Loving What Is -A book finds me!

A few months Byron Katie’s The Work found me. It found me in the Self-Help area of Barnes and Noble, cruising for answers to the constant whole in my heart. Am not sure what I was looking for that day, guess I was hoping something would just pop out at me. In hindsight, that is more of a life approach than an issue of that wandering day.  When I am open to new ideas, I wander with a general big picture in my head, I let the details/signs find me.

I was walking down the isle and there at eye level, stood a black book with an incredibly inviting smile calling me in. As I got closer I read the title, “Loving What is: Four questions that can change your life”.  As a lover of questions, the power they invoke, and the precision in which they can cut though static…I found myself buying this book instantly.

The book promises nothing, except to change of everything! Through these four questions and a turnaround (called The Work), we can begin to change our relationship with our thoughts.  As I started to read, I was struck by the utter simplicity of this method/thing/concept/mindset/approach (book’s self proclaimed identity issue).  Four questions and a turnaround that’s all I needed, that’s all I ever needed to end my suffering and change? Yes! that is what The Work promised and delivered time after time.

80% of Loving What Is, are transcribed recordings of people doing The Work with Katie. Issue after universal (but so profoundly individual) issue is put against these four questions.  In every single session, you see the light bulb of new understanding start to shine…not only for the person in the book, but for me as well. Outwardly verbal, I said Yes! That’s it, OMG that hurts me too and Wow, how did I not see?

The four questions:

Is it true?

Can you absolutely know that is true?

How does it feel when you think that thought?

Who would you be with out that thought?

The turnarounds are very individual based on the person’s answers, but for the most part they are simply a 180 degree turn to your initial issue/judgment or belief.

These questions have changed the way I see things, how I approach thoughts and feel the power to end my own suffering. They even have helped me motivate my teenage son to really participating and grabbing what he wants.  Professionally, The Work has become an integral part of my coaching and speaking career.

This book found me when I was ready, and I am blessed for it.

Never Understood by Wayne Roberson

Never understood

Never seemed to care

Then your words appeared

And they stirred the inner most part of me

I thought I was dead in the places you touched

Never knew my younger years

Were able to be born again

 

I was alone in my silent world

Until your words unlocked the door

How did you get in?

Why did I let you?

I had been so good at keeping that part closed

Yet you move me

 

My soul exposed

My heart wide open

Will you stay?

Will you go again?

 

I will be here and…..

Thanks for the words

For making me alive again

For stirring something long forgotten

 

It’s nice to have you here with me

Finding an old friend…

Am brought back 20 yrs in an instant

The chords open up memories to a place and time

To an island of calm, sanity, peace, creativity and connectedness

While the inner war raged on between personal growth and self imposed chaos

 

“A path lost for years that lead us thru” Moody Blues

 

I walked away from this path, almost forgetting of it’s very existence

As each chord is played and lyric is sung… The words come so easily

I remember without remembering I remembered

With out remembering I forgot

 

“20 years now where’d they go

20 years, I don’t know” Bob Seger

 

None of that matters

With out judgment or ruling

I am here again; the songs never knew I left

They waited for me to open the four doors again.

 

Through the doors I find an old friend

    2009 Jodi Mathieu, Published by Unlocked Communications, LLC

Where will we be…

Where will we be when the end is the beginning

starting or stopping…..

is it about the place or the ride….

 

Journeys are traveled by all

depots, vehicles, people you meet…

 

Never linear in practice..

cyclical, dazzling, confusing, spiritual

 

It is not were we came from or where we are going…

the destination is but a vision…

 

The miles traveled, lessons learned….

“A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)”

 

Is how we know….”all is well…”

 

 

Get Real. Get Naked. Get Better.

       For some of us, getting or being naked is a gruesome fear dredged from the deep well of insecurity, vulnerability and exposure. We anxiously lag behind others in the gym locker room, as if the delay will give us the mental energy to send subliminal messages and clear everyone out of the room or build a protective invisibility bubble around us. When we need to put our bra on or change a shirt with a friend, family member or lover are in the room, we turn around hoping beyond hell they are not looking to see our back fat. Making love or the act of sex is only to be had in the dark (or maybe one dimly lit bulb or candle way across the room)… and this is only when we have beat them in the room, whipped off our clothes and are trying our best to look seductive under the covers we just scrambled under.

 

Yes, physical nakedness is scary enough…but what about mental or emotional nakedness. Where can we hide from what makes us us?

 

Hiding from emotional or mental nakedness is less obvious than concealing our physical selves; but we do it is such subtle ways.  We see a community acquaintance in the supermarket and spend three isles worth of mental energy trying to justify why we acted like we didn’t see her.  Or come up with story after story in our head for the ready, incase we see her further along in the store. At work, we know damn well that suggestion or new process the boss just came up with will not work, will be counter-productive and a colossal waste of time…but, we say nothing. For a number of reasons; fear of confrontation, need to get on the bosses good side because Sally in accounting was earning too many ass kissing points last week and we need to even the “I’m a good obedient worker” score…or the very real possibility of losing our job. For what ever reason we say nothing and lose a bit of ourselves every time.

 

Romantic relationships can be a breading ground for us to pull every cover over our heads in effort to hide our true emotional/mental selves, and not the person we pretended to be while winning them over. Or we lay down millions of miles of road called anxiety and worry tying to simultaneously run away from and romance our father’s memory.  Some of us spend many of our greatest years alone, so we never have to truly share ourselves with a partner…but we spend hour after hour searching the online sites wondering why it all feels so illusory.  We lose weight, gain a lot of weight, hide behind out weight, change our hair color, pack on makeup, and even have plastic surgery to conceal our fear.

 

Hiding from emotional or mental nakedness is less obvious that hiding behind our clothes or outward roles we play in the adult world. It maybe less obvious, but can be much more damning. Bit by bit we learn to cover our needs, wants and feelings to keep the peace, go with the flow or even survive. Everyday we live our lives under the veil of going to and from, worry, guilt and fear. Dreading someone will find out what we know for sure…we are frauds or worse… we are not worth it. We take our depression meds, put our work clothes on, send our kids off to school, put on our game face and muster through the day…totally sick to death of being what we have become, but scared shit to become what we have dreamed. Sometimes we don’t even give ourselves permission to dream anymore, we are so petrified of exposing the real us. Who ever that might be.

 

I propose we need to get naked. We need to get raw again, get in touch with the fear that runs our lives and determines who we are. Get real with its power and influence it has taken of our individual lives and those of our society. There is a saying, “We are only as sick as our secrets”; What if the biggest secret we keep hidden is our potential or unconditional love, or the fact we wanted to be a ballerina and we settled for middle-management.  Get better, learn to dream again and cast away the fear, doubt and insecurity that keep us bound to inaction.

 

          Lets get real, get naked and get better.

 

 ã 2008 Jodi Mathieu, Published by Unlocked Communications, LLC