Month: February 2016

Non-violence seems like an impossibility. You can become vegetarian in an attempt to be non-violent. You can carry the spiders out of your house. You can be kind to others, and do your best to avoid harming them…

I just downloaded the new app. And my opinion out of the box: It rocks!

This is one of the mind’s biggest tricks for not doing The Work. This is how it works. You start by following the directions for doing The Work. You identify a stressful moment, a time when you had some sort of stress reaction, even minor. Then you start writing a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet about the person or thing that stressed you in that moment. And on the worksheet you start uncovering embarrassing thoughts. Thoughts you’re ashamed to admit you have. And then the mind starts going, “Yeah, but that was just a little thing. That’s not really the way I feel.”

Fairness is a big concept for me. I notice I want everything to be fair. And I spend a fair amount of energy thinking about how to keep things fair. Fairness is not a bad thing. But I’m starting to see fairness as more of a consolation prize than as a true ideal.

The Work is meditation. And meditation means slowing down. The Work is about slowing down and really taking a look. And when it comes to question 3 of The Work, sub-questions can be used to do just that. To slow me down.

Doing The Work is like breaking into a house. My beliefs are carefully locked up inside me. And I don’t want anyone messing with them. My ego keeps it this way so that it can maintain control. But personally, I’ve lost confidence in my ego’s ability to run things.

There are a lot of reasons for doing The Work in a group. And number one for me is that it keeps me showing up to do my work. There’s something compelling about being in a group. It’s instinctive, I believe. We don’t want to let our group down, so we rise to the occasion. It certainly has worked for me.

The joy of discovery is compelling. Once you gain some insights through The Work (questioning what you believe), it’s natural to want more. I’ve found myself often wanting to dig deep into one area using the four questions and turnarounds of The Work. But sometimes I reach a place where I can see no further.

Questions 1 and 2 of The Work of Byron Katie are very similar. Question 1 is “Is that true?” Question 2 is “Can you absolutely know it’s true?” At first it seems pointless to have two out of the four questions of The Work be so similar. But let’s look at the difference between these two.