Awakened Love and Work via Forgiveness (as Fun and as Freedom)

Forgiveness as Fun
Forgiveness as Freedom

Anyone out there think of forgiveness as “fun?” Probably not. It usually has this onerous feeling, something “good for you,” kind of like pulling spiritual teeth, something the Bible touts, and “good” people (who are often hard to stand being around) tout it, but it just seems like a drag.

And by the end of this section, you’ll have a bunch of ways that forgiveness might be considered fun for you, and even more ways that you’ll feel, in your guts and your heart and your body, that something very much like forgiveness brings great and almost immediate freedom.

And now, we’ll shift our approach.

This book is about love and sex and orgasm and happiness. This is yum stuff. And… all those require getting out of our ruts.

New pathway: How many of you out there wouldn’t mind being more happy?

Probably most.

So, that’s where we’ll head in this section, and come back to the forgiveness thing at the end.

And we’ll have fun and be smart by coming at happiness the wisest and most foolproof way: stopping being unhappy.

We are in a task that is at the center of what life is all about: how to end emotional suffering. And by the time this section is done, you’ll be able to “un-do” your emotional suffering … one thought at a time. Really “un-do” it. No positive thinking. No sweeping it under the rug.

Best of all, no being “good.”

You are going to be able to sweep away, one thought at a time, any and all of your unhappiness.

Is there anything in your past that is nagging away at you, helping you to be unhappy? The longer ago, the better for what I’m about to show you, because this is one of the strange adventures of human beings: we like to mull or gnaw over something long past and make ourselves unhappy.

It’s over.

It’s totally impossible to have that past be any different.

And we mull and gnaw and obsess and make ourselves unhappy wishing something should be different.

So here’s the game.

Think of someone who, as they say: “Done you wrong.”

It could have been a year ago. It could have been ten years ago. It could have been way, way back when you were a child at the mercy of one parent or both, be they of the deranged sort, or mean, or crazy, or whatever word you pick sort.

Here’s the way to make sure you know you are suffering; You can think of a specific instance.

It feels bad when you think of that.

And you have a “should” or a “shouldn’t” sentence about their behavior.

Like this: “My Dad shouldn’t have been so critical.” That’s seven words, and I suffered greatly for many years via those words.

Part of this game is to write it down. A short sentence that has a “should” or a “shouldn’t in it.”

This isn’t going to feel so great at first, and the goal is the elimination of suffering one thought at a time. And this one short sentence with the should or the shouldn’t is the thought we will un-do in this section.

Not fix.

Not positive think our way out of.

But un-do.

So write it down. Whether you like to or not, writing it down takes it out of the mind where we can obsess and go over and over.

Really do it.

Get a pencil and paper, or pen and paper, or pen and notebook, and write down a “so and so should/shouldn’t have….”

Okay.

My sentence was, back in 1998, “LYNN ANN SHOULD LOVE ME MORE.” We’d been together for seven years. She had been my friend and lover for seven years, and we’d managed to find each other in Berkeley and drink coffee and discuss design. We found a mutual love of gardening. We got out of Berkeley to an idyllic cottage in the small beautiful town of Sonoma, in so-called wine country. We created a heavenly garden.

And we fought.

Fought like hell.

I’d go to the local bookstore for advice on couples and found one book that said if the one F, for “fighting” was happening more often than the other F, for “….ing,” then you were in bad shape.

We were in bad shape. Screaming. Throwing stuff. Arguing about our arguing.

Killing the beauty of the amazing gardens we’d created.

I’d even been writing in my journal wondering about whether I could “take” it for six months or a year more. I’d committed to that, I was going to tough it out. (Recall the “being good” disease).

And then she found Hank. They talked design and drank coffee. Hank and she didn’t fight, and fascinated each other.

If you ever want to get rid of someone, being jealous is a great way, and for some strange reason that more I nagged at her about what an idiot Hank was and how heartless she was to be liking him more and more, and why she should be spending more time with me (so we could fight more and I could nag her more), the less and less appealing she found me.

And the less appealing she found me, the more I nagged and the more she withdrew, until whoosh.

She was gone.

Not home.

Off with Hank. She took her cat and her car and her gardening tools and her body and her affection a mile or two away.

To Hank’s.

Knife to my heart.

This should have been a relief. No more fighting. Beautiful cottage with beautiful gardens and no more fighting.

And when I was present, and alone without fighting, I was even a little happy.

But then the thoughts would come in. She shouldn’t have been such a traitor. She shouldn’t have left me.

And this one, the statement that changed my life when I undid it.

LYNN ANN SHOULD LOVE ME MORE.

So now, you’ve got your poison, and I had mine.

When we broke up I didn’t know the process I’m going to lead you through, and then a few months later I found it, and it changed my life and set me free to be present as often as I was willing to do “the work.”

THIS IS LIFE CHANGING WORK.

IT CAN SET YOU FREE.

IT’S “WORK,” BUT IF YOU DO IT, IT WORKS.

And this “work,” is the work of Byron Katie, which is the stage name of a woman we all call Katie, and who had a rather wonderful and earthy path to become this discoverer of a route to end suffering that could have been applied Buddhism, or a method to get six months of therapy done in a couple of hours.

Her earthy path was not one of spiritual seeker. She’d done tons of therapy and it hadn’t worked.

She was an alcoholic and a rage-aholic, and obese and chain smoking and agoraphobic and depressed.

A mess.

But a mess with a deep, deep wish. That she die. Not that her body die, she had enough “something” not to want to hurt herself, but over and over, her mantra was “I want to die.”

Meaning her suffering.

She’s in Barstow, California, a desert town, not  (before her) considered a center of spiritual breakthrough.

She’s in a halfway house. On the floor since she doesn’t think she deserves to be on a bed.

