A game of friendly and present asking, a LOVE game

Week Three, Day Two: LOVE

Listening, listening, listening

Ask from presence

Listen from presence 

Inside of Gratitude and Present Awareness

That’s all: that’s a lot

 Here’s a fun game today. We are going to ask a question. The more it can be from curiosity the better.

For example: when you were ten, what was most important to you?

When you were twenty what was best in life and what was most confusing?

Or even, the Big Dreams questions: If we could make a huge difference in healing the Earth and/or healing Humanity, what would that be?

There is a set of “contentious” questions, that might not be so helpful.

Like: “Last night when you said that this and that was bothering you, did you ever look at that pattern as coming from your childhood?”

Even worse, “Why are you so grumpy all the time?”

So, you get the idea: leave aside slightly or not so slightly warfare questions.

Ask something that would be interesting for your mate to answer.

Ask something that would be interesting for you to hear.

And do it in presence.

Look each other in the eye.

Say gratitudes before asking.

Say three or four or five or more awarenesses in the present.

Take a deep breath.

Be quiet inside for awhile if no question comes to you.

Take another deep breath.

Ask the question.

Let them answer.

They, too say gratitudes and awarenesses before they get into the “meat” of the answer.

Why?

Because the framework of this game is curiosity inside of awareness and gratitude.

It’s patience.

We don’t have to rush anything.

The questions answerer has five minutes, including gratitudes and awarenesses to answer.

Then the switch. The one who answered, now takes a deep breath.

And says gratitudes

And says awarenesses.

And then asks a fun and deep question.

So there is always gratitude and awareness between the mental aspects.

And, hopefully the questions will evoke responses from the whole person.

So, just because we all love the games in bold print, here we go

Love Game #11: 

Partner A: 

Ask a question after gratitudes and awarenesses

Partner B:

Answer the question after gratitudes and awareness

Take five minutes to do both

Switch:

Partner B:

Ask a friendly and evocative question after gratitudes and awarenesses

Partner A:

Answer the question after gratitudes and awarenesses

Take five minutes to do both

In all the talking, and waiting to talk, and listening:

Follow your breathing

Connect to gravity

Connect to the inside now

Connect to the outside now.

Go back and forth a couple of times.

This can be a lot of fun on safe car drives.

It can be a relaxing way to spend an evening together.

Essentially you are treating your partner like a new friend, about whom you have easy going curiosity and good will.

This is good for us.

This can be new for us.

Give it a try not just today, but three or four times a week.

I know, I know, things to do are piling up.

Oh, well. They are nice things, and tomorrow, we’ll get a little more sexy, so that’s nice, too.

Summary of Week Three, Day Two: LOVE

Ask and answer friendly questions.

Start the asking and start the answering with

Gratitude

Awareness in the Present

Be in breath and sensing and noticing the now, as you speak and as you listen.

Enjoy this new way of being.

Now as in, Now as Out, Awareness as Who we Really Are

Week Two, Day Five: ENLIGHTENMENT

This Now is always Now

Awareness doesn’t have an agenda

Waiting as Food

Action as a double chance to Wake Up

Listening from Emptiness

Where are you, right now?

Enjoy this two ways:

Inward: what do you sense in your body that is interesting? (I.e. avoid the usual complaining way of life where people only notice the pains when they notice their body)

Sense something, and actually sense the sensations.

Don’t compare: like “feels better than usual.”

Don’t judge or describe: “painful,” “Injured”

Don’t complain: “this ankle has been bothering me.”

Don’t compare: “my legs used to be thinner.”

Just the actual, right here, right now sensations.

The easiest way to do this is to be aware of how one part of your body is relating to another part: my left leg is over my right thigh. I notice my right foot on the floor. I can feel my fingers interlaced.

Or how one part is interacting with the world: I can sense my pelvis pressing against the chair. I can feel my shirt against my ribs. I notice my fingers typing on the keyboard.

Noticing your shape: the shape of your arms and spine and legs, this is crucial to realizing yourself in reality. Feel the arms and legs and spines as if you were going to draw a picture of yourself, and this would set up the basic structure of the drawing.

And there is always breathing. Your air comes in your nose, down your throat, and your ribs might expand, or your belly, or both. 

These are the going in part of being present.

And then there is the “going out” part.

Your eyes are seeing something right now. What?

Your ears are hearing something now. What? 

(If this is not true for you: what ways are you “taking in” the outer world?)

We can have attention in and attention out at the same time. And there is “someone/ something/ a great mystery” in between.

