An email to KT

As Friday now begins, this will be my fifth day living here in the county of Humboldt. I feel so many lessons waiting for me here, so many stones unturned, so many teachers fast approaching. I love to notice how full of myself, how self-righteous, and how quick to judgment I am. It is so exciting to see how much work I still have to do. It fills me up with bursts of enthusiasm, as I reflect on anything in the day that felt like velcro in my body, any stressful thoughts that did not pass with ease, but instead stuck inside me and became hard. I had such a beautiful facilitation by my new friend D today. My stressful thought was “I don’t fit in”. I quickly came to realize it was my thinking that did not fit in here. It was my thinking that was creating all of the separation I was seeing. There is no separation until I believe it. Believing the thought I don’t fit in makes me focus on where you and I are different. It only makes me want to see more ways that I can justify this belief that I indeed, do not fit in. That you are not like me, and that I am better. It’s become such a game, between me, myself, and I. When I hear the thought swell up inside me “I’m better than you, or, I know more, or I’m on such a higher level” I meet it with giggles of joy. I now actually enjoy kicking myself off my own pedestal, it’s become so impersonal. Somewhere along the path of committing to self-realization, it became self-enjoyment, and now there is no part of my mind I do not enjoy.

I am so appreciative for this continued commitment of inquiry with ongoing partners. I was quite resistant at first because I believed I didn’t need it. I have had to sit with myself literally for an hour or more at a time to try and find one thought that was causing me stress before calling my partner. Sometimes I can’t locate one at all. And I find that those are the days that inquiry is just simply fun and when the call ends I feel happy to have connected with someone from the school. And then there are days, like today, when I needed that call. I was feeling alone, isolated, and out of place here in my new place of residence. I got to talk it out with someone who uses the same language, someone who knew the work, someone who could just hold the space for me, ask the simple questions, and listen. It is priceless.

I’ve come to realize that I don’t need The Work every day. I go days on end without a single stressful thought. And then something pops up and I discover a new stone, or an ancient stone, that hasn’t full turned over and cleaned itself off yet. Those are the days that I go straight to inquiry and fall in love again, and again, and again. I can no longer locate a time I am not falling in love, whether it is with living without stressful thoughts, or living with a stressful thought and then asking it four simple questions and turning it around.