Q. How do I surrender the never ending stories from my past? The things that others have said to/about me, or events that happened to me seem to continue to affect my life. How can I ever get rid of them?
G. An "I" is assembled around its original elements of genetics, where and when it was born and in what family, etc. Myriad different-colored "Post-It" notes with all sorts of beliefs, messages, experiences, etc., fly around the "I" but nothing much "sticks" when we are a year old. we are just doing, being, eating, crawling, etc. w/o story lines.
Later, these ad-hoc "Post-It" notes begin to stick as mom, dad, grandma, siblings, friends, etc. relate to us and as experiences manifest in our environment. Out of the blizzard of millions of messages, experiences and stories, gathered on different subjects at different times by different brain areas, a few are seemingly randomly selected to "stick" and modify the "I". By the time we are 8 years old, a new "I" has formed.
As we go through our childhood and into our teens, the stories get more complex, interrelated, and who we are gets significantly modified and embellished . Again, out of the millions of experiences and messages that happen, only a few ad-hoc "Post-It" notes are somehow selected to stick and make a new "I". It is composed of many different stories from different times and events that are unrelated, but we somehow try to hold them together in a single "I" story.
In our twenties, with work, increasingly complex relationships, new activities, etc., the "I" gets stuck with more different stories and messages. New ad-hoc "Post-Its" are stuck alongside old existing ones already haphazardly selected. Old stories are kept, and attempts are made to integrate this jumble, as if what grandma said about us at 4, how poor we were at soccer at 7, or how we looked at 8, means anything today.
The critical errors are believing, a) that these stories are related, b) that there is some "reason" they are included other than that they caught our attention or produced an emotion, and c) that they must be maintained even if they may not be true, or if they no longer serve any purpose. As we watch our thoughts, we can see this default program of beliefs running, often destructively.
There are simple, and useful, approaches to seeing if these beliefs are true, helpful and useful and then letting go of them if they no longer serve us.
The best known of these approaches, which many of you know, is The Work by Byron Katie. She has many books (Loving What Is), a website crammed w/videos, apps (yes, an app), events, schools, 116 youTube videos, etc.. It all boils down to four simple questions, openly shared on her website, asked around our beliefs and stories:
1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?
You then "turnaround" the belief to its exact opposite, and see if that is as likely to be true as the original belief.
An example would be "XXXX doesn't like me?". Try it and see how it works.
Watch your thoughts and if you see a belief, a story, or a persistent thought stream, make it into a simple sentence. Run through these four questions and turnaround. Watch Byron Katie in the videos; this is a powerful and quick process.
If you practice this, it becomes automatic, running, "in the background", virtually constantly. Beliefs and stories are discarded quickly, almost without being conscious of the process.
As i used this process myself and w/folk, it didn't feel "complete". In looking for something to use with Katie's process, the Sedona Method manifested, created in 1952 by Lester Levenson, a physician sent home by his doctors to die. In this dire state, Lester realized two great truths:
1. His own feelings were the cause of all his problems, not the world or the people in it as he had previously thought.
2. He had the ability to let go of those feelings.
Lester's "releasing method" that became the Sedona method is also simple:
1) Allow yourself to feel what you're feeling in this moment
2) Could you let it go?
3) Would you let it go?
4) When?
5) Repeat until you feel lighter, freer, happier, etc.
IME, put these simple questions after Byron Katie's, and the work is more compete. Byron Katie brings you into the feeling, now use Levenson's approach to let go of it.
you may find that with both processes, there are layers "underneath" that may be more fundamental, and more potent. Handle these the same way.
As Lester passed in 1994, the current head of The Sedona Method is Hale Dwoskin. Current efforts are very different, IMHO, from Levenson's, promising to be "Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace, and Emotional Well Being". There are many youTube videos w/many active proselytizers selling their programs. The questions themselves are all that i have found useful.
This work has neuroscientific implications, fortunately, for unwinding neural networks associated with specific thoughts or beliefs. Hebbian theory and chemical synapses show how we create networks responsible for beliefs/stories. The more the synapses in a network are used/fired, the more they are chemically altered to strengthen the network and increase "synaptic efficacy". As each neuron can have thousands of synapses, the network can be massively complex and tightly wired together.
