Instead of being a gut-wrenching evening, filled with the sadness of people's lives, the three hours of The Work was so wonderful funny, packed with wit and irreverant humor, a gentle, loving poking at the seriousness with which people take themselves. If my eyes misted over, it was from laughter!
"Loving What Is" was a lecture about, what else, love.
Love as an experience, as 'the power', as a guilt-free state of mind, as unconditional, as offered without expectation of return, as joyful, as our own true nature, as the only way to peace...our own, that of others, that of the world.
One of the simpest but most profound concepts is that of "staying in your own business."
Katie sees only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, your, and God's. By God, she means reality...anything that is out of anyone's control is God's business.
"Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business." Think about that.
If I am consumed with what you should do or, more likely, what you should not do, if all I can think about is how you are screwing up, if I am focused on all the ways in which your thoughts and deeds are wrong, I am living your life. And if I am spending all of my energy living your life...in your business...who is living my life? WHO IS LIVING MY LIFE?
Being mentally in another's business leaves me no time to be present in my own. Yet I wonder why my life isn't working. Even if I love you, it is sheer hubris to believe I know what is best for you. Do I know what is right for me? That is my work. That is my business.
Understanding the three kinds of business allows me to stay in my own. It frees me in a way I might never have thought possible. Katie suggests that the next time you feel stress or discomfort, ask yourself whose business you are minding and you may just enjoy a good laugh! Noticing whose business you are in can bring you back to your self and - in time - you may "come to see that you don't have any business either and that your life runs perfectly well on its own."
SOME GREAT QUOTES FROM THE EVENING
Everyone has a right to believe what they believe.
Guilt is a loveless state of mind.
Personalities don't love...they want something.
Open your mind to love or to suffer. The difficult thing is to NOT love. That is suffering.
As long as we believe our thoughts, we suffer.
Physical pain is a projection of mind.
We are the person we accuse the other of being.
For the mind to be right, it has to worship the thought it is holding.
Another human being cannot make us happy.
We wish for a young beautiful, healthy agile body. What we should work for is a young, beautiful, healthy, agile mind.
The Work is stillness, contemplation, open-mindedness. It is a fearlessness.
Harmony Books publishes Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life
I Need Your Love - Is That True?
A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are
Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie
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