Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day How to submit material to the Highlights
#3012 - Monday, December 10, 2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Today's issue is a reader's submission from Susan
Lucey. More information about Byron Katie and The Work can be
found here: http://www.thework.com/index.asp
Byron Katie
Someone recently sent me a questionnaire about
meditation. Here are my answers:
What is the cause of our disregard for each other and our
world?
We believe a thought, we assume that the thought is true, and
then we act on it. Anger, depression, addictions, sadness, words
that hurt others and ourselves, actions that are selfish or
unkind, are the effects that we must suffer as believers. Mind is
the cause of it all.
For example, look at the thoughts that you yourself believe or
have believed, thoughts such as "He doesn't care,"
"She is wrong," "I have to be careful,"
"I need to know what's going to happen," "People
shouldn't lie," "Life is dangerous," "She
shouldn't have left me," "I'm not good enough."
When you believe these thoughts, you suffer; when you question
them deeply, you begin to wake up to what is, and what is is
always beautiful. Actually it's heaven on earth.
The Work shows us how to come to a knowledge so bright, so close,
so loving, so simple and kind inside us that everything makes
sense. To use the four questions is to undo the judgments that
have caused suffering and violence in humanity since the
beginning of time. When you understand how the mind works, the
truths within you can never again can be drowned out, covered up,
or overridden. I invite you not to believe me, but to do The Work
and test it for yourself.
What is meditation and what does it mean to you?
Meditation is noticing the imagined sitting, standing, talking,
laughing, listening, reading the paper, drinking tea. It's
quietly being as each image, thought, judgment, concept, scene,
illusion, dream of what can never be. The old ones saw
imagination as though it were real, they believed their judgments
and thoughts as though what mind mirrored back were something
other than original cause. And what they believed about mind's
creation frightened them. They imagined their creations to be the
enemy, and then they became victims of what they imagined. They
began to do war with what they imagined, they even imagined
themselves to be real and did war with what they believed their
self-created self to be. They became lost in the self-inflicted
suffering of the imagined world they had created without the
ability to look to themselves for the original cause and go back
home to what they really are, prior to imagination. They had
become believers, they had become separate, they had become
"I"s. Being an imagined self is a very strange reality.
In fact, it is no reality at all.
Meditation--sitting, being still, waiting for the answers to
arise to meet each of the four questions and show you examples of
the turnarounds--shows you who and what you are not and can never
be. Your answers wake you up to your true nature beyond any
belief, even that one. Can you imagine a planet that doesn't yet
understand the difference between imagination and reality? A you
that isn't awake enough to laugh at what it believes itself to be
and was never, and can never be and radiate as gratitude its own
self as the cosmic joke that it never was? If you still believe
that you are a you, sit, meditate, witness what is being, and
what is being imagined as a you or another, and sit to the degree
that you would no longer believe what is shown as anything more
than… Notice what you believe as you sit in mind, meditating
that what you imagine is what has been, as though what you are
imagining really happened in another time, a time other than now.
Do you understand yet that even "now" is something to
question? That now is over and now is over, and now, whoops, it's
gone. It is all that it can be only if you believe it to be. You
are the only source of life. The images and judgments that you
witness as you meditate are what you react to, this inner life,
this only life, not the apparent physical world of mirrors.
The inner experiences of mind are the cause of all feelings and
identification and create the physical feelings as well as a
"you" and all life. When this is realized by mind,
apparent "real" or "physical" life cannot
compete with the excitement and unceasing joy of witnessing the
miracle of the beginning and end of creation, and the old world
simply falls away and ceases to be. Gone, the unreal apparent
real. The old uninteresting becomes neglected, put away,
secondary, and finally a nonexistent mirror no longer needed as
though waiting on the ego that is required to exist, an ego to
reflect what is not, and in the end it must simply stay clear
with no job to do but wait, and watch, and be, until required to
do its job.
How does meditation help us overcome emotional dysfunction or
deal with fear?
Meditation, answering the four questions that make up The Work as
we sit, eyes closed, still, mind open like a child to the old
wisdom, the uninvited hidden unknown known, invite it to surface.
Watch, it will show you the answers through the wisdom that lies
beyond what you are believing, and your emotional dysfunction
will lessen each time, as will your fear, and eventually you are
enlightened to the cause of all suffering and each thing seen is
seen through the eyes of God, brilliant.
Through meditation it is said we can wake up, become
enlightened, and see the impermanence of all things. What does
this mean?
Things are impermanent because the way that your mind sees
things is impermanent. For example, if you have ever believed
that you didn't like you or someone else, then you must continue
to attach that belief onto others, even the others that you
believe that you like. When you believe that you like
"him" and he threatens what you want or what you have,
you don't like him anymore. So who you believe him to be is
always changing. If you look in the mirror and you like what you
think, you automatically like what you see. If you look in the
mirror and don't like what you think, then you won't like what
you see. This happens before you even get to the mirror. If you
don't like your thoughts, don't look, unless you really want to
be free to understand the mind. Mind is not body. Work on the
mind and the body will follow. The body is only a reflection of
what you are believing; it can't be otherwise.
Can meditation affect the way we treat each other, as seen in
racial prejudice, or the hatred, aggression and war between
families, communities and nations?