IME, as networks fire and produce a thought, memory, or story, if there is no one attached and willing to take delivery on the "thought", it begins to let go. The next time, it will be less potent, and potentially will disappear. Highly emotional memories w/a strongly-connected network may take several Katie/Levenson cycles to "eliminate", but it appears as if each reemergence is less intense and problematic.
There are simple and effective understandings and processes for surrendering the "I", and letting go of suffering. Just do it.
 |
| Lester Levenson |
G. An "I" is assembled around its original elements of genetics, where and when it was born and in what family, etc. Myriad different-colored "Post-It" notes with all sorts of beliefs, messages, experiences, etc., fly around the "I" but nothing much "sticks" when we are a year old. we are just doing, being, eating, crawling, etc. w/o story lines.
Later, these ad-hoc "Post-It" notes begin to stick as mom, dad, grandma, siblings, friends, etc. relate to us and as experiences manifest in our environment. Out of the blizzard of millions of messages, experiences and stories, gathered on different subjects at different times by different brain areas, a few are seemingly randomly selected to "stick" and modify the "I". By the time we are 8 years old, a new "I" has formed. 
As we go through our childhood and into our teens, the stories get more complex, interrelated, and who we are gets significantly modified and embellished . Again, out of the millions of experiences and messages that happen, only a few ad-hoc "Post-It" notes are somehow selected to stick and make a new "I". It is composed of many different stories from different times and events that are unrelated, but we somehow try to hold them together in a single "I" story.
The critical errors are believing, a) that these stories are related, b) that there is some "reason" they are included other than that they caught our attention or produced an emotion, and c) that they must be maintained even if they may not be true, or if they no longer serve any purpose. As we watch our thoughts, we can see this default program of beliefs running, often destructively.
There are simple, and useful, approaches to seeing if these beliefs are true, helpful and useful and then letting go of them if they no longer serve us.
The best known of these approaches, which many of you know, is The Work by Byron Katie. She has many books (Loving What Is), a website crammed w/videos, apps (yes, an app), events, schools, 116 youTube videos, etc.. It all boils down to four simple questions, openly shared on her website, asked around our beliefs and stories:
1. Is it true?
 |
| Byron Katie |
2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?
You then "turnaround" the belief to its exact opposite, and see if that is as likely to be true as the original belief.
An example would be "XXXX doesn't like me?". Try it and see how it works.
Watch your thoughts and if you see a belief, a story, or a persistent thought stream, make it into a simple sentence. Run through these four questions and turnaround. Watch Byron Katie in the videos; this is a powerful and quick process.
If you practice this, it becomes automatic, running, "in the background", virtually constantly. Beliefs and stories are discarded quickly, almost without being conscious of the process.
As i used this process myself and w/folk, it didn't feel "complete". In looking for something to use with Katie's process, the Sedona Method manifested, created in 1952 by Lester Levenson, a physician sent home by his doctors to die. In this dire state, Lester realized two great truths:
1. His own feelings were the cause of all his problems, not the world or the people in it as he had previously thought.
2. He had the ability to let go of those feelings.
Lester's "releasing method" that became the Sedona method is also simple:
1) Allow yourself to feel what you're feeling in this moment
2) Could you let it go?
3) Would you let it go?
4) When?
5) Repeat until you feel lighter, freer, happier, etc.
IME, put these simple questions after Byron Katie's, and the work is more compete. Byron Katie brings you into the feeling, now use Levenson's approach to let go of it.
you may find that with both processes, there are layers "underneath" that may be more fundamental, and more potent. Handle these the same way.
As Lester passed in 1994, the current head of The Sedona Method is Hale Dwoskin. Current efforts are very different, IMHO, from Levenson's, promising to be "Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace, and Emotional Well Being". There are many youTube videos w/many active proselytizers selling their programs. The questions themselves are all that i have found useful.
 |
| Chemical synapse |
IME, as networks fire and produce a thought, memory, or story, if there is no one attached and willing to take delivery on the "thought", it begins to let go. The next time, it will be less potent, and potentially will disappear. Highly emotional memories w/a strongly-connected network may take several Katie/Levenson cycles to "eliminate", but it appears as if each reemergence is less intense and problematic.
