Diving Deeper Through a Portal

How to Find the Deepest Corners

The Work of Byron Katie is way of bringing the light of awareness to the deepest areas of the mind, where the light may still be dim. This process of self-inquiry allows me to make peace with anything, no matter how hidden and persistent it may be.

But how do I work these deep issues?

Surprisingly, the deep issues are not actually so hidden. They may have deep roots, but they also have branches, flowers and fruit above ground that are easily accessible.

How Do I Find These Flowers and Fruit

I find them by simply living my life day to day. As I do, I inevitably trip over something. I was going along fine and suddenly I’m triggered. That stress I feel lets me know that I just touched on a part of my confusion.

I don’t have to dig deep to do deep work.

All I have to do is look at my stressful reaction and look for who or what I am blaming in that moment. I write a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet on that person, and question what I wrote using the four questions and turnarounds of The Work.

This is how everyday events become portals into self-inquiry. When you deal with what is coming up now, you also deal with the underworld that supports it. By cutting the branches above ground, you also weaken the roots below.

But You May Find More When You Enter the Portal

Maybe someone triggered you today by dismissing you. So you write a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet on the person who was dismissive. And you work through it slowly meditating on each question and turnaround.

In addition to getting clearer about how to stay peaceful in this situation, you may also start to see images from old situations. There may be older stressful moments and memories contained within this one.

These Old Situations Can Be Worked Too

You may start by writing a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet about someone dismissing you today, but you may end up writing other worksheets on a pivotal times in the past where someone dismissed you. Maybe it was an old friend, or a parent, or a teacher that hurt you, and you still hold that hurt today.

Each of these old hurts could be its own separate Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet.

The combination of working recent situations, and older related situations means that the confusion has little chance to survive. The branches and the roots are be being cut away from both sides.

Sometimes I spend months working through the related worksheets that come up from one small incident that triggered me. That’s how I’m diving deeper through a portal.

Have a great week,
Todd

“I often use the word story to talk about thoughts, or sequences of thoughts, that we convince ourselves are real. A story may be about the past, the present, or the future; it may be about what things should be, what they could be, or why they are. Stories appear in our minds hundreds of times a day—when someone gets up without a word and walks out of the room, when someone doesn’t smile or doesn’t return a phone call, or when a stranger does smile; before you open an important letter, or after you feel an unfamiliar sensation in your chest; when your boss invites you to come to his office, or when your partner talks to you in a certain tone of voice. Stories are the untested, uninvestigated theories that tell us what all these things mean. We don’t even realize that they’re just theories.” Byron Katie, Loving What Is