In fact, sometimes I never start.
Sometimes I question only one statement on a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet. Sometimes I question three, or four, or 10. Sometimes I question every single statement.
What I love about The Work is that there are no have to’s. The Work is just an invitation to explore.
I often do, long after the charge has gone away. Many times, after questioning what I wrote on line 1 of a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet, I’m no longer stressed. I could easily just move on and be done with it. After all, there may be other worksheets I could write.
But I tend to keep questioning the statements on my worksheet even though they don’t hold a charge for me. I love to because I find so many unexpected surprises that way.
The first is to get out of pain. The second is to simply to explore.
When I’m doing The Work to get out of pain, that motive sometimes keeps me a little bit more closed-minded. I miss things because my sole focus is to get out of pain.
But if I keep doing The Work even after the charge is gone, I often see things with an even more open point of view. I am least biased in my work when I’m doing The Work this way.
True meditation has no goal. Just as walking in the park has no goal. The joy lies in the doing of it. When I do The Work with this attitude, I see all kinds of things that I would not see if I were rushing towards a goal (for example to get out of pain).
Just because the charge goes away after questioning one statement on my worksheet doesn’t necessarily mean that my work is done. The other beliefs that I wrote are still sitting there unquestioned. It’s just that they are no longer active for me at the moment so I don’t feel the charge.
When I question them anyway, just because they’re on my Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet, those pieces of my story start to fall away as well. And the chances of reactivating the whole stressful story are much less.
“If you’re in a big hurry, slow it down.”
For me, slow is fast in this upside down world of self-inquiry.
If you want to practice slowing down in your work, join us for The Work 101.
Have a great week,
Todd
“If you can do The Work in slow motion, meditating on a situation when you were upset or angry, taking five, ten minutes or more with every question, it becomes a pattern of mind, a natural state of listening.” Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself
We are not meant to live stressed lives. Learn how to address the root cause of your stress and find your freedom again. Otherwise, stress will keep accumulating. Learn how to break the cycle of stress here.