And a cockroach crosses her ankle.

This is 1983. She’s 43 years old. For 43 years her religion, she’d said, was “you pick up your socks, or I’m going to be unhappy.”

The cockroach walks. Someone else’s dirty socks don’t matter any more.

Nothing matters but the wonder of life.

She gets her wish. She “dies” to all the beliefs she’s had about EVERYTHING. Her name, how she should be, how others should be, her identity, what life was about.

No thoughts.

No beliefs.

She has an “enlightenment” experience, whatever that is, which she simply calls, “a moment of clarity.”

She dies to her suffering, to believing or even having all these thoughts we torture ourselves with.

And what’s left when all that dies? Laughter. Joy, freedom, release and holy laughter.

She’s so free from beliefs that there is no more suffering.

She’s so free from beliefs that people have to tell her that her name is Katie. When she finally decides it will help other people if she uses a name instead of pointing at her body, she decides to tag on Byron, the name of a grandmother. So that’s her tag, Byron Katie.

And she discovers something amazing.

In the midst of all this bliss and clarity, the slightest complaining/ should/ shouldn’t thought sucks her back to the old suffering.

In her clarity she sees that the thoughts aren’t true. That the believing them causes the suffering.

She comes up with the method we’re all going to do now, to “un-do” the suffering even she can have, even though she’s “awake.”

Here’s her method:

JUDGE YOUR NEIGHBOR.

WRITE IT DOWN.

ASK FOUR QUESTIONS

TURN IT AROUND

That’s it.

The judging is to sidestep all that teaching about “judge not so you won’t be judged.

No one could do that for two thousand years.

So, first step is to admit. We are kind of rats, and love to judge others.

 And that’s okay. You’ll see it’s the quickest medicine to how to heal what most needs to be healed in us.

So, step one: JUDGE YOUR NEIGHBOR, YOUR EX-MATE, YOUR CURRENT MATE, YOUR MOM, YOUR POP, YOUR KIDS, YOUR SIBLINGS.

One judgment at a time.

One “should” or “shouldn’t” at a time.

Short and bitter:

“Dad shouldn’t have been so critical of me.” “Mom shouldn’t have hit me.” “My sister should be happier.” “So and so should appreciate me more.”

But just one.

WRITE IT DOWN. You know how suffering goes. You get a nagging thought in your noggin and you obsess and go over and over (and over and over)  the same damn thought.

As if it will change the world if you just think  and obsesses about it often enough.

Later in the book, we’ll discover a whole bunch of ways to move our bodies more slowly and with more awareness to create learning again as if we were a child again, and to create grace and ease and freedom from pain and an increase in coordination.

Slow down.

Add awareness.

Create learning.

This can change anything.

So slow down, with your sentence ( you’ll see, you’ve sentenced yourself) of suffering.

Slow it down, by writing it down.

Short. Less than ten words so you can start to see the bitter truth. “My father shouldn’t have been so critical,”  is seven words. With those words, I’d sentenced myself tor 20 or 30 years of misery before I discovered this method.

And for this section, my words are:

LYNN ANN SHOULD LOVE ME MORE.

We’ll go through this process together and see what happens. This is inquiry. It’s asking questions and discovering inside what the real answer is.

It’s called the work.

Four parts.

Judge your …..

Write it down.

Ask four questions.

Turn it around.

So, you look at your statement as I looked at mine and let’s all ask the first question:

“Is it true?”

We want to think our statement is “true,” but this is the first power of this work.

“Is it true” or is it just my opinion.

If I hold up a piece of paper in the air, and let go, will it drop

Yes.

If I think it won’t drop, will that change anything?

No.

So truth isn’t dependent on my opinion.

Is it true?

We can ask that so many times a day.

“That guy cut me off because he is a mean bastard?”  Is it true? What if he’s fighting with his wife, and this is his relief. What if he has to get to the bathroom. And even if he’s generally a jerk, “is it true?” that we should never have jerks in our world?

If I believe Donald Trump should disappear, is that a truth or my opinion.

I’d like to be true, but it’s my opinion, right?

Whatever I think, he’s sticking around.

So what “Is it true?” is really asking is: Is this true like gravity, or is this an opinion, no matter how firmly you believe your opinion.

So, “Is it true?” that Lynn Ann should have loved me more, or was that my opinion.

Dang. It was an opinion. So the answer is no.

Write down question #1 after your statement. #1: Is it true?  And then write yes, no, or I don’t know.

And now comes #2.

“ #2: Can I absolutely know this is true?,” which is an even more annoying question because the only way I can absolutely know something is true, is either with something like gravity, or by being God and knowing absolutely what another human being should and shouldn’t do.

I’m not God.

Damn. I can’t absolutely know that Lynn Ann should love me more.

“Can I absolutely know this is true that Lynn Ann should love me more?” Do I, like God, know what’s best for the universe and for my future, and I absolutely know that Lynn Ann should love me more.

No. No. No. I can’t

So that’s the first half of the four questions.

Throughout this book, you’ll be given “games” that lead to learning and transformation.

And what is “learning.”

Learning is noticing a difference that makes a difference. ( This will be key to everything we “learn” in this book and comes from my ten years training in the Feldenrkais Method® and the Anat Baniel Method, pathways to increased coordination and elimination of neck, back and shouder pain, and anti-aging via brain plasticity)

We’ve done the first two questions. (Judge your … Write it down…. Ask four questions… Turn it around).

The first two questions are all about this difference: what is the difference between a truth and an opinion/ a belief/ a thought/ a judgment.

They help us “wake up” to the tragic path of most humans, including ourselves, when we way too often confuse our thoughts with truth.

Believing our thoughts can be the severest form of human suffering.

Don’t believe me.

Do this “work” over and over on every “should” and “shouldn’t” in your life and see what happens.