There is some sort of “Awareness” that can be aware of sensations inside of us.

There is this same mysterious and always present “Awareness” that can be noticing the world outside of us.

That’s the game. Perhaps the most important game in all of life:

Enlightenment Game # 10: Have your attention in three areas

Right here

Right now:

Inner attention on sensations in arms and legs and spine and pelvis and gravity and breathing

Outer attention on the world outside of you

Attention on your awareness as the “you” that has been there all along

Been there all along?

So it seems.

When you were four, and walking down the street with a parent, and you saw the blue sky and the birds on a tree and felt your feet moving on the ground, and perhaps had a hand in one of your parents’ hands: Who was aware of that?

It wasn’t your name.

Wasn’t your age.

Wasn’t your political beliefs (hopefully, you had none).

Wasn’t your skin color.

But is was “you,” some hard to define, maybe impossible to find “you” that has been the “you” of “you” all along.

Don’t worry about or even think about this much.

Just look out the window.

Feel the awareness that is looking out the window.

Now feel/ sense your bottom/ pelvis on the chair.

Notice your awareness noticing them both. Be aware of your awareness.

Who is doing that?

Can you pin that down? Can you locate where this “awareness” is coming from?

Can you feel how core that is to your existence?

That’s the main game of your life, really.

Be aware going in.

Be aware going out.

Feel/ sense/ notice/ delight in the awareness of you, being aware, no matter what you are being aware of.

Now, get up.

Take a walk.

In nature.

In the now.

In the enlightenment game land.

Enlightenment Game #11: Take a walk.

In awareness.

And the delight of awareness.

In nature.

And the delight of nature.

Doesn’t have to be a park. Does have to be outside.

Sense your legs moving and your feet as the touch and lift from the ground.

Notice your arms swinging, usually in a balanced and opposite way to how your legs are moving forward.

Sense your spine holding up your head.

It’s good to be alive. 

Add on, what am I seeing, right now? (And it changes every step, at least slightly)

What am I hearing, right now?

And: is my breath coming in or out.

We always have now. We almost always have nature of the outside version.

We always have nature of the sort:  “this is our body, designed to be on the planet Earth, for millions of years.”

Enjoy

Summary of Week Two, Day Five: ENLIGHTENMENT

Be present.

You always can.

Try for three areas of attention: 

inner, 

outer, 

your “you/ awareness”

Go for a walk.

Enjoy legs, arms, breathing and the outside world.

And the your world of awareness.

When things good: hug. When things bad: hug.

We are alive. We are mammals, warm blooded, and we like to cuddle, like to sleep together, like to touch other bodies.

This is how we are made.

This is your assignment, my assignment, the human assignment: hug a living being every day.

Lust Game # 5: Hug a living being every day.

If you have a mate and live with that mate, and are both in the same house/ bookstore/ park/ place, go hug that mate right now.

If you have a mate and they are somewhere else, make sure you hug them, at least twice, today.

If you have a work environment where hugging is “okay,” hug someone at work.

If you have no mate, and a “ Non-Okay” work environment, hug a tree today, at least twice.

This may seem weird.

So be it.

Weird is good.

One of the reasons I’ve had such a life of miracles, is that I went for a “risky” adventure when I was 65. I’d given up my life in Sonoma several years before, given away all my tools and most of my belongings and had gone four different places to live with friends and work with special needs children in : Atlanta, Tucson, Arcata, and Orcas Island.

The last, Orcas Island, seemed like a paradise up the the Puget Sound, and I lived there for a full year from October 16, 2009 to October 16, 2010.

Then, faced with another wet winter, I decided, partially on my son’s suggestion, and partly on knowing one very interesting person in Austin, to “try” Austin out for the winter.

Then I’d live the life of Austin in the winter and Orcas in the summer.

And how did this come about from weird?

I had never been to Austin, and used to tell the joke about the contest where the first prize was a one week trip to Texas, and the second prize was a two week trip to Texas.

But….

I’d heard that Austin was the “Berkeley of Texas”  ( as Madison, the Berkeley of Wisconsin, and Boulder the Berkeley of Colorado, and Ann Arbor the Berkeley of Michigan.)

I loved Berkeley, so Austin seemed worth a try.

And weird?

Austin had/ has (it’s losing ground a bit) a slogan: Keep Austin Weird.

I’d always been slightly weird, to more so. (Witness going off to four new places in my sixties). So I figured Austin might be the place for me.

It was.

Weirder than I’d imagined, and with far more magic.

