Day 69

Where is home? Who is home? And who am I in relation to it all? How much can I include in my heart? How many people can I invite into it before I realize that it can hold the entire universe?

The Practice

Tuesday morning - 15 minute meditation
Tuesday evening - Byron Katie's "The Work" (3 hours)
Wednesday morning - 30 minute meditation

Reflection

I decided to put one of my habitual thoughts to the test yesterday during "The Work." If you're not familiar with the work, it's basically a process of self-inquiry where you look at each thought by asking four questions:
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 that thought?
And then, you turn it around. Once you find the turn around that fits, then you find three genuine examples of how each turnaround is true in your life.

I tried doing the work on my own before and for some reason I felt that the "work" didn't work for me. And even last night, with the facilitator there, I was doubtful whether I would find the core issue to a habitual thought pattern. At first, I didn't even know what to write about until I heard, "I don't want to go home." I asked to go first as I have never been facilitated in this process before and wanted the most genuine experience. And I got exactly what I asked for, plus some...

Arising from "I don't want to go home" came the thought, "I shouldn't be living at home" to "It's too expensive to move out" to "I shouldn't be depending on other people" to "My parents are too distracted"  to "They can't handle my authenticity" to turning all those statements around to "I should be living at home" to "I can't handle my parents' authenticity" to breaking down bawling only to discover that the reason I'm living at home is because I love my parents.

This is by far the shorter version of what transpired yesterday. And I've skipped hours of confusion and turn arounds that led to the revelations. I realized that asking the right questions at the right time leads to inevitable revelations.