And how did I learn this.

In 1996 I moved to the beautiful town of Sonoma, with the fight buddy, and F…ing friend Lynn Ann. After Lynn Ann had the temerity to live her own life and seek her own happiness, a friend of mine, Robert, with whom I drove down to my old digs of Berkeley to take an improve class, told me to check out Byron Katie.

At that time, Byron Katie was still living in Barstow, and still with the husband Paul, who was exasperated as all get out as his formerly alcoholic but easily pigeonholed wife become a world wide healer of great renown.

She came to Marin often for donation based weekends that hundreds attended.

I could see quickly that sometime she’d hit the Oprah level, and be much less accessible, so when the chance to take a two week “school” with her, half time in a hotel in LA and half time in Barstow, I jumped at it.

Later, her schools became nine days and I staffed one that was held in Joshua tree.

She ate lunch with us all, talked with us all, was a human that weirdly and delightful loved everyone and was always happy.

She also had end of the year New Years “juice fasts,” several of which I participated in.

I probably spent around sixty days with her, which is a lot less than some, but the work is the work is the work, and doesn’t need her, though she’s an amazing human.

What does the work need?

JUDGE YOUR…

WRITE IT DOWN

ASK FOUR QUESTIONS

TURN IT AROUND.

The distinction in the first two questions is truth vs opinion.

The distinction in question three and four is: attachment vs non-attachment, thought Katie didn’t know this is what she’s come up with.

Here’s question #3: How do you react when you hold onto and believe that thought/ statement/ belief/ opinion?

I have people go to a new chair to first feel and then write what happens when they hold on to the story.

So do it. Sit in another chair, and read your judgment and feel how you feel and then write it down.

When I believed that “Lynn Ann should love me more” I felt bitter and betrayed and weak and failure and hopeless. And angry. And sad.

This is the laundry list.

Lynn Ann wasn’t giving me this misery.

My holding on to my belief was giving me this yucky result.

And now, switch to another chair, and ask #4: Who or what are you without that thought?

So I was back in Sonoma. I hadn’t invented the changing chair thing, but it was radically clear, that without the thought, I could just be present and alive and free and breathing.

I was something like happy.

I was a lot like free.

And my addition with the two chairs is this:

Go back and forth between #3 where you believe the story and feel that

And then go to #4 where you don’t believe it, or don’t have those thoughts.

Back and forth.

One chair is you on the drug of your beliefs.

The other chair is you in the present, with no thoughts about that.

You don’t have to give up your suffering.

You don’t have to let go.

But the more you go back and forth, the more you’ll feel, in your gut and your heart, just what you are going to get when you go to the attachment place.

So here we begin to understand forgiveness as selfishness. Holding those angry and judging thoughts hurts.

Not having them begins to set you free for the rest of your life. We’ll explore how movement and awakened talk and great touch and great sex and writing goals toward what you really want and writing gratitudes toward what is going well in your life, can all give you tremendous ways of making the wonderful life and relationship you want. But first you have to be free.

This “work” is one way to be free.

Four questions:

#1: Is it true?

#2: Is it absolutely true?

#3: How do I react when I believe that thought/ story/ opinion?

#4: Who or what am I, without that thought/ story/ opinion?

And then…

TURN IT AROUND

This they talk about in the Bible: seeing the Mote in your own eye instead of the Speck in the other’s, which always seemed a bit weird, but there is a common praise out there in the world:

One finger pointing out ( in judgment) and three are pointing back.

You are selfish, oh, I am selfish.

You don’t appreciate enough, oh, I don’t appreciate enough.

There are two turn arounds:

The simple turning around of the pronouns. “You don’t listen to me enough” becomes “I don’t listen to you enough.”

“You don’t appreciate me enough” becomes “I don’t appreciate you enough”

And so with Lynn Ann, this was my breakthrough. Loosened up by the four questions and realizing that I was causing my own misery, I had a lightning bolt realization at the turn around:

She should love me more.

Turn around:

I should love her more.

First it was, yeah, yeah. And then it was Oh, My God. I do love her. And loving her more means being happy that she is happy with Hank.

Being happy that she is free from our fighting.

Being happy that she is living the life she wants.

Loving her more was about, her, and truly set me free.

No more unhappiness when I could be truly and completely loving of her happiness.

The second turn around is very medicinal for us all:

“You should appreciate me more,” becomes, “I should appreciate me more.”

“You shouldn’t criticize me,” becomes “I shouldn’t criticize me.”

No waiting around for others to do what we haven’t learned yet.

So, Lynn Ann should love me more became, I should love me more.

Which I could do when I wasn’t wasting my energy believing the thought, and when I was set free to love her and stop demanding that reality be different than it was.

So that is my story.

That’s what I did with one of my judgments.

How did you do with yours?

Remember : you don’t have to come up with any answers, but you are welcome to learn as much as you are ready to learn.

Did into the learning.

Notice the differences:

What is the difference between your story and truth?

What is the difference between believing your story and not believing it?

What is the difference between obsessing on how the other person “should” change and realizing: oh, damn, this is a change that I haven’t really figured out yet for myself.

It’s humbling and it’s fun and it’s certainly freeing to start to see how every flaw we can get so worked up about in others is usually glaringly present in ourselves.

And so we come to the end to the forgiveness section.

The goal isn’t forgiveness: it’s to stop suffering.

How?

But judging our…

Writing it down.

Asking four questions.

Turning it around.

And when your suffering is ended you’ve done the same thing as forgiving, you’ve let go your demand that the past have been different, that “they” whatever they they were have been different.

You’ve let it go because chair #4 feels so much better than chair #3, and because the turn around has made you laugh about the work you still have left for yourself.

