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A Trick for Welcoming Yourself to the Human Race  Image of colorful clouds at sunrise or sunset reflected in water with silhouette of a seated human being looking on. From Niilo Isotalo on Unsplash. 2 words to set you free: FIND IT What I offer here will automatically support you to set yourself freer & freer if you play with it. It’s likely to help you do some (maybe all) of the following:
Context for the invitation to FIND IT In 2006, I went to the School for The Work of Byron Katie to save my life. I was deeply immersed in suffering, and because I was a parent to two and step-parent to another, this meant that human beings cuter and more innocent than me were affected, sometimes intensely, by what I couldn’t shake myself free of. The stakes felt high. Also, I was pretty sick of myself. Many things happened in the School’s psychic excavation that spanned 10 days. All of it centered around questioning our thoughts—any thought that felt bad. If some belief, even one we were convinced was right, good, and true caused any modicum of suffering (discomfort, anxiety, disempowerment, self-loathing, confusion, sense of being limited, etc, etc), we were invited to question it. I redefined what nice was, what no meant, what I owed others, what made me a good person, what I had to have in place to be okay, what I thought I couldn’t forgive, and on and on and on. When someone (of the 250-ish international participants) stepped up to question something with Katie, they were bringing some superlative: worst fears, greatest pain, most debilitating shame … the stuff that keeps us most stuck. As soon as their bare-bones story was sufficiently stated to give us the them, Katie would turn to the room and say, FIND IT. By which she meant, find this in your life, find it in you. Obviously, everyone present didn’t have a specific extreme story of the same nature, or even in that same realm of life. But the invitation (or injunction) was to find where that story was our own, to whatever degree, in any way, shape, or form. The invitation was NOT to declare:
 Image of person seated sideways on bench looking out contemplatively over ocean view with cloudy sky. From Mohamed hamdi on Unsplash. Find it meant, locate in yourself something like:
It didn’t matter if you had a thimbleful or a boatload of their oceanic issue. It didn’t matter if you had it in a house or with a mouse, in a box or with a fox. Katie pointed out that if we could find in ourselves no more than a drop of it (whatever the it of the moment), that drop was where our suffering was; that drop was where our work was. This also meant that the other person’s ocean had nothing to do with us. Nothing for us to judge, nothing for us to measure ourselves by for better or worse. And, BONUS, it meant that we could both look upon them with compassion, and see ourselves in the same kind light. Never did another participant bring in a problem or negative tendency that I couldn’t find in myself. Not once. Even when they offered something that no part of me wanted to find in myself, when I looked with some modicum of willingness & curiosity, I found it. I couldn’t have predicted the profound & enduring impact this would have on me. I didn’t realize the ease it would bring in over time, the clarity of self-awareness, and especially the RELAXING OF SELF-JUDGMENT (which inevitably goes hand-in-hand with a less judgy gaze upon others). FIND IT: A great way to shift judgments of others After the School, I kept looking for—and finding—anything in myself that I caught myself (critically) finding in others. Not always instantly, but it never took that long, either. Judging feels bad, and Katie’s inquiry process had calibrated me to QUESTION MY PERCEPTIONS anytime I felt bad. Before that, I just carried on (cheerfully or miserably, or in some weird combo of both) poring over thoughts that made me hate my life, myself, or humankind. I re-trained myself to catch my own judgments of others as mental intrusions (not normal stuff to think about)—which I often noticed precisely because they felt bad. I learned to redirect my attention from the judgee back to me by directing myself as Katie had: FIND IT. I would look to find in myself whatever I saw that I thought was wrong with them. I still always could. I still always can. Yes, I can be that rude, yes I can be that unfocused, yes, I can yell at my children, yes, I can forget that my agenda isn’t the only one, yes, I can give a cringy performance, yes, I can butt in where it’s not wanted, yes, I can stay quiet when someone voiceless could use a mouthpiece, yes, I can stir up a pointless war … Hey, if someone BOTHERS you, feel free to move away from them. That’s a very good idea. But if you persist in judging them, and try to control them, even with useless mental reviews of what they’ve obviously got wrong, you’ll just create suffering for yourself & others. Katie taught me that I can’t stop judging altogether. The mind judges. But I can
Sometimes, Abraham-Hicks taught me, course-correcting just means moving my attention to what makes me feel better. Locate what I value about someone I’m judging by cataloging Easy Existing Matches to focus on what I genuinely appreciate, enjoy, or value about them. Or ZOOM OUT and remember it all comes out in the wash and people shift and change over time, but maybe not today, and maybe not right away in the exact way I’d like. (Turns out I don’t manage anyone else’s growth process and it’s not my business!) It’s alway weirdly effective to get off the tricky topic completely and focus on what doesn’t churn up resistance, doesn’t make me feel superior or inferior, doesn’t involve evaluating others or myself--maybe get on a topic that just feels nice, fun, easy, satisfying, calming. That’s radical, and it makes for a better internal & external reality. Love & blessings, Jaya
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