I’ll share plenty of the magic as the book progresses (Sexual training in female orgasm meets meditation, Life Transformation possibilities due to a 5000 year old Chinese energy system, a set of waters called Barton Springs that allows the soul and body to be refreshed no matter what kind of 90 degree and hundred degree summer weather central Texas likes to cook up.)

You’ve already heard the magic of Carol Williams buying a house down the block and ending up Carol Elms.

Austin is that kind of place.

Weird is good.

One way to think of weird is as the code word people say when they see someone being authentic. Some people like weird/ authentic people. Those can be very interesting people. Some are freaked by us weird and authentic people. So be it. That’s their business.

What’s your business?

To be happy.

To be present.

To connect with the fullness of life and the human need for connection and touch.

Hence: hug a person.

And if there is no person that will do, hug a tree.

I remember wondering what hugging a tree would be like, with so many jokes/ remarks out there about tree huggers.

And then I hugged a big redwood and felt that depth and serenity and power from deep in the Earth.

Hugging a big tree felt like connecting to a source of peace that was rooted so much deeper than we can attain in the human dimension.

Hugging trees, even if you’ve got a friend or mate around who is up for hugs, this can be a deeply fulfilling part of your life.

When we hug a tree we can usually feel the depth, literally, of Life on this amazing planet Earth.

And that’s the backup plan. Always have something alive to hug.

And if you are in a relationship, allow yourself to hug your mate, deeply and fully at least twice a day.

When? Right now.

When? In the morning.

When else? In the evening.

Why the morning? You have wake up energy, and you have a day to go into. The love between you will fuel and deepen this day.

Why the evening?

Because you are going to go to bed together, and sex or no sex, touching bodies is a very, very, very important part of relationship.

And here’s another game with hugs.

It’s called, the Avoid trouble and Hug Game.

Why?

Because sometimes we get in trouble/ conflict/ a mess/ disconnection with our mate.

And, though most of us are incredibly slow to realize this: When things are bad between people, talking almost always makes things worse.

Why?

Because the part that talks is usually the part that wants to be “right.”

And the part of the mind/ intellect that wants to be right, is usually both defensive and offensive in subtle and obvious ways, all of which are deeply engrained.

Engrained in what?

Winning at being right.

The problem with this, of course, is that both people can’t be right if they want the other to be wrong. Which they usually do.

So “talking things out” usually means trying to make the other person wrong, which usually makes the other person feel like shit, so if you happen to “win” (which happens very rarely) you lose.

So what’s the secret? Shut up and hug.

Lust and Love Game #1: When things feel bad/ are bad between you and your mate, ask for a two minute hug.

Hug.

Don’t talk.

Feel your feet on the floor.

Feel your breathing and their breathing.

Feel where you are touching.

Feel your hands.

Feel their hands.

Feel each other’s heartbeat if you can.

Slow down inside.

Have as few words in you head as possible.

If you have “wounded emotion” feelings, see if you can sense the feelings in your body without words, and without demand that they go away.

Allow the pleasure and NOWNESS of the hug to be the central fact of your life for these two minutes.

Notice another nice/ wonderful/ healing/ connecting aspect of hugging when things get rough.

This helps us not do the avoidance thing that people can get into when things “go south.”

This is it: we can be in fight, flight, or flow.

Fight: is to argue it out, trying to be right, in the guise of “sharing our feelings/ talking it out.”

Flight: leave the room, shut down, get on Facebook, avoid, avoid, avoid.

Flow: Things are easy and natural. Like a tennis game going with incredible ease. Or a dance together without effort. 

Or a hug, that just goes on and on and on, and is enough, is plenty, is great, is nourish, is wonderful.

You are connection.

This is who we start the world as, connected full time in our Mom’s belly, and then connected a ton to them when we are little.

If we are lucky a bunch of aunts and uncles and the dad and grandparents pick us up a lot.

We like our body.

Others hold us with affection.

Hugs are good.

When things are going well: Give yourself and a friend or a tree hug

When things are NOT going well: Give yourself and a friend or a tree a hug

Love and Lust Game #2: When things are going well between you and your mate: hug.

Will this solve all problems?

No.

Will this, like gratitude and coming into the present, make a huge shift?

Yes.

And now we have a final delicious aspect of hugging.

We are going to combine “bare bones enlightenment” with our hugging?

How

So there. This is an easy chapter.

To think about.

To agree with.

But to do?

You find out.

Two hugs a day.

Morning and night.

When things go well.

When things suck.