The old saying is: not being willing to forgive is like swallowing rat poison and hoping that the other person will die.

Chair three: feel what it feels like to swallow the rat poison.

Chair four: who or what are you without that poison in you.

Are you happier?

I hope so.

I was.

Much, much happier.

It’s worked for hundreds of thousands of people. You can find it at http://thework.com.

It will work for you, especially if you take it as a journey of learning and discovery.

The motivation is a root one: to end suffering.

And the way to end suffering is not to push suffering away, but to get crystal clear about the causes of our suffering.

I could list them from what people learn doing the work.

I won’t.

You’ll love discovering how to set yourself free.

This is part of all our work with couples, the ending of all resentments.

You can do it on your own.

You can do it with help.

It’s a technology to end suffering that is simple. And it works.

If you do the work.

All you have to lose is some time and your suffering.

Is it worth it?

You decide.

Cheers

Chris

why our Dads were dickheads--- an open letter to two young men

Dear ,, and ...

Sorry your Dad is a dickhead, and was verbally abusive over the phone.

Mine was a dickhead too. He was verbally abusive many a time.

It turns out my long time friend Mark Ritter's father was a dickhead, too, which was a huge shock, since I'd always thought he was a good guy. But he rode Mark hard and insulted some of his core values.

So what gives?
Bad fathers seems to be the norm, like maybe 90%.

And why are they bad fathers?

Because they aren't happy with themselves.

And why aren't they happy?

For the same reason, anyone is unhappy:

One: They believe their thinking.

Two: They aren't present.

These two go hand in hand. To be present is to be in the world of what we are experiencing right now, and that is not our thoughts about our experience, but the experience itself.

To be believing our thinking, which is often complaining about the world and how people are and what's wrong with them, or that's wrong with us, is a blur over the present.

The cure for them, these miserable fathers of ours, would be, or would have been (for the dead fathers) to have been present and to stop all their believing their thinking about what was wrong with them, or what was wrong with us. And to be present to themselves and their wives and their friends and us, in this marvelous moment of life.

Which is only now.

So what is our way out?
To not believe our thinking that they, these miserable men, should be different, until perhaps they are. But for now, they are mean, or abusive, or stupid or brutal or cruel or miserable.
Forget the labels even. They are just humans who can't say kind and loving things.

To think they should be different is to suffer.

To feel our pain in the present, without the words, this is the way out too.

Present experience.
Don't believe the words.
Watch the words and then leave them behind for the present, then believe them and feel the pain, then come to the present, even the present ache of a broken heart, without words, is "just" life aware of how life is sometimes.

This is words.

The now, your now, is always available.

The peace of not believing our thinking is always available, even with an aching heart, the peace is there.

It's weird. 

The Bible says, a "peace that passeth all understanding."  It comes sometimes when all the thinking would say we should be suffering.

And we chose now instead.

Back to dickhead Dads....  Or anyone bugging us.

If we are thinking they should be different, we aren't now. And so we suffer.

If we chose to shift this to just attention on the present sensations of our life right now, and leave the words in our head behind, we stop suffering.

This is our greatest freedom, the freedom to place our attention.

On the present.

Our breathing. Our skeletons. What we see right now. What we hear.

And then what?

Write a slew of goals about what we'd like to make better or different in our lives, and a series of action steps toward those goals.

Write a slew of gratitudes about what we notice in the present or what we like and love in our life.

We can't change the past.
We can't change our dickhead Dads.

We can move into, small step by small step, the life we want to create for ourselves.

If we believe we should be better at this than we are.... misery by believing our thoughts.

If we are curious about what actions might create more fun, interesting or better results,,, then the fun of making a life for ourselves is at hand.


Have fun.
Be present.
If you catch yourself believing your thoughts, notice what the effect of that is.

There are many entries in this blog of the Work of Byron Katie, and on Happiness. You might or might not enjoy them.

Myths that ruin relationships

LIFE

I am in the most amazing relationship of my life. This is partly because I walked out of my door one day to be in nature, following a nudge to be outside, and an inner urge to walk.

And walking down the street and back, I met Carol, whom within several months revealed herself to be the love of my life.

We are together because we are deeply committed to a life of meaning and love.

And because we agree and realize that you can’t have love without being present.

And because we want to live in a bigger context of higher truth (which we call God, but you don’t need to) and service.

And because we realized, even though we’d found the impossible “miracle” love our lives, there was work to do.

And we do it.

Daily.

You can, too.

3 Myths That Ruin Relationships

One reason Carol and I “work” on our relationship each day is that without doing something to keep love alive, it tends to get pushed aside or grow stale or go beyond stale-- to sour.

Even though we each found a partner far beyond our wildest dreams (as I say, Carol met 18 of my 15 criteria, and those 15 were off the charts), and have incredible compatibility and joy and growth together, we have found ways to ruin our relationship.

Which the “games” of this book—it really isn’t “work”—have been invented and/or honed to forestall.

In face, our first “date” which we didn’t know was a date, started as an hour and a half lunch to discuss a book I was writing on relationships. This book was the culmination of forty years of studying and practicing mindfulness techniques, communications game, and the amazing opportunity I had in the late 90’s to work with the amazing Byron Katie, perhaps the happiest woman in the world.

This book had many games close to what you’ll get in here. We communicated via those games well enough so that the hour and a half turned into twelve hours and we were sure we’d struck it rich with the one we’d been almost afraid to admit could be there for us.

And even with the glory of our merging, and the relief that there was someone out their beyond our wildest dreams, we still found ourselves messing things up.

The book needed some fixing. Because, even with three hundred pages of great practices, we were still occasionally going astray.

How?

We did that in the normal human way, by believing three false myths that ruin many a relationship.

Here are three myths that ruin relationships:

Myth One: If it’s not perfect, it sucks.

