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All Good I Should See Through the Eyes…

Fading Tulips
It’s easy to see good in a perfect blossom, but can you still see good when the petals are falling? Can you see good when only the stem remains? Or even when the whole plant turns brown and dies?

There Is a Lovely Quote About This

It’s from the Upanishads and it goes like this:

“All good I should hear through the ears.
All good I should see through the eyes…”

Or sometimes it is translated:

“May we hear through the ears what is auspicious.
May we see through the eyes what is auspicious…”

I See Two Ways of Understanding This

One way to take it is to “focus on the positive.” This is a basic, optimistic approach. “Focus on the positive, and it will become stronger in your life.”

And it’s true. I’ve experienced this many times. When I have a choice between focusing on the positive or the negative, if I choose the positive, it uplifts me.

But This Approach Implies That There Is a Positive and a Negative

It still has an element of avoiding the negative and holding onto the positive. And I notice stress in this.

Peace comes when I am neither avoiding nor holding on.

Real freedom for me comes when I can see the negative AS positive. Everything is then good from this perspective. And “negative” and “positive” lose their meaning.

I Use Both Approaches When I Do The Work

When I’m looking for examples for turnarounds, I sometimes look for the “silver lining.” This is how I “focus on the positive.” Even if something bad happened, I focus on all the other good that is happening too. And I experience a kind of balance between good and bad. It feels peaceful.

But my most powerful examples when doing The Work come from looking directly at the stressful situation, finding exactly what I think is bad about it, and seeing if I can find examples of how that “badness” may actually be good.

If I can find examples of that, then my peace is not just coming from a place of balancing good and bad. It is coming from a place of “there is nothing bad here at all.” And that is the most solid kind of turnaround example I can find.

That’s When Snakes Turn Out to Be Ropes

Once I see that the snake that was scaring me is really just a rope, I can’t go back to being scared of it anymore, no matter how hard I try.

This is more powerful than just focusing on the positive, and finding things like, “Well at least the snake is not moving,” and “Luckily, I didn’t step on it.”

How to Do This When Doing The Work

The way I do this when finding examples for turnarounds is to look primarily for examples within the situation that I am working.

If someone hurt me, and my turnaround is “They didn’t hurt me,” I look for examples of how they were not hurting me in the very moment when I thought they were hurting me. If I can find that, my perspective changes dramatically.

And if I can’t find any examples of how “They didn’t hurt me” in that moment, then I look for examples from outside that situation. Maybe their hurting me this time was just one of a very few times that they have ever hurt me. That perspective helps too. It softens it.

But the place where I find it most powerful to see “all good through the eyes” and hear “all good through the ears” is in the very spot where I think there is no good at all. If I can find good there, I experience it as a very freeing feeling.

Have a great weekend,
Todd

“When people see some things as good, other things become bad. When they believe their thoughts, people divide reality into opposites. They think that only certain things are beautiful. But to a clear mind, everything in the world is beautiful in its own way.” Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy

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Todd Smith has been doing The Work of Byron Katie on an almost daily basis since 2007. He is just as excited about this simple process of self-inquiry today as he was when he first came across it. He also enjoys writing about The Work, and training others in the subtleties of this meditative process. Join Todd for The Work 101 online course, private sessions, virtual retreats, and his ongoing Inquiry Circle group.