So Simple a Child Can Teach It
August 24, 2011 at 12:52 pm | Posted in beliefs, family, fun, Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: learning from children, The Sedona Method
See, all you have to do is open your arms and let it go.
On the Sedona Method 4-in-1 Audio course a woman asks Hale how to introduce The Sedona Method to her kids and he recommends that with children the best thing to do is live it, and that even more than what you do children look at what you’re being. Hale goes on to say that many parents artificially try to ‘do the right thing’ around our children but feeling-wise we haven’t shifted. It struck me how similar this is to what Katie says: if I think someone needs to do The Work, I need to do it.
I’ve needed to hear these messages over and over as I have at times felt a strong urge to force my kids – and the whole world, including myself – to let go, be happy, peaceful… Nowadays I usually just welcome that urge, and allow it to pass, and this often has results I could never have imagined.
As well as being fluent in The Work, the girls both know the Method and that they can ask for support to release if they want it. LB often asks to release, particularly around bedtime if she has trouble getting to sleep. Lolo, on the other hand is pretty happy-go-lucky and only rarely worries about much. Although a while ago she liked listening to the story of how Lester Levenson originally developed the process, she has hardly ever done any Sedona Method. Or so I thought. Then a week or so ago I was feeling upset about something and Lolo asked if I’d like to release. Of course I said yes! Her version of The Sedona Method was a little different and really great for anyone who might have resistance to welcoming or letting go, as I was at that moment.
“What are you feeling?” she asked.
I told her I felt sad.
“Would you invite it in and give it a cup of tea?”
I was already smiling by then. Yes, I could invite my sadness in and give it a cup of tea.
“And a cookie?”
Oh, yes, that was no problem either.
“Would you let it choose when it’s time to leave?”
Yes, I would do that too.
“Could you watch it going off down the hill on a bouncy space-hopper?”
By then I was laughing and hugging Lolo. And she didn’t stop there. Sensing I was still holding on, she asked the questions again and up popped an underlying emotion I hadn’t even realised I was feeling. Releasing that has left me a lot freer around a long-standing issue.
So if you’re struggling with any issue that feels sticky, or if life has become a bit too serious, then I invite you try The Lolo Method. And please let me know how it works for you!
The Tao of Meow
January 19, 2011 at 3:48 pm | Posted in beliefs, emotions, fun | Leave a commentTags: beliefs, present moment awareness
I am cooking. I notice my body feels tense, and then the cat comes in, meowing. She wants food, not just any old food but the kind that comes out of a little sachet and has lumps of meat and gravy, and is fish. (Or at least it says on the packet it’s fish though it never looks much like it to me.) She has already had some today and, according to the vet, she is overweight. Certainly she is a little barrel of fluff. I am fairly certain that if I put dry food into her bowl she won’t eat it, and that she is not really hungry.
I wonder why she wants food when she’s not hungry. Then I remember reading years ago that when animals live closely with humans they develop human-like traits. I have no idea if this is true, but it reminds me to look behind the obvious. That, and remembering that when I see something in someone else, even if that someone is a cat, most likely it’s also in me. Recognising that the cat’s meowing alerted me to my own wanting I say thank you to her and tell her she’s a wonderful little thing and I love her. She understood every word. (No, I don’t really believe that, but sometimes it’s fun to project.)
Then I ponder what is it I want? For a start, I want the tension in my body to go. I want a reply to an e-mail I’ve just sent and I want that reply to be favourable, for the recipient to think that I am wise or clever or some other such nonsense. I want a reply to something I’ve posted on a forum and I want it to be similar to the e-mail. So it would appear that what I want is approval. As I allow myself to welcome this wanting of approval the cat goes quiet and sits still and apparently peaceful. (Of course this could be more projection on my part, perhaps she’s really seething underneath and plotting her revenge.)
More to the point, as I allow myself to welcome this wanting approval I feel calmer. It leads me to contemplate the many ways I seek approval. As I type this now, remembering the story of cooking and the cat, am I again editing my thoughts to make myself look good and so create a favourable impression on any reader? Or am I being totally, ruthlessly honest? The truth right now, is I don’t know. This has perplexed me ever since I started writing this blog, and now it doesn’t matter any more. In the past I’ve agonised over whether I was writing it for the right reasons, as I’ve done about most of my writing. (A good way to develop writer’s block if anyone wants to know!) The right reasons being to do good, to help others, to be of service. And why would I want to do that? Well, so that I can approve of myself of course!