Or: You can’t occasionally hate the one you love.

Or: You can’t have bad moments

Myth Two: It’s all the other person’s part,

Or: I love you just the way you are, now change.

Or: If you’d just change, then I could be happy.

Myth Three: There’s no way out of this mess.

So avoid, go numb, be tortured, have an affair, leave, wait it out.

And myth in this book isn’t one of those myth’s to guide your life by, like the Myth of Trouble/ Learning/ and Redemption.

These three myths are of the fraudulent thinking sort that lead you away from the life you are meant to live, that derail you from the happiness you are meant to experience, that make impossible the more fun and sexier and deep and spiritual relationship that you really want.

Myth #3 is false. There are many ways out.

I’m offering seven.

Seven Ways Out

Liking and Loving

Being present

Movement with Awareness and Brain Plasticity

Contrasting complaining to reality

Humor with complaints

Complaints transformed to a goal, especially a “we” goal

Touch

These ways all lead you back to your real self, from which you can love better, live easier and more productively, and be happier.

All but touch can be used with huge benefit in any relationship in your life.

All are fun, a shift from how life is usually lived.

What are we waiting for?

Someday we will die

Someday we will die

and maybe—maybe__
on our deathbed, or soon after, we will know:
“What is it all about?”

until then:

How happy  can we be

paying homage to this

Miracle of Life?

What is best in your life?

What is most meaningful?

What is most deeply satisfying?

What do you like and love?

For what are you grateful?

When we answer these
we are well on the way to knowing:

Why am I alive?

Recharging Your Relationship: Day Twelve

(This is day 12 of 21 days of games to recharge a relationship that wants to be more fun, more loving, sexier and more connected to real spiritual growth.

There are a number of exercises that have been worked up to one by one.
This is an advanced flavor of a life that could be lived as a completely different level.

For a free half hour of coaching and exploration of how you could have a magical and awakened relationship, call 360-317-4773.
Well: email first with what you want.)

Here's day 12:

Day Twelve: Setting Goals as a Way Out

Remember myth #3: there is no way out. By now you’ve got a basketful of ways out and this goal thing, especially if written when you are by yourself, or spoken as a “we” goal when you are with your partner, is one of the most potent ways out.

Attention is powerful.

If we put our attention on our complaints, we stir ourselves down to bitterness and frustration.

If we put our attention on what we want, we tune ourselves toward a better life.

And here’s the deal: We want to speak to our partner, and write (in handwriting) our goals in two segments:

The masculine segment: What we want to get done, or what we want to have happen.

The feminine segment: How we want that to be as it gets done.

I can have the goal of finishing this book by December 15. That’s the masculine goal.

I can have to goal that this is done without pushing, and with a lot of ease, delight and discovery. That I am present and relaxed and happy as I write.

That brilliant ideas come naturally and easy to me.

That the catalog of all my discoveries over all of my years be easily and readily available to me.

So that’s the goals you want to say in your “we” goals.

What you’d like to happen:  “My we goal is that our communication improve.”

And how you’d like it to happen: "My we goal is that we easily and almost magically keep discovering ways to communicate that help us to talk and hear each other in ways better than we can even imagine.”

Ask for it all.

Point the arrow of life where you really want it to go.

And what helps give fuel to this arrow:

Being present.

Being grateful.

Being in like and love.

Being in the learning mode.

Being in the laughing mode.

Love, laughter, learning and listening: Listening to the now. Listening to the other. Listening to your intuition. Listening to your body.

All these will fill you with a kind of love/ divine/ happy power energy to get your life going toward these goals.

LEARNING VIA MOVEMENT WITH AWARENESS AND VARIATION.

Learning is the noticing of differences that make a difference.

Over and over we alternate between hanging out in the complaining mind and the real you, the you that is present and grateful and likes and loves, and is in your body in this moment and is aware of the outside world at this moment.

As part of your rapid development, and as a gift from the Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel training, here is another movement to fuel both learning and presence and deeper and more pleasurable breathing.

Stand and put your hands behind your head.

One: arch up your head and breathe in deeply as you push your belly out.

Two: shift your weight to your left foot and bend forward as you breathe out and move your right elbow toward your right knee.

Three: Keeping the weight on your left foot, raise your head and body and elbows and rotate your left elbow up and to the left as you breathe in and push out your belly.

Four: Breathe out and shift your weight to your right foot and take your left elbow toward your right knee as you lean forward and round.

Five: Breathe in and keep your weight to your right, and push your belly out and lift your gaze and your right elbow up and to the right.

Back to two. And keep repeating a number of times.

Notice lots of differences: weight on the left foot and weight on the right. Breathing in and breathing out. Belly in and belly out. Back arching and back folding. Twisting to the right and twisting to the left.

Do this a lot.

Enjoy it.

And now let’s do day twelve:

Have a big fat complaint in your head.

Stand opposite your partner and do three rounds of the above movement.

Partner A now starts.

First: Saying I like… I love… I am grateful for… twice each.

Second: shift to another spot and think the complaining thought.

Third: come back to in front of the partner and share observations in the present, now standing but as before: “Now I am aware, in myself of…” ( Picking something below the waist). “Now I am aware, outside myself of….” “Now I am aware, in myself of… (Picking something above the waist). “Now I am aware, in the outside world…”

Fourth: Move back to the complaining spot, think the complaining thought and feel the shift.

Fifth: Come back to the real you spot and do the arching/ rounding and twisting movement

Sixth: Go back to the complaining spot, thinking the thought. Feel the differences in your mood and your body and your breathing.

Seven: Come back to the real you and formulate a “we goal,” that includes both what you’d like for the two of you and how you’d like it to be.

Eight: then fuel this more by any or all of the real you energizers:
Commenting on the present.
Liking / loving and gratitude.
And, aware movement with variations and presence.

