I Love Reading Ancient Spiritual Texts
Just like I love reading modern spiritual texts. Because the message is pretty much always the same: come back to yourself.
I just love hearing all the thousands of ways it can be said. And all the thousands of ways it can be done.
The Other Night I Read This One
It’s from Vasishtha’s Yoga, an ancient Indian treatise on enlightenment. There are many times when I’m reading a book like this that I’m reminded of The Work of Byron Katie, but this quote was a particularly clear description of The Work for me:
“When the thought, ‘This is pleasure’ is confronted by the thought ‘This is not’, they both perish. I remain in that peace that survives this.”
This Is the Balance that Turnarounds Bring
If I was doing The Work on the thought, “This is pleasure,” the turnaround to the opposite would be, “This is not pleasure.” Neither one is completely true. But each describes one side of it.
If I was believing only one side, the turnaround gives me a chance to find truth in the other side.
Together they balance each other so completely as to cancel each other out. And what remains is peace.
This Is What I Do Every Day When I Do The Work
I start with one thought. And I question it and find turnarounds and examples.
And each time I do, I get another taste of this balance. The idea that I was taking for granted becomes mute. And it ceases to have power over me.
I love the way turnarounds balance out my beliefs, and open up my heart.
Have a great weekend,
Todd
“Inquiry is more than a technique: It brings to life, from deep within us, an innate aspect of our being. When practiced for a while, inquiry takes on its own life within you. It appears whenever thoughts appear, as their balance and mate. This internal partnership leaves you clear and free to live as a kind, fluid, fearless, amused listener, a student of yourself, and a friend who can be trusted not to resent, criticize, or hold a grudge. Eventually, realization is experienced automatically, as a way of life. Peace and joy naturally, inevitably, and irreversibly make their way into every corner of your mind, into every relationship and experience. The process is so subtle that you may not even have any conscious awareness of it. You may only know that you used to hurt and now you don’t.” Byron Katie, Loving What Is
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