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It is very confusing to be a human being. Why? Because we have not been very good interpreters of our experience. It isn't our fault. We were very impressionable as children and learned the art of misinterpretation from our well-meaning but misinformed caregivers. Like little monkeys, we "see and we do"…and continue doing until we realize we have a vast intelligence that we can use to unlearn the past. It's important to realize that if we don't unlearn the past, we will repeat it. There is no doubt about this and if you don't believe it, take a long, hard look at your life. Same patterns, different day. Now the tricky part is that on some very basic level, we want to repeat the past. Repetition of what has come before is like a security blanket that we cling to for dear life…no matter how much it trips us up as we're making our way through life. Change, on the other hand, terrifies us because it threatens our concepts about who we are. The fact that we aren't who we think we are doesn't seem to matter even when someone tells us that there is so much more to us and to life than we've ever dreamed possible. It usually takes a crisis to make us willing to do something different…which is why we should be grateful for all the supposed problems that cross our path. They force us to stop and look and listen to what's going on inside us at a deeper level than usual. (Or else we look for bigger and better escape hatches which usually end up turning into yet another problem.) Now, assuming that for whatever reason, we have become open to change. The next question is: How? And it's a very important question, indeed. Despite our best intentions, if we don't have the proper tools, we can spin our wheels looking like we're busy changing…and yet not go anywhere significant at all. (How many people have you heard say "I tried to make such and such happen, but it didn't work.") The good news is that there are ways to move forward in a significant way and one of them is a process called The Work. It was created by a woman named Byron Katie who had misery down to an art and woke up one day realizing that suffering was actually optional. She discovered that the source of our unhappiness came--not from people and events on the outside as we have been taught--but from believing our stressful thoughts. Where we took for granted that there was a stage in our growth where we were going to rebel against our parents rules and opinions, we failed to realize that questioning what we have been taught is not just something we do as adolescents and then get over. It is a lifetime process. Why? Because of all that misinterpretation mentioned earlier. We have misinterpreted so many things about life that we have actually convinced ourselves that life is not good. That life is a struggle and that sometimes the best we can do is get through a day. Not only is this no way to live, but it isn't even necessary! We don't have to be the Dalai Lama or some other enlightened being to find peace here. But we do have to be proactive about it. We do have to stop waiting for someone else to save us from our own confused minds. You believe you're not good enough as you are? That's confusion. You believe that to be okay you need someone else's approval? That's confusion. You believe that your problems are someone else's fault? That is confusion. The Work consists of four simple questions and what are called "turnarounds" that help us to reclaim our lives from all the ways we have learned to argue with reality. Life. The way things are. We learn to question what we are thinking that is stressful one belief at a time, notice how it affects us when we believe that stressful thought, discover what we would be like without it and see how we are doing the very things we are accusing other people for doing. (It's called taking 100% responsibility or ending the blame game once and for all.) Obviously, this only a process for people who want to grow up. If you like being a victim (and most of us have gotten benefits from it in one way or another,) you probably won't like The Work. But if you are tired of suffering…if you want to live a peaceful and satisfying existence, then The Work can work for you. Slowly, but surely (the thing about instant gratification is that it last just that long: an instant) you will notice your life improving in ways you could never imagine from your present vantage point. And you will no longer continue to drag your past along with you everywhere you go. You will know what it means to live in the moment…and wouldn't have it any other way. So if you are ready for real change, give The Work a chance. |
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