Then smile.

Say “thank for listening” to your partner, and each take three deep breaths together.

Reverse this.

And do it again. Each way, all eight steps.

This is a  lot.

So what? We’ve spent a lifetime programming ourselves to believe the nonsense of our complaining minds.

Now we have the contrast to feel

Now we have the fuel to energize our goals as to what we really want.

To have different results we get the great joy of “working on ourselves.”

If you want a meaningful life, this is the price of admission. Pay in time and attention and notice the differences.

Don’t believe anything you don’t experience.

Hell is your state of mind that is complaining.

Heaven is reality.

Enjoy the difference.

Why People hate Christians

Why do people hate Christians?

Because they aren't Christian.

Most of the people who are so-called Christians are busy turning people off to Christianity by being exactly as Jesus preached against:

Rule bound hypocrites, much more interesting in telling other people where they are wrong and what rule they are breaking than helping people achieve what everyone wants to achieve: happiness, love, content, fun and harmony.

And usefulness.

They have the "my way or the highway" rule, which blasts people for not believing that Jesus is the only way to heaven, or God, or even happiness.

Minor detail: Jesus said I am the way. And Follow me.

He didn't say He was the only way.

And never said to worship him.

What did He say.

Love your God with all your heart,

and love your neighbor as thyself.

Which is sadly true, except most people's god is either money or status, or their ego, or their image of themselves, and this is what they are in love with.

And most people love themselves hardly a whit, and so a busy not loving others.

Which comes to the core of why people hate Christians.

Jesus said to love your enemy.

The so-called Christians don't love unless you buy into their way of thinking.

These so-called Christians set up conditions, which is the opposite of love: follow these rules, jump through this creed, sign on to hating gays and maybe even working class, and you, too, can get my approval.

And what did Thomas Aquinas say, or St Thomas Aquinas as he is called:

One may have never heard the

sacred word "Christ"

and be closer to God

than a nun

or 

a priest.

And what was Jesus' mission?

To wake up people to their ability to find, right now, the kingdom of heaven within, and to love God ( call it Life) and to love other people and to love yourself.

This is big work.

Scary work.

And frightened people always like rules more than freedom, liberation, real love, happiness.

Rules seem to protect.

Except they make to so-called Christians content only in their heads with their righteous bubble, and they turn off people to what could be ONE of the many beautiful paths of liberation on this earth,

An earth where suffering is the main path of most lives.

What causes that suffering?

Ask and ye shall receive an answer.

But not in your head.

Cheers,
Chris

what is your life for?

What  is the meaning of your life?

What is most important to you?

Where are you happy?

Where are you least happy ?

 These are the questions that people have asked for ever and ever. So we might as well ask them now!

 Good place to start is always… Now. What is your  sensation  of your self as a living being ,  right now?

 And from that sensation of being present in your body right now, can you answer the questions about the meaning and importance and happiness and unhappiness ?

The Present. Loving Life/ Others/ Yourself

The Present:
Our Only Route to Freedom and Love

Here’s the deal:

One: If you had perfect parents AND

Your partner had perfect parents , THEN

You can have a grand relationship and be mindless

Two: We are either mindful or mindless

Three: If we did NOT both have perfect parents, things are always going to get awful unless we are mindful.

This isn’t to say they will always be awful.

In mindlessness, we can coast through good times, or stay busy enough to be out of each other’s hair, but there will be times when one or the other (or both, as often happens) have stressful/ bad/ shitty days.

When that happens, and we are mindless, guess what?

Not being mindful, we don’t get to chose what our reactions are going to be?

Who does?

Our programming.

Where does most of our heavy duty programming come from: our parents.

So, that’s the formula: stress, plus mindlessness equals we fall back on the rather funky examples and programming of our parents and act them out on our poor mate.

And our poor selves, because we aren’t really home when we are acting out the mindless game.

We are a pawn of our programming.

This would be bad, bad awful news, if we didn’t have an alternative to being mindless.

But we do.

To be mindful.

Remember number two at the start of this chapter: we can be mindful, or we can be mindless..

Mindful, we can notice:

Oh, darn, my buttons are being pushed. Better say something about that.

Or, wow, look at the way my words have caused my loved one to tense their breathing and look hurt in their face.

Maybe those weren’t the words I really wanted to say.

So, that’s that deal: Mindful we have choices. We can notice our own reactiveness.

We can notice the effects of our words and actions.

We aren’t lost in our own little world, but are paying attention to reality.

We notice the birds and our breathing and our skeletons holding us up in gravity and the look on our loved one’s face and the tone of our voice and the feelings that are coming up in us.

The world is new and fresh when we are mindful and if things aren’t “going right,” we can notice this, and say something about it and get curious.

And make suggestions.

Or requests.

All that, the making requests, the diffusing our own reactivity will come later in the book.

For now, we are going to practice pointing our attention to what we like in life.

What we are aware of in the present and what we like in life.

In couples, so much conversation is either planning out the business of what to next or later. And a lot is complaining about what happened in the past.

And the lovely blaming the other for when we feel bad.

So, let’s get our attention on what we like muscles build up and spend three days talking about what turns us on in life, what we like in life, what we are aware of in the present.

Like this…

The Liking Game

In some religions they lay it out like this: Two biggie commandments, Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Check that out closely and it’s three rules for the good life:

Love God

Love others.

Love yourself.

And now, gentle reader, we’re going to take a short cut, a short cut to happiness, contentment and bliss.

A way out of a bunch of conceptual tangling and fussing that has waylaid humanity for way too long.

Instead of God, we are going to say Life.

Capital L Life.

The miracle of the flowers and the creeks and the salmon and smiling children and tuba’s and kissing and square dancing and redwood trees.