Absolutely. Do The Work, tap into the wisdom within, listen as
you question what you believe to be true, and allow the answers
that will end your own prejudice, hatred, self-hatred,
aggressiveness toward yourself and/or others. Question your
judgments and end the war in your own mind and the war with your
family, past and future will end as it ends also in your
community and world. Your mind's war with itself is the only war
to end, the only one you can end. Until you end this internal
war, until you understand that you are the one to end it, war in
the world will never cease to be. You are responsible for the
world that you live in; no one can end it but you.
Can meditation affect us physically? Can it help us heal
epidemic illnesses, such as addiction, AIDS or cancer?
Yes, and I invite you not to believe me but to use The Work to
test it for yourself. I was an old woman at forty-three. Sick,
agoraphobic, obese, dying, and twenty-two years later I am not.
At my nine-day School we all get to see decades of high blood
pressure drop to normal, blood sugar regulate without insulin,
incredible miracles. We get to see sick people get well,
frightened people become fearless, sores that haven't healed in
weeks and months heal in days. We meditate, we call it The Work
as we ask and wait in the stillness and allow the unknown to be
known to us, to enlighten us, to heal us. What I love about
meditation, The Work, is that when the mind heals and the body
doesn't, it is of absolutely no consequence to the enlightened
mind. The enlightened mind sees the body as not "it,"
and in that the body is able to mind its own business and heal
itself or not, and always with the mind's unconditional love and
service.
Do you believe that meditation can help solve world problems?
For instance, can meditation lead to a big enough shift in
consciousness that it can make a meaningful difference to the
state of our current reality?
Of course! When you shift, the whole world shifts. So it's up to
you: one two three, SHIFT! Or not.
Can meditation affect the way we treat our environment, such
as pollution or global warming?
Absolutely. I have no reason to live because I can't, I don't.
And yet my home is powered by the sun, my Segway by the house,
the car I drive is a Prius. I am fearless, worry free, and yet I
appear to do all these things for no reason. They just happen as
thought happens. "Get solar panels," the mind says, and
then the mind comes up with reasons that it is not possible and
not one of the reasons is valid, as all thoughts have been tested
by the four questions, and our electric bill has turned around.
At some point I will have put back all that I have used and more.
This will match my existence. All traces gone, a grateful life
given back to what it came from.
Can meditation affect global poverty, or the economic and
political systems that create poverty? Can it directly affect
countries or peoples that are physically and economically
underprivileged?
Yes, fear creates poverty. Meditate, enlighten the mind and end
the fear that creates poverty, war, loss, sadness, hunger, and
all suffering. Your enlightenment enriches the world, and sitting
in The Work as you meditate leaves you fearless to be what you
know to be. Enlightenment leaves a kind mind, a generous mind, a
fearless state of existence that cannot be equaled or stopped.
The enlightened mind lived as human rich or poor, with or without
food, with or without others at war even when the war is in your
own front yard, even when it costs you everything that the other
world holds dear. In this enlightenment we cannot give enough,
because we need nothing but to serve what needs to be served, and
what needs to be served is clear, and you are fearless to do what
can be done beyond belief.
Can meditation affect the way we do business and run
corporations?
Of course. In BKI, people hire themselves and fire themselves.
They say, "I can do it," their résumé says so too, so
they are hired. They hired themselves, and I agreed to it. There
are times when it turns out that they can't do it, even though
they want to be able to, even though their résumé looked good,
it just isn't true that they can do it, because they haven't done
it, and so with all of the evidence in hand, I ask them, "If
you worked for you and this, this, and this didn't happen, you
didn't meet the deadlines, what would you do with you?" And
they usually fire themselves. Also, when I fire them and they
feel angry, sad, etc., I ask them for a list of ten reasons why I
would want to fire them, and by the end of the list they
understand and agree with me that this is the way that they can
best support BKI and themselves. Also, I ask them to give me a
list of at least three reasons why their life is better and
kinder because they no longer work for me, and three reasons why
BKI's life is better, and a list of reasons why the world is
better off because they no longer work for BKI. I love that we
all have the power to be fearless enough to come and go with what
we know to be right. BKI operates on what it can give, and people
buy and pass it on or not. If we have something of value, it
lives, and when a product has no authenticity, when it is all
package and little to back it, it doesn't live. Everything comes
and goes in the universe perfectly on time, in time, and there is
no exception to that, believe it or not. I have an amazing list
of beliefs for leaders to Work as they meditate. Meditation is
good business, the best.
What can each one of us do that will help make the world a
more caring and compassionate place?
Each day do The Work with your stressful thoughts. When you are
waiting for answers, look for negative reactions to arise in the
third question and feel fully what arises before moving to the
fourth question. In tandem with the Work meditation, each day do
three things that are kind. Do these anonymously, and if anyone
finds out, start over. This will enlighten you to what you don't
want to see that you really want to see. This exercise will bring
to you the greatest gift of all when combined with The Work, it
will give you your self back, and that is the most caring and
compassionate gift that you can give. You are the one you're
waiting for. You are the love of your life and the first, last,
and only one who can know you
_______________________
All a sane man can ever care about is giving love.
~Hafiz