There are simple and effective understandings and processes for surrendering the "I", and letting go of suffering. Just do it.
Hi Gary, I'm having trouble in applying this to road rage in particular. I tried working through these questions with a friend who was very angry about a lady causing a traffic jam by crossing the street while there were green arrows. I don't know if it just doesn't work in that situation or what result we're supposed to be getting.
ReplyDeleteThe initial statement was "Jaywalking lady is selfish for breaking the law and holding up at least 7 people when they have important places to be." My friend in particular had to rush to the post office to get an item out that a lady was threatening to leave a bad review for which could jeapordize his business and livelihood.
It seems it is true, to both 1 and 2. The reaction is anger and the like. And their answer for who they'd be without that thoght was "I'm somebody who lets people get away with being rude pricks and breaking the law, endangering their own lives and inconveniencing other people who did nothing wrong to her in the first place"
It seems to have helped her after doing the following 5 questions, but I'm still left confused on how the first 4 are supposed to work. I have trouble applying them to a lot of situations so I think I'm not fully getting it.
Hi Anonymouse,
DeleteIt is useful to understand that there are different kinds of anger, as discussed in the blogpost "How do i deal with anger? i can't meditate it away...".
Some angers are evolutionarily-installed for our protection and are just too quick to "get in front of" as they occur within milliseconds. This is called "hasty and sudden anger".
The most dangerous type of anger is "settled and deliberate" and involves the ego/I creating stories that dramatically amplify the anger that may have arisen from an initial incident like the jaywalking which involved "hasty and sudden" anger. It turns a simple episode into dangerous retribution later. This is the only type that we can meaningful change with self-inquiry and surrender.
There are also physiologically-induced angers from genetics, physiology or neural problems, which we can do little about, without medical intervention.
Focus on the story-generation aspect with the questions in this post and you will find the repercussions from episodes of anger to drop dramatically, even if brief outbursts do occur as they do for the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, as well as most of our species.
stillness
Thanks Gary, this helps. One last thing, I read about the sedona method more, and seem to really understand what to do now. One last question, in your experience with the questions, is it normal to start flowing through the questions by feel, without verbalizing in your mind each question and answer? I get the same feeling of lightness afterwards for smaller issues. Larger issues I'm attached to more strongly still don't go away fully until a little bit of time passes as well.
DeleteThanks
Hi Anonymouse. Yes, if you use the Sedona Method, or the Byron Katie approach, for a while, that is exactly what happens for most folk. It becomes an "automatic" routine (a "heuristic") that the brain employs for a certain type/energy of thoughts/story, "all by itself", w/o your needing to verbalize it any more. Almost before you know it, the story vanishes. "Zap!" - it's gone.
DeleteAs you have experienced, smaller issues can vanish with one encounter/letting go, but larger, more complex, stronger, deeper issues with a more complicated neural structure may take several encounters to be completely resolved in all the aspects. They will be weaker each time normally, and less problematic.
stillness
Hi Gary. I noticed the comment on Hale Dwoskin, the Sedona Method is very interesting. Hale teaches pure non dual advaita at his retreats and has skati so piercing it literally feels like fire burning, having been to his retreats. The Sedona method to quote Hale is a "Bridge Technique", people can use it to feel better, or go all the way as Lester did. The basic of it is the ego consists of the 3 wants, control approval and security, and after those are released the "one" that wants to release is gone and whats left is pure awareness.
ReplyDeleteHi Silence and Emptiness. Interesting background on Hale and his current description of the Sedona process and how he is currently applying it.
DeleteIME, it has been most useful, in its simple direct version, for many folk. The biggest problem with both it and with the Byron Katie process is that they are so simple, direct and powerful that it is best done DIY without needing psychologists.
Some practicing Sedona "psychologists" have told me that there is now a much expanded and comprehensive version to accommodate the psychologists which is focused on endless sessions with no real intent to ever complete the process. Perhaps that is the version you have experienced.
stillness