Life.

So the Big Three rules become:

Love Life.

Love other people.

Love yourself.

And guess what?

You are your partner are going to practice that for twenty minutes a day for at least three days.

And you are going to start by noticing the big three: yourself, another person, and Life.

Here’s the game, sit as before in two chairs close to each other and look each other in the eyes as one speaks and the other listen.

Be present to your voice as you speak.

Both be present to the voice and the breathing and the body, both your own and the other’s.

And talk in two turns of talking and two turns of listening like this.

For five minutes cycle through these six sentence stems, finishing them as the words come to you.

1.    I notice in the present this about myself…

2.    I notice in the present, this about you…

3.    I notice, in the present, this about Life around us…

4.    I like this about myself…

5.    I like this about you…

6.    I like this about Life…

Pause for a couple of sweet breaths as you look each other in the eye, and then go back through the six sentence stems again.

And again.

And again.

Until the five minutes are up.

Notice the delight in just talking about what you like.

Notice the delight is just listening to your love talk about what they like.

Do this two turns each.

See if it changes how you talk in the rest of your life!!

Touch in the Now, wow, no hurry, no worry, just "feel"

The book is once again, Love, Lust and Enlightenment
and it still wants you to have a marvelous relationship
and
a body brain teamwork that helps you feel younger and smarter and happy
each and every day.

Here's a chapter, day six.
It's going to be thirty day's worth of couple delight and anti-aging fun.

Day Six: Touch in the Now 

Life is now.

We know (as experience) that we are alive,  moment by moment—call that awake.

We are lost in our hurry or our inner chatter, and missing our experience in the moment --- call that asleep.

Someday we will die, and all these moments of having a chance to sense and know and feel ourselves as bodies and beings on this marvelous messy bright beautiful mysterious blue sky green lead infinite laughter flower and bird song planet Earth will be over.

Done.

Dead , finished, over.

One of the surest ways to know we are alive, and to be present is to follow our breathing.

Now. Try it. Notice your breathing and what does that do for you? Notice that difference. (Who notices that?)

Another constant of life on earth, is gravity. What do you feel now about your bottom pressing into the chair, or your feet into the floor?

What does noticing you are a real live body, in breathing and in gravity, what does that do for you?

(Who notices that?)

Breathing.

Gravity.

Always there. Always an immediate way to “wake up” to now.

BE IN AWARENESS OF NOW.

AWARENESS OF YOUR BREATHING.

AWARENESS OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO GRAVITY.

AWARENESS OF YOUR AWARENESS.

And from here, let’s touch today.

Try two turns of three minutes each of touching the other’s foot.

Go slowly.

And In the first turn, do what you did in prior touches. Take turns verbalizing what you are feeling as the toucher, and as the touchee.

So, go three minutes each each way with that.

Second turn:

Each time you verbalize what you are noticing, start with three verbalizations
One: about your breathing
Two: about what you notice about the other person’s breathing

Three: what you notice about your connection to gravity.

And then four and five:

What you notice either in your touching, or in being touched.

Take turns sharing these five statements.

Realize what a relief this can be, not to have to think. To simply be reporting on breath and gravity and touch.

Go back and forth this way several times.

At the end share for a couple of minutes, what it was like to be touched and to touch in the two different ways.

Even now, even in this sharing, you might want to walk of now as gravity, or now as breath, and then go back to sharing about your responses and inspirations and realizations in this “game.”

Radical Presence via the Gurdjieff Meditation "Plus"

From my forthcoming book:
LOVE, LUST & ENLIGHTENMENT

Day Seven: Enlightenment as being
“In Your Body”
The Gurdjieff Meditation Plus….

Here’s how to enjoy being more awake in your day: be present to your arms and legs.

And spine

All day.

Get out of your head and come to your senses.

Get out of those words in your noggin and sense your feet and toes, as far away from your head as you can get and still be in your body. Sense your spine holding them all together.

The party of being human.

The “five lines” that a child often draws when they first draw people: a head, a line down from the head. Two legs off the bottom of that line. Two arms up higher off the line.

Sense the five lines of you.

This is why people like yoga: it kind of makes a game of the various shapes you can put the lines in.

This is why the Gurdjieff meditation “plus” is so useful: Wherever you are you are in some “shape.”

What is it?

What is it now?

The “plus” is because the Gurdjieff meditation as the standard and amazing practice is both arms and both legs, and “meditation” days are painting houses, and building decks and digging ponds, as chances to practice being “in” the arms and legs.

The “plus” of the spine in from Moshe Feldkenkrais and that work I mentioned in the chapter on the weekend where I felt like I was twelve again. Moshe likes people to see themselves as five lines.

He understood that as the way the brain organizes movement most quickly.

This book is about enlightenment.

Enlightenment is about coming out of our heads and into our senses.

Arms and legs and spine are a huge percentage of our real estate and always in some configuration.

And we are usually unaware of these big chunks of us, unless we are lucky enough to have a physical job.

And when we put out attention on our five lines, vast chunks of our brains are lit up.

And our attention is vastly sharpened.

Don’t believe me.

Give it a go.

Sense those feet and toes.

And legs.

Sense those finger and hands.

And arms.

And spine/ head/ pelvis.

Wiggle around, talk, stand, sit, talk, write.

Sense them as you do anything. Everything.

Let’s do the morning meditation.

This will help Love. You want need to drag for attention. You’ll be giving it to yourself.

This will help Lust. You’ll be in the full body, not just genitally driven.

This will help enlightenment. Not just meditating with your eyes closed, but all day, how much more delightful time to “wake up”

Here goes:

Sit in a chair. Or anywhere, feet on the ground/ floor.

Close your eyes.

RIGHT LEG

Start at the tips of your right toes.