One solution: SHUT UP AND HUG.

Summary of Week Two, Day Three: LUST

Lust involves touch

Being a mammal involves touch.

If things go poorly: hug.

If things go well: hug.

If there is no human around to hug: hug a tree.

This is much better to do, than to plan to do, or think about doing, or think about planning to getting around to it.

Hug.

Doing the Work of Byron Katie on ALL complaints

Week Two, Day Two: LOVE

Turn complaints to gibberish

Refine and dissolve ALL complaints with the 

“Work of Byron Katie.”

In love, we have our moments when we are not particularly thrilled with what the other person said.

If this person is our “True Love,” these words often hurt the worst.

One: They are our True Love. They aren’t supposed to say harsh/ mean/ selfish/ inconsiderate/ disrespectful things to us.

Two: They have been with us for awhile and know our weak points, and this is often where they go when they want a little blood.

Three: They “love us.” They aren’t supposed to want a little blood. (This is the same as One.)

And how many times have we counter-attacked, pointed out their hypocrisy, showed them how they do or say even worse things than they just said about us.

Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.

It’s grade school stuff.

And we fall for it.

We have this ancient and immature story: They started it, so…. What they said isn’t “fair,” so…..That wasn’t nice, etc, so, we get to retaliate….

This is all bullshit.

Why?

The results, the results, the results. Anytime we’ve tried tit for tat, it’s been a disaster.

And we don’t have to do this bullshit anymore.

This can be nipped in the bud, by taking our gibberish way of saying the complaints and doing a five part process with them.

This sounds like a lot.

Well, it’s “work.”

And it’s work that can do six months of therapy in a couple of hours.

Love Game # 8

Before you feel like saying a complaint, don’t.

Write down a statement of the complaint in gibberish.

Then do the work of Byron Katie on your statement.

What’s the work of Byron Katie?

Stick around. It’s a system discovered by a woman named Katherine in 1986, out of immense suffering. She was obese and chain smoking and depressed and alcoholic and a mess.

And then she “woke up,” or as she says, “had a moment of clarity.”

But is was really, really clear clarity, so she started laughing and feeling at total peace and bliss with the world, since all of a sudden she didn’t believe any of her thoughts.

She was free.

Her suffering was all gone. She was 43. Suffering was over.

Except when it wasn’t.

If a thought of complaint (and so many of them are) came to her brain, say the old fashioned thought that “My Mother shouldn’t have….,” then suffering would roar back.

All the more painful from her new state of almost full time bliss.

And so she had evidence right there immediately: I am suffering because of my thoughts.

And this method came to her: Write down the thought, Ask four questions and do the “turn around.”

Write it down to slow it down, so you don’t go over and over in your head.

Ask four questions: let’s find out if the thought is true? Let’s find out the difference between believing the thought and not believing it.

So, here’s the game.

1. Think the complaining thought
2. Don’t say it
3. Write down the thought, in squiggles and wiggles, as if writing gibberish
4. Ask four questions 
5. Turn it around

And what are the four questions?

Let’s say the thought is…%^&*#@%

Here’s the questions;

1. Is it true?  In writing, you’d write, Is %^&*#@% true?
2. Is it absolutely true? In writing…. Is %^&*#@% absolutely true?
3. How do I react/ feel/ live when I believe this thought? In writing: When I believe that %^&*#@% how do I feel? Actually write down what you feel: sad, angry, hurt, victim, or whatever you feel. Write what happens to your body: I tense up here, I stop my breathing, I shrink down. How do you live: I avoid, or I numb our, or….
4. Who or what I’d be without this thought? In writing: When I don’t have the thought that %^&*#@% who or what am I?

Discover what’s left when you aren’t taking this personally. They still do or did what they do or did.

But you don’t have the %^&*#@% thought that is complaining, attacking, to come between you and simply being present .

In the present you might see the other person as they are.

In the present you might remember what you enjoy and sense in your body and your life right now.

And now, what’s the turn around?

And here we do the other way of looking at the world.

This can be an art form just in itself.

Let’s make it, it’s own love game.

Love Game #9: Whenever you think about a flaw in another person, find that flaw in yourself.

They are selfish: find it in yourself.

They don’t respect you: you don’t respect them.

They fudge the truth sometimes (lie): find where you fudge the truth/ lie.

This seems harsh.

It actually frees us up for a sense of humor about how we are much more similar to our so-called opponent than we’d like to think.

That’s the “turn around” in the Work of Byron Katie.

You should listen to me more, “turns around” to I should listen to you more.

