream on his face?  The kindness of a stranger in the airport?

• As you look back at your experience, what would you change?  This is a good place to star to questioning  the mind.  I shouldn’t have eaten so much potato salad. Is that true?  Find out.  Question the thought that  whatever happened wasn’t for your learning.

•What pearls of wisdom do you bring back? What did you learn about yourself?  Others?

• What advice do you have for yourself about future trips?  I find this a great way to remember what ways I was kind and unkind to myself so that I can plan future trips with more kindness.

• I love putting a physical thing I bring back or that reminds me of my experience on an altar or someplace that I’ll see it when I wake up in the morning.  Each time I see it, I’m reminded of the new pearl on my strand.

Enjoy your pearls with new eyes.  Summer is young.

Little Questions, Big Trees, and Me

in Radical Kindness

I just returned from a three day event at Breitenbush Retreat Center in the old growth forest of the Oregon Cascade mountains. There we all were, almost thirty of us,  with some big questions, some big trees, and ourselves. Because we weren’t able to access our cell phones, Internet, or ordinary life stories, there was a sense of adventuring together as we asked the Four Questions and Turn-Arounds of Byron Katie. We adopted the name Deep Divers, which described perfectly the experience of going again and again into the depths of our own minds. Once we began to answer the questions, we each emerged with our own pearls: the truer and kinder answers that brought each of us a sense of peace in our own lives . Maggie Carter, long-time practitioner and facilitator of The Work, reminded us that there’s nothing magical about the 4 Questions. (If you’d like more explanation, go to Katie’s website: http://www.thework.com/thework.asp) And yet there was little doubt for any of us that the process itself was magical.

I notice as I return that a renewed clarity and a peace of mind is possible when I’m not in the thrall of my beliefs. I notice I have a choice in whether I want to live from the old, archaic beliefs that have caused me stress or to challenge myself to find a kinder way. When I believe that I’m in charge of everything, I suffer stress. I fatigue myself.

When I notice all the ways I’m not in charge, I feel free. When I believe that other people won’t accept me when I operate from my own sense of authenticity, I shrink back and don’t offer my gifts to the world. When I don’t believe it, I’m free to honor my own knowing and act with integrity.

Again and again I’m noticing a Beginner’s Mind that allows me to see where I have a choice and where I live out of an unexamined belief. This is the true power of inquiry for me, the experience and the scent of freedom. This is kindness. This is the pearl that I bring back to examine again and again in the light of reality. This is magic.

Grandmother Snag

in Confusion to Clarity

It’s Memorial Day, and instead of visiting the graves of my human ancestors, I’m sitting in the Oregon old growth forest at my favorite altar in the world, above a noisily  burbling stream.  From this spot, if I peek through the hemlocks and cedars just in front of me, there’s a snag, the part of the tree left over after the rest of it has broken off and thundered to the ground.  This particular snag, about fifty feet tall at a third its original height,  was created about twenty years ago, from the falling of a two-hundred year old giant.  They say that when it split in two, an eighty-year old woman in the cabin crushed by the fall was saved because she was looking into her refrigerator, which held up the roof above. This image has given me such peace when I stand mutely gazing at my own leftover larder, but this is only a teeny little part of the inspiration of this stately scene.

The truth is, I’ve passed hundreds of snags while hiking without being transported to this deep peace I feel today.  It always takes a while for my mind and my eyes to relax enough to truly let in the subtle majesty of such an old, broken relic.  After about a day here in the forest, my vision shifts. I’m reminded of my personal relationship with each tree here at the cabin.  I begin to call them my friends.  It’s then that I truly see her,  the old Grandmother of the hillside, the sacred snag. Read More>>

Thought Catching

in Radical Kindness

Many years ago I made Dream Catchers with my students. Borrowed from the Native American tradition, they were a beautiful way to remind ourselves to dream, that dreams matter. As we made them together, we talked about our dreams. Then we hung them near out beds, jotted down our dreams upon awaking, and made them into poems or art.

The other day, as I was coaching a client by listening for a painful thought to question, the words “thought catching” came to mind. Since then I’ve been turning over those words.  Thought Catching is a lot of what I do with clients.  I listen for thoughts that they can’t hear, thoughts that keep them in locked in a story that hurts them. Once I hear a belief , we can usually get traction and find something truer and kinder.  The result is nothing short of freedom.

I’ve been wondering, what would a Thought Catcher look like? It would have to be selective, since neurosciences have estimated that we think 60,000 of them a day.  They come and they go, like dreams.  Some stick with us and cause us pain. Those are the ones I’d like to catch, before they do any more damage than they’ve already done.

I haven’t yet come up with a new invention, but I already know of one that works incredibly well for the purpose.  It’s a Judge Your Neighbor worksheet, a foundation of The Work of Byron Katie. Katie refers to it as “flypaper for the ego.”  When we judge someone else (or something else), we catch our own thoughts.  It’s a thought catcher. Try it out.  You can find it at thework.com. Click on Resources.  Then look on the left-hand side under “Downloads.”  Once you get the thoughts, use the One Belief at a Time Worksheet to question each one.  Or call me and we’ll see what thoughts we can catch together.  One at a time.

The Power of Us in the Light of Inquiry

in Radical Kindness

This past month I’ve been leading classes in Inquiry, and I’ve been moved by how universal the beliefs are that hold us hostage.  Because I usually work with people individually, I have plenty of experience of the power of one-on-one seeking.  Not that this process is without surprises. Just when I think I know where freedom will arrive in each client’s mind, some new way of thinking shows up from the periphery that has the power to completely shift their world.

But in a group, this power is primed.  And it is deeply powerful for all of us.  As each person finds a belief that they may not have even been aware of holding, we all notice we’ve held that same belief about our lives.  And as we observe the questions and answers that bring freedom to one, we all find relief.  One by one we question thoughts like, “It shouldn’t have happened,”  “My body is too fat,” “I can’t get it right.”  And one by one we find the kindness of truth.

Spring Inquiry group events here at Oasis are over, and now my mind travels to summer.  In my mind, summer solstice seems like the perfect time to hold thoughts up to the bright light of inquiry.  Best of all, my friend Maggie Carter, director of the Institute of the Work for Byron Katie, will be coming to Oregon to join me at a couple of events.  We’re both looking forward to joining people who are beginners as well as seasoned facilitators.  We’ll be spending a day in Portland (June 20th)  and then three whole days soaking in inquiry and the peace of the Oregon Cascades at Breitenbush Hot Springs (June 21st through 24th).  All are welcomed.  Liberate yourself of some excessive winter beliefs and make peace with reality. With all of us.