Sense them all, and keeping the attention always where it’s been before, move your attention bit by bit up through your leg to sense all the inside and outer flesh of your toes, until you reach your feet.

The whole foot, all of it, inside and out.

The ankle.

Up, up, keeping all you’ve sensed so far.

The lower leg.

Knee. ( No words, just sense it as…..sensation)

The upper leg, all the way to the hip joint.

Sense this entire chuck of you, toe tips to hip joint. Fill it up with attention.

THE RIGHT ARM

Keep the entire right leg lit up with attention and add on the fingertips of the right hand.

Move up, through the ‘

Fingers

Hand

Wrist

Lower arm

Elbow

Upper arm, to the shoulder socket.

KEEP THE WHOLE RIGHT ARM AND ENTIRE RIGHT LEG IN ATTENTION.

Good.

And now, add on

THE LEFT ARM

Starting from the top, this mediation sometimes being called, “around the world.”

The left upper arm from shoulder down to the

Elbow and then

Lower arm, wrist, hand, fingers, finger tips.

KEEP THE WHOLE LEFT ARM AND TWO RIGHT LIMBS IN ATTENTION.

Now, finishing the “circle”

THE LEFT LEG

Upper leg at the hip joint, down through ALL of it to the

Knee

Lower leg, ankle, foot, toes and toe tips

Now sense all four, fully, for while, then add on

YOUR SPINE.

Start with your pelvis. Feel how it connects to both legs, which you are keeping in sensing.

Find the spine rising out of your pelvis and sense up, as much vertebra by vertebra as you can, to the base of your skull.

The spine doesn’t attach to the arms, but feel their proximity, and sneak in the ribs if you want.

Feel the skull, your skull on top of your spine, as if pelvis – spine – head are your central line.

Which they are.

SENSE ALL FIVE.

INDULGE AND ENJOY.

Then

Add on listening. Hear whatever you hear WHILE KEEPING BOTH ARMS AND BOTH LEGS ABD YOUR SPINE IN ATTENTION.

You now have inner and outer attention.

Bask in that for awhile.

Then OPEN THE EYES AND NOTICE REFLECTED LIGHT COMING IN TO THEM.

Four windows out into the world , two ears and two eyes.

Five bastions of inner attention, two legs and two arms and one spine.

Hang out in this fullness.

Now get up and go about your day staying in all this attention.

Past thoughts on "the book"

Hello, happy Wednesday

I am moving along on a book that has changed titles twice.

First is was Love, Lust and Relationship.

Second, is was Love, Lust and Enlightenment: Falling Back in love with your mate, and becoming “almost enlightened” to boot.

Both those versions started like this…

“This is a book about enlightenment.

No, wait, this is a book about great sex.

No, wait, this is a book about being a great friend to that person who is driving you crazy—your partner.

No, wait, this is a book about being a great friend to another person who is driving you crazy—yourself.”

It’s was an exciting title, and the book filled up with touch games and talk games and even some games to get people clear on how amazing and important it was to be in their bodies.

And then it need to be a bigger book. It need to include a big synthesis of all I have learned in all these years as a Movement Coach and a Relationship Coach.

And what everything had in common was what I realized could be called Radical Listening.

Thus the new title:

The Power of Radical Listening:

Creating the Magical Bedroom,

The Magical Boardroom, & the

Forever Young Body

Radical listening to each other’s talk for a magical bedroom and magical boardroom/ workplace. Radical listening in touch for that revitalized and magical bedroom. And radical listening to your own body, via present awareness of movement, for the forever young body.

And how did this “forever young body” come to the bedroom and the workplace?

Well, obviously, a body that works well, is better in the sack. And a body without neck, back and shoulder issues is much more happy at work.

And it’s deeper, it goes to the principles that make Radical Listening so powerful.

I lucked into all this when I was 55 and I took a weekend workshop, after which I felt as if I was 10 years old again, in movement, and acuity of thinking.

This led to 9 years of training in two systems, the Feldenkrais Method and the Anat Baniel Method, that created a platform for helping high performing musicians and people with back, neck and shoulder issues, and children with special needs.

How did it do this?

By bringing people into the present, deeply.

By creating situations of non habitual behavior and new options.

By connection of places that usual aren’t connected.

And these are how Radical Listening will work in talking and in touching and in movement.

For example in talking to a loved one, or an estranged one, or a person with whom things are kind of blah and you’d like to have REAL connection, here’s a major game in the book.

Listening back and forth for 18 minutes.

Take a timer, and commit to three turns of three minutes each.

In the turns one talks and the other listens.

We apply all three principles of Radical Listening.

Being present:

Both the talker and the listener attempt to be present to their bodies, to the melody of the words, to each other’s breathing.

Non-habitual:

The listener, says nothing and does not “think” about their response .

The talker does NOT talk about:

The other person ( if it’s a troubled issue, there are patterns of way too much talking about the other)

The relationship ( ditto)

What the person said in the prior turn

This last constraint brings about much better listening because we aren’t formulating what we are going to say in response, because that’s off the table.

It makes easier talking because the person speaking doesn’t have to worry about what the other person is going to “think” about what they said. ( Later, of course, this might want to be in the game)

To make things even juicer, a non-habitual recommendation for the speaker would be:

Talk about present noticing. ( I feel my hand on my pants. I feel my breath coming in. I see your brown eyes. I see your breathing--- noticing about the other person is a far cry from the usual commenting about their personality)

Talk about what they like. (This a far cry from the habit of much of talking to be about complaining)

And the third part:

Connecting: Look each other in the face or eye as you talk, and as you listen.

With touch.

These three are great:

Present.

Non habitual

Connection

With movement

Present

Non habitual

Connection

All to be revealed in the book. Call for a sample of each type of exercise in the first four chapters. 360-317-4773