You should appreciate me more, “turns around” to … I should appreciate you more.

Good.

Okay, that’s enough to change your life immensely and completely.

A story about my life changing once because of the “turn around.”

This was a whiles back when the girlfriend, whom we’ll call Sally, and I were in heaven making gardens in Sonoma, California. Yeah, yeah, Marlie and I made gardens. Sally is different.

(Minor insight: my mother was not the happiest person in the world, and there were two times she was happy when I was younger: when she was reading and when she was puttering in a garden. Later bridge became her passion, but as a kid, I saw an basically distracted and frustrated mother become calm, content and even happy when she was reading or when she was gardening.

Guess what two activities I have loved most of my adult life?

Right, reading and gardening.

Now I read less, and take walks more, but gardening is still a treat and a real food for my life)

One way Sally is different is that she likes to argue.

And so do I.

And so we argue a lot.

And have good sex and argue and have good sex and argue.

It’s not that great a relationship, and I’m even planning on letting it end in six months if it doesn’t get better and then a very human disaster happens.

She leaves me.

For Ted.

Now, if I’d called the end, I probably would have been fine. (This is petty, right? And this is the way we are in love that is lusty and not enlightened, it gets quite small minded, sometimes.)

But, her leaving me??? Disaster! Infamy! Etc!

So, she’s off with Ted, busy not arguing and having great sex, instead of with me and arguing and having great sex.

I do the usual stupid stuff of demanding she come back so we can argue some more about what a mistake she made by trading me in for someone she isn’t arguing with. And for some reason she turns this down.

Now, I notice something interesting: when I’m present and in nature, I’m pretty content, because nature is peace, and there is no Sally-Chris argument going on to disturb the peace.

And when I’m not present, I’m busy driving myself into unhappiness with the usual nonsense: this isn’t fair, how can she do this to me, I’ll never find another Sally (which was true, luckily, not to ding her, but to ding us and how we argued).

And then a couple months after her “unfair” departure, I learned the work of Byron Katie.

And doing the work on this belief led to an amazing opening in my mind, life, heart and soul…..”Sally should love me more.

I did the four questions, and began to get free.

“Sally should love me more,” Is that true? I don’t know.

“Sally should love me more,” Can I absolutely know that’s true?, and the answer is a clear… No.

“Sally should love me more, “How do I react when I hold and obsess on that belief?” 

The usual consequences of taking the victim stance: angry, hurt, cheated, betrayed, weak, scared, and on and on.

“Sally should love me more, “Who or what would I be without that story?” Free. Ready for what life had next.

And I was still a little fumbling until I go into the Turn Around.

“Sally should love me more” became, “I should love Sally more.”

As a set of words, I could say, “Yeah, yeah, I should love Sally more,” and somehow I felt this as a real and deep stance in life.

Loving her more would mean,

1. Being happy that she was happy
2. Being happy that she was with someone with whom she wasn’t arguing
3. Being happy that she was finding a more satisfying love
4. Being happy that she was doing with her life what she wanted
5. Being happy that she and I had both gotten a lot from our 7 years together, and that she was going to a next level for her
6. Being happy that she was happy

I said that before.

I’ll say it again, “Being happy that she was happy” was the core of what “I should love Sally more”  meant.

It wasn’t about me.

It was about her. That’s what love was.

That’s what I felt and realized when I actually did “love her more.” I was free. She was free.

Same old sentence, and it was deep and liberating for me: I was happy that SHE was happy.

And I was free.

The bitterness and betrayal and poor me shit turned into the golden glow of a smile on my face and in my heart of real happiness for her happiness.

This changed my life, and made it very clear that being with someone who left you was always alright, if I could love them for their sake and not mine.

Love is big.

This turn around helped me deeply and truly understand that.

Summary of Week Two, Day Two: 

Feel the urge to say your complaint.

Don’t.

Write down your complain as gibberish.

Do the Work of Byron Katie (http://thework.com), which is….

Ask four questions about that gibberish written thought:

Is it true?

Is it absolutely true?

How do I react when I believe that thought?

Who or what would I be without that thought?

After that, do the “turn around.”

Which is to admit and see: whatever flaw you are twisted up about, exists in you, too.

“So and so should….. me more” turns around to “I should…. so and so more.”

And,

“So and so shouldn’t …..” turns around to “I shouldn’t…..”

The turn around always shows us our next medicine, or next job, the real work that we need to do.

Our judgment of THEM turns into wisdom for what WE NEED TO DO.