We were going to examine the thought “Something terrible is going to happen.” And please let me make clear that this is for those who want to find the truth. It’s certainly not for everyone. Most people want to believe what they believe, even though it causes them pain. So if you want to find the truth, this may be for you.

Okay, here comes the inquiry. It consists of 4 questions and the turn-arounds (for more see: http://skillsforawakening.com/solutions/the-work-of-byron-katie-2/)

Here is the first question: “Something terrible is going to happen.” Is that true?

Stop for a moment and go inside. Is there a Yes or a No?

When you have found your answer go to question # 2 - Can you absolutely be certain that it’s true that “Something terrible is going to happen.” Yes or No?

Good. Now let’s go into depth. Question 3: How do you react, what happens, when you believe that “Something terrible is going to happen?”

Spend a moment to really explore how you react when you have this thought. For instance: What feelings arise with that thought? What past or future images do you see? (Close your eyes, see them, feel, relax and observe). How do you treat people when you believe that? What world do you live in with this thought? What addictions or obsessions manifest with it? What other thoughts come up? Take your time to answer this.

And now question #4: Who would you be without the thought: “Something terrible is going to happen?” Close your eyes. Picture yourself without the thought. What is it like? How do you feel? Feel that.

Then one Turn Around: “Nothing terrible is going to happen.“ How is that as true or more true for you? Give yourself 3 or more real examples. Contemplate. Take your time. (Notice if you stay in your business here or not) Make it real for you. Only what’s true for you counts here.

Can you find another Turn Around?

Good. We’ll continue tomorrow.

Let me leave you with a thought by Mark Twain: “The worst things in my life never happened!”

See you tomorrow,

Ram Giri

PS: Please remember if you live in South Florida, come to our afternoon Seminar on the topic in Key Biscayne (more here: http://skillsforawakening.com/events/)

It’s coming around again, this Saturday. Already many people are feeling it – a certain discomfort, anger, perhaps helplessness. And definitely fear. Since 9/11 the thought “Something terrible is going to happen” has become the inaudible but deafening mantra in the collective mind. How is it going to change?

How are we/you going to feel safe again and at peace?

It is up to us, to everyone of us.

Let’s take you, what can you do? Unable to face down bin Laden, what can you do? You can put the internal terrorist out of business.

Let’s talk about that for the rest of the week – and if you live in South Florida, you may want to come to our afternoon Seminar on the topic in Key Biscayne (more here: http://skillsforawakening.com/events/)

So what can you do? You can recognize that

• fear is not caused by outer events
• fear and all other stressful emotions arise as a result of our internal reactions to outer events
• events happen. How we react to them is up to us!
• you can overcome fear by investigating the thoughts that create it
• when you find a deeper truth (which is now hidden by your unquestioned stressful beliefs) the fear dissolves.

This is a simple process AND in practice it can get a bit confusing. That is because it takes us into thinking we are just not yet familiar with. This possible confusion however will give birth to clarity and freedom from fear.

Are you up to it?

I invite you to examine this core thought “Something terrible is going to happen.” We’ll walk with each other through this in the next days, looking for a deeper truth that will set us free of the inner terrorist.

See you tomorrow,

Ram Giri

We think of it as inevitable, but that is not true. Suffering arises in the unquestioned mind and spreads from there. It is an ingrained habit, no more. And we can change habits.

Our thoughts run into the past and the future, imagining what was and could go wrong. Observe it. These regrets and worries are not ‘problem solving’, they are ‘problem creating’. They are the habit of old and future pain. None of it is real. One, the future, has not yet happened, the other, the past, is over.

What is real is the Now. Can you be here for it? And when you are, look, what is there to worry? And what old hurt would you voluntarily carry there?

Yes, suffering is an ingrained habit. Let’s change it. That’s how we become part of the change we want to see in the world.

For more go to: http://skillsforawakening.com/teachings/#03

We don’t want to suffer. So what do we need to do when it comes, small or big? Grin and bear it? Hope for a better world after we die? All that has been tried. I prefer to end suffering.

Many voices that will tell you it’s impossible, that suffering is part of life. But not so fast! There are after all people who are free of it. These accomplished beings among us are showing us the way. The fact is, if just one person can do it, we all have that same potential. It may take us awhile to get there (or not), but what’s the alternative? Continue to suffer. (Not good.)

And if the Buddhists are right, we have done it since beginningless time. (Not good at all!)

So if we look closely at suffering we see that it arises in us. We need to fix it there, rather than trying to change the world so it won’t offend us. We’ve tried that for thousands of years and it hasn’t worked so well.

Let’s do it together, day by day. I will give you tips in these blog posts. Please let me know how it goes for you, give me your questions and problems and I will try to answer and respond as best I can. We’re in this together. Let’s walk this amazing road to the end of pain!

For more go to: http://skillsforawakening.com/challenges/3-causes-of-suffering-and-their-remedies/

“Suffering is voluntary and unnecessary. It is created by the mind” In days of old these insights would have been regarded as a secret teaching, accessible only to a select few. To even approach this knowledge you would first have to go through much training and many tests, and only if you were found worthy, you could become an initiate.

But we live in different times. Now millions are learning quickly to live in this new reality. It is a world increasingly free of unnecessary pain, anger and fear and increasingly filled with love.

