I was very lucky to find an email from Byron Katie in my spam mail box this morning. Her take on how to feel better with what is currently going on with our country is very refreshing. Mind you, if you are REALLY angry about what our government is doing right now, you might find this really hard to swallow. Ultimately, I believe that what she is saying will help ME find more peace no matter what is going on. Maybe it will help you too.
I Am Angry and Disgusted with a Large Segment of Our Population for Supporting the Current Administration
A man at the 6 September LIVE—At Home with Byron Katie event reads his stressful thought to Byron Katie and the audience. “I am angry and disgusted with those who support the current administration.” This thought usually occurs to him when he’s reading an article or some comments on Facebook. Katie brings him back to the moment when he is reading. “How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought, and you’re reading an Op-Ed?”
“Very tight in the throat and chest,” says the man.
“I want you to know where you feel it,” Katie says, “so that the physical reaction can remind you to look to what’s going on in your mind. What images of the future do you see when you’re believing this thought?”
“Environmental devastation, people with no access to education or doctors, people being silenced for having alternative beliefs, and basic 1984 fear,” says the man.
“The 1984 image is of the past in your mind,” Katie says. “I want you to know why people often say, ‘Be here now.’ You’re reading and you see what is not happening now; it’s a case of imagination witnessed in your mind’s eye. And you see future fearful images. You become upset yourself as you witness false past and future as a movie in your head. Who would you be without those thoughts, images of past/future?”
“I’d be Forest Gump,” says the man. “I’d be happy. I’d be a much more sane and calm person.”
“So is it really those of us who are supporting the current administration who upset you, or are you just sitting in an internal movie upsetting yourself?”
“I’m absolutely just sitting there upsetting myself,” says the man, laughing.
“And then others take the blame.”
“I guess I’m kind of trying to rule the world.”
“I’d drop the ‘kind of,'” Katie says. (Audience laughter.) “Now how would you turn your thought around?”
“I’m disgusted with myself for assuming all of these things about people I don’t know anything about.”
“The way you have identified yourself, you’re up here and we’re way down here,” says Katie. “We seem to be who you believe us to be.
“Another turnaround,” the man says. “Thank you for supporting something I don’t believe in, so that I can learn a different way of looking at it.”
“A clear mind is a beautiful mind,” says Katie. “Can you find another turnaround?”
“I’m not disgusted with anybody, because that’s insane,” says the man.
“I love your open mind,” Katie says. “That tight feeling in your chest will always let you know when your mind is closed.”
When the man gets to statements two to six on his Worksheet, he is astonished that he now feels embarrassed to read them.
“What we are thinking and believing is the cause of all suffering. No administration has the power to cause you stress or ultimately take your freedom from you.” —Byron Katie
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