Posts Tagged: Questioning the mind

Juicy Question Collection Project

in Confusion to Clarity

A couple of weeks ago I started a personal inquiry process to begin “living the questions,”  I began with the question Who am I right now? Since then I’ve brought the question out of my pocket at least a dozen times.  I mean that literally.  I wrote it on a little sticky and carried it in my pocket.  It continues to bring me back to the present, to a deeper sense of authenticity as I live it. I noticed I want to share the process with others, so I’m calling it the Juicy Question Collection Project and inviting everyone to chime in. I’ll keep posting my question and yours and we’ll see what we learn together.

Juicy Question Two: What am I believing right now? To get the best traction, I’m going to a place where I feel stuck.  I have a couple (or more) areas I can find more than a little stuckness, but the one that shows up as a guide multiple times a day is mindless eating.  What am I believing when I reach out to food to reduce the feeling of stress? As I work with myself, just as I do with clients, I notice that finding these beliefs takes practice, but then it’s easier. I have a top ten list of beliefs that cause me to leave the moment and reach out for “comfort.” Here’s number one: There’s not enough (time, not enough of me, you name it). Read More>>

Indian Summer, Wabi Sabi, Seasonal Questions

in Radical Kindness

We call it Indian Summer. The light at this time of year is slanted.  Just a few days ago light and dark were in perfect balance. It’s a time between worlds, a perfect time to catch up with yourself.

The Japanese have a word to describe the deep yearning that autumn brings. Wabi sabi. It’s a way of seeing and a recognition that all things are temporary.  This experience of impermanence is the key to the  subtle beauty of the season. As we open to the beauty of the fall, we become aware of the constant flux of the natural world. We are called to deep appreciation of each moment, before it fades and becomes the next. This moment.  The one right here. Now.

After full-tilt boogying through life, there’s a yearning to go within, to get a little quieter. To bring home the harvest of the growing season.  To balance inner and outer worlds. To appreciate the subtle fluctuations of life. We open to the sweet impermanence of the season, the passing beauty of a leaf, a baby’s face, the light hitting the window just so.

When we move into a darker and quieter time, we  find out what’s in balance and what’s not. We  discover the little resistances and the limited thinking that would be keeping us from being our most peaceful and free versions of ourselves. This is a perfect time to ask ourselves some questions that call us into deeper living. Read More>>

Living the Questions

in Getting Unstuck, Radical Kindness

Many years ago I came across these words by Rainier Maria Rilke, in his Letter to a Young Poet:

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

I’ve been compiling a list of questions that I love to ask myself and others ever since. When I’m feeling confusion or stress, it’s usually because I haven’t taken the time to ask myself some good questions.  I notice this is true for my clients, too.  With that in mind, I’m sharing some of my favorite questions in the next few blog entries.

Here’s the one that shows up today: Who am I now? I’ll be carrying it in my pocket today to find out, as the day progresses, as I live with it.  Here’s what I notice this moment.  I’m finding my way back to my center after the last month’s whirlwind of activities. I’m noticing I’ve been missing me when I’m responding to everyone else.   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.

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.

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.

Fall of the House of Cards

in Radical Kindness

What’s your Queen of Painful Beliefs look like?  Mine’s like the Red Queen in Wonderland.  She’s diligent at protecting those sacred precepts that keep me imprisoned in a House of Cards.  As I begin to question beliefs that used to work (sort of), she watches, ready to trot me off to the guillotine.

Even the hint that I might violate her sacred edicts, gets her agitated. Read More>>

Happy New Now!

in Confusion to Clarity

This cry resonated in the ballroom on  New Year’s Eve,  where I was attending the Mental Cleanse, a five-day event with Byron Katie. The event is an annual Love Fest where participants spend the last days of the old year challenging the beliefs that imprison them and taking off the chains, one thought at a time.  As always, Katie was unconditionally loving with every person and thought she invited into her “parlor.”  And we’re always invited, each moment, to finish the past and begin again, in a new now.

Over the week I noticed all the beliefs I had been acting out in my life that were no longer relevant and had caused harm to myself and to others.  Decisions about what to do in 2009 just kept making me as I watched others undo their own painful beliefs and questioned my own.   A very different way to make New Year’s resolutions, from a place of what is truer and kinder for my world.  I’ll be continuing to explore what this looks like in future blogs, I’m sure. I just find I want to share as much as I can about my own work with anyone who’s interested.

On New Year’s eve there’s a No-Talent show where participants challenge themselves to do things that would bring up fears and beliefs.  This year was my first year to take the stage, and I shared a couple of poems I’d written about what happens when you question thoughts.  Now you should know that I’m a closeted poetry writer who has never (and I mean never) shared my work. This It was scarey.  I watched my mind compare myself to the person before, convinced I could never be as funny or perfect for the occasion.  And when I read what I’d written  in front of 300 people about half of what I was on stage was me. The other was a totally freaked out lizard, victim of the reptilian Flight or Fight brain. Afterward the applause (and one person even cheered!), I was still pretty scared. It was after that biochemical cocktail of limbic wore off that I felt freer, more open to whatever is next.  To whatever that scares me. A new year. A new Now.