In I Need Your Love – Is That True, Byron Katie asks: “Who would you be without the thought you need to make an impression?” She also writes: “Seeking love becomes so much a part of our lives that it’s automatic. We hardly know we’re doing it. It’s easier to notice the anxiety it creates out there among our friends and colleagues.”
So it is, and Katie invites us to judge our neighbours so that we can see these traits in others and then turn the spotlight on ourselves. She does not invite us to do this so that we can judge ourselves, condemn ourselves, and force ourselves to do better. That’s pretty much what got us into the whole approval-seeking game in the first place, so it’s not likely to get us out again.
Can we ever be totally free of wanting approval? Perhaps that’s the wrong question to ask, perhaps a better one would be can we be free with wanting approval? I’m not sure the first question is even answerable, and so is likely to keep the mind spinning. I might imagine that a few awakened beings – Katie for instance – have transcended this need, and that if I try hard enough, do The Work rigorously enough, use the Sedona Method often enough, if I’m lucky I’ll eventually get rid of all my wanting approval and find the happiness I crave.
You may already have noticed a few flaws in this plan: for a start, though it seems possible that Katie never wants approval, I can’t absolutely know that’s the case. Then, if the whole reason for wanting to get rid of the feeling of wanting approval is to feel approved of this has much the same effect as the cat chasing her tail.
The second question is a different matter. Can we be free with wanting approval? I’d say the answer is yes. When I welcome that wanting there is freedom, or maybe more accurately there is awareness of freedom. All that ever stops me noticing that awareness is a thought or belief that I’m not free, that I need approval, that happiness is somewhere else at some other time: when I have got rid of all my accumulated baggage, when I’ve got my children to sleep, when they’ve grown up safe and well, when they have careers they love, when their children have grown up safe and well…
by which time this body would be
six
feet
under
A Little Wisdom
August 22, 2009 at 6:46 pm | Posted in fun | Leave a comment
When LB was four, she often called me by name rather than ‘Mummy’. One day we were discussing my middle name – which I rarely use as I don’t particularly like it. I said what it was (and no I’m not telling you!)
She replied, “No it isn’t. Your name is Mummy Yvonne.”
I asked then why it was she called me Yvonne.
“Well,” she said. “Mummy is such a common name. Yvonne is so much nicer.”
The wisdom of four-year-olds. Why do we get them to call us such a common name?
Just For Fun
October 31, 2008 at 2:36 pm | Posted in fun, Uncategorized | Leave a comment
This post is a bit of fun, but it does also show how easy it is to believe total lies!!
Inquiry: The Cat Is Out
Is it true?
Yes.
Do you absolutely know it’s true?
No.
How do you react when you think that thought?
When I believe the cat is out I go to the door and call. I go upstairs, check her favourite place under our bed, and see nothing, read for a while, then call again. When she still doesn’t come I brush my teeth. Then I go outside and wander around calling for her. Eventually I give up and go to bed. I imagine her coming to the door, and waiting in the cold. (We don’t have a cat-flap.)
It also flits through my mind that she may have been knocked down by a car, given her fondness for lying in the middle of the road, but as our street is currently shut to through-traffic due to road-works, that thought doesn’t grab my attention too long.
After a while I get up and call for her again. Back in bed, I lie for a while with that image of her coming to the door and then I console myself thinking that if she really was cold she would have come home, and maybe she’s got some hiding place I don’t know about. (Spot on as I will soon find out!!)
I doze off and then wake in the middle of the night, hearing the tinkle of a cat’s bell. I convince myself it’s my imagination, get up and have another look for her outside.
Supplementary question: when did you first have the thought?
When my husband told me the cat was still out.
Who would you be without that thought?
I’d be thinking that sound isn’t just a cat’s bell now, there’s also a distinctive little noise that I’ve only ever heard our cat make – almost like a miaow, but not quite. And I’d be leaning over and looking in the basket under our bed, and seeing that yes, indeed she did have a very cosy hiding place.
And I’d be laughing.
Turnaround: The cat is in! Yep! That little bundle of ginger, black and white is a cat and she’s definitely in.
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