Yes it’s not yet on CNN because it grows from the grass-roots, person by person. This is how we will change the world. You will do it with us, by changing you, by becoming a bringer of happiness.

But preparation is needed, practice of the new truths will make them familiar to us and will establish us in this new freedom. For this purpose I will offer you in the coming weeks thoughts on the pain body and its dissolution.

May they open to all of us the passage into a world free of pain!

For more: http://skillsforawakening.com/teachings/the-pain-body/

The Israelites showed us how it’s done. 40 years in the desert with nothing but their faith to support them – my God that was no picnic!

Picture them, the whole tribe walking along. Up ahead the courageous ones, the explorers, ready to conquer the scary unknown. Then the whole mass of the people, the old ones, women and children. And at the end the stragglers, the weak and the sick.

That’s how we move toward enlightenment, all of us. We’re a whole crowd, every one of us, all the different parts moving as fast as we can into the light.

Look, there is your courage and strength moving ahead and there is also your weakness, your pain, your arrogance, blindness and shame, lagging behind. These are the parts of you slowed down by the five poisons (or kleshas), confusion, anger, desire, pride and envy.

So now picture yourself as Moses. You’re in charge to get the whole convoy of yourself moving along. Where do you put your attention? It’s fun to deal with the fearless explorers and with the crowd in the middle that knows to party every night when you make camp.

But as the best of leaders, I bet you’ll pay special attention to the stragglers, won’t you? Because you know that the whole of you can only move as fast as they move.

There is no point in giving them pet talks. They are already moving as fast as they can. Better to relieve them of some of their burdens, purify them of those poisons. They are bogged down by stressful emotions and thoughts that are giving them pain. Have patience; show them compassion. Be kind to yourself and clear and determined in your spiritual work.

Show them, one by one, how they can put down their burdens. Make that your main focus and the whole procession of you will speed up. You will move along in a unified way, everyone will feel better and you’ll get to the promised land right on time!

Everyone is our teacher, everyone is part of God, the only question is: are we listening?

Of course at times I am far too busy with my self-importance to listen to anyone. The chatter of my thoughts is more ‘interesting’ then paying attention to God. (Oh, when am I going to be sufficiently tired of myself?)

So I was blessed by a return email (from God) that spelled out in detail how I had treated the writer with a sense of entitlement, something I’ve been working on lately. (see: The Angry Email from God!  http://blog.skillsforawakening.com/blog.- August 30.) Wow, there it was, black on white on my screen. I couldn’t deny it, he was right. I was grateful and distressed at the same time. Here my pain body was again, clear to see. It had tricked me again.

And so the screen of my self-deception was punctured. Thank God I know enough to take the bitter medicine and to appreciate what it does for me. So I wrote a letter back, admitting, apologizing and mending fences. And sure enough, immediately I received a pleasant reply, ending the whole drama. Thanks!

We have no choice in the way we act as long as we are in the grip of our blindness. Of course, once we find out the mind may want to break into self-recrimination, but I was able to stop this old impulse. It’s such a waste of time. I rather learn instead. So I looked at my past behavior with the intention to see it clearly for what it was. This way I can become more aware and free not to repeat it.

This is the price of wisdom: to look deeply at what keeps us unconscious, at what we want to deny.

What’s left is gratitude. Everyone is my teacher. How wonderful. Even – and especially – the people who are difficult to deal with are offering me precious gifts. I am truly blessed!

“Remember that there is only one important time and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future? The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.”

Tolstoy, from his story The Emperor’s Three Questions

– Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh quotes this in his famous seminal classic book The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975)

Angry and petulant is the best way I can describe it. There it sits in my inbox. How am I going to deal with it?

Of course I could react now, but I can just see the repercussions. Hopeless and completely unnecessary.

So: Can I see the writer as part of God? How can I appreciate that he is here to give me a teaching I obviously need (because here it is, black on white on my screen)?

I go slow. My gut churns a little and I pay gentle attention to that. Soon it calms down. I craft a careful reply, being polite and expressing my truth as clearly as possible.

I turn his accusation around and look if he could be true. I see it and I tell him in ways he can understand.

When I’m done I feel good. I am grateful to the writer because he gave me an opportunity to grow beyond that old reactiveness I know so well.

He is teaching me to be peaceful while standing up for my truth.

I look forward to as many other teachers like that I might need until there is no longer even a slight urge to react. He is teaching me the reality of love.

Obviously it was God writing to me.

Amazing!

“What do you do?” I dread that question. It seems I fail at it every time. So then why do some people love working with me?

That must be it, the love, the ‘stuff’ that’s between the lines of what can be said. It’s what you can’t put in a bio or on the screen.

Alex is such a case. I’ve been coaching him for a few months and he rarely responds to my emails – too busy. By all accounts he should be a failure.

And then we meet and the next day he writes: “It’s always a fantastic experience for me, every time we meet. I never know what the outcome is going to be, and I always leave amazed of what happens.”

I swear I’m not doing it. I just let go and open to the moment. And it’s always there. It rises up from somewhere to meet us, this inexpressible thing, love, in some form or another.

And because I can’t claim ownership, I find that everyone I meet brings it to me, if I’m just open enough to receive it. So you must have it, it must be there. And you probably don’t need me to find it.