Ordinary is Extroardinary
I am in love with The Work of Byron Katie. It knocks a quart of the best ice cream out of the water when it comes to dissolving stress. It is self-inquiry that burns calories. It strips away all that is not you, and I always feel lighter when it’s done. So let’s fast track to a holy sh*t moment from a recent facilitation.
My client revealed a memory from long ago (50+ years!) when her father reprimanded her for getting a 95% and not a 100% on a test. Failing to live up to her dad’s approval birthed within her an authority that to this day sets expectations and punishes both inwardly and outwardly in her relationships.
The 95%
…Is false. There is nothing in existence that is not 100%! When a leaf falls off a tree, both the tree and the leaf are 100%. As with every grain of sand, every sound, the subtle and profound. Every-thing and every action is complete.
I Need To Be More Than 100%. Is it true?
The missing 5% is a mental construct; an idealized version of self that is out of line with reality. If I am already complete, then that 5% is a hook keeping me on a hamster wheel forever searching but never satisfied.
It’s a mentality of lack born from comparison. I need to live ‘up’ to something more than myself as I am so I put myself ‘down’, judging this to that. And forever it goes, up and down, bliss and anguish. And the list extends to everything I perceive: politics, weather, mother, father, sister, brother… prizing one over another.
In inquiry we question everything we think we know for sure to be true (that causes stress!). So I tend to the inner garden; to all of my beliefs, stories, and identifications that argue with the equanimity of reality-as-it-is.
It turns out, the only thing that is ever happening is now- reality as-it-is,and this moment is whole, it is 100%. And so are you. Not one thought better or worse.
What a relief! I don’t have to wait for (my idealized) tomorrow to be enlightened, to live ‘up’ to my internalized standard of complete. If I slow my thoughts and look within I can find it. Imagining there is no other, it turns out, I’m perfect. And when I don’t feel this, which is often!, I come back to The Work.
Abundance is you. Your very being here is abundant.
Abundance pervades forever in a flow state and can be observed in the ordinary. It is prior to motivation and manipulation, beyond (and including) giving and receiving. It’s in the simplicity of stepping aside so someone can walk past you. In hearing someone and in being heard. It is your body digesting, sleeping, sweating, excreting (bless!) It is in each breath, in birth and death.
Inquiry clears and steers the way towards the world without internal conflict. To move and grow and flow in and of the world from a place of harmony within. Open to what is, with curiosity, courage, and compassion. And in celebration of the wisdom woven within lack, fear, and comparison, calling us home to Truth.
Let’s connect, re-wild, express, be slow, breathe together, scream together, heal together, and live from our deepest Truth at the level of the heart. The Work is to find peace. And the play is to be free!
