Month: October 2017

When a stressful event occurs, the emotions that arise can be overwhelming. If left on their own, the stressful emotions and thoughts can build on themselves in a vicious cycle. One way to break the cycle is by venting.

At first you might think that this question is not relevant. You might think, “I’m not treating that person at all. They aren’t even here. How could I treat someone one way or the other if I don’t even know who they are?” But this is just a limited way of thinking about the question.

If I want an apple, and I think, “I shouldn’t have an apple,” and then I question “I shouldn’t have an apple,” I can end up using The Work to justify taking one. The Work is not about justifying. The work is about taking responsibility. it is about coming back to integrity. But even The Work can be misused by the mind. This happens most commonly when people are new to The Work, and most most especially when people are working one-liners in a free-form way. This is one reason why Byron Katie invites us to use the Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet as the primary way for identifying stressful thoughts to question. This problem doesn’t come up much when you’re using the Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet. But when you’re working one-liners free-form, the mind can try to reverse-engineer things, or more commonly, step innocently into this trap.

The mind Is expert at getting out of work. And one of its favorite excuses is “I’ve seen this before.” This is a clever way of discrediting any insights that may be coming up when doing The Work. Another phrase for the same excuse is, “Boring!” or “This is repetitive.” But these are nothing but lame excuses.

Instead of sharing with you my insights about The Work and life in general today, I invite you to share your recent insights with me.

In my attempt to be something other than what I really am, I have to manipulate. I have to hide some things, and promote other things. I can’t just be. The appeal of manipulation is to hypnotize others into believing I’m something other than what I am—in the hopes that, when they believe it, maybe I’ll believe it too. It’s a complicated way of trying to fool myself into believing that I’m something other than what I am. Luckily self-inquiry cuts through all this pretending like a knife.