The Undoing Way - Japan #1
I will start posting messages I am sending out to our Japanese list and visitors to our website...
***
Hi,
I am Jeremy from BodyChance, and I am writing to you from the Gold Coast in Australia.
I sometimes wonder why I left Japan the day before the earthquake hit - is there any meaning in that for me?
And the only meaning I can take right now is my determination to come back. It has tested my will, as a foreigner, to know if Japan is really a home for me. I discovered that it is. I plan to return on March 24th and do what I can to support you through this terrible crisis. I don't mind if my life is shortened as a result – I am only afraid to waste my life. I am afraid to go to my grave without being able to say "I did what I could."
I've just come off a conference call with the members of BodyChance's full-time staff, and I ended our conversation with tears in my eyes. I had not felt nor understood till that moment what a crisis of confidence is happening for you in Japan. I want to come back and be with you all. I want to tell you what a wonderful people you are.
So many people the world over care for you now – do you know that? My friends in Australia talk of nothing else - we are all concerned for you, for Japan's welfare. One beautiful outcome of this tragedy can be your discovery of how much you are loved by others in the world.
Right now, many of BodyChance staff are experiencing fear – they have many concerns. I asked to them - how can we offer leadership to others, when we our selves are feeling so unsure? And for that, we look to the deeper qualities of the work we offer at BodyChance. At the top of our website we say that undoing is more important than doing.
What is there for you to "undo" in a crisis such as this?
There is a lot to undo – beginning with all the 'noise' the voices in your head make as you try to understand and cope with what is happening. There are two reactions you have. The first reaction is primary – your feeling. It is strong, present and moving from one state to another. The second reaction is what you say to your self about your feeling – this is the 'noise'. This is the part of busyness that you can "undo".
It will not help to get caught up in your thoughts. Why? Because your thoughts always work to create the worst picture of things – they are biologically designed to do this. However, the design doesn't serve you now as it did 100,000 years ago.
Can it help you now to always be thinking and imagining the worst? Do you have the power to change the outcome now? Basically not. Your thoughts affect you deeply, but they do not, for example, make much difference to the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. And it is not those worries that are really your true experience. Your true experience is not about nuclear reactors, tsunamis or earthquakes.
Your primary, true feeling has no thoughts. Your true experience can be felt without noise of your thoughts. Quietly, silently, I encourage you to be present to whatever feelings you have. There is no wrong feeling to have. You may feel guilt. You may feel excitement. You may feel despair. You may feel frustration, anger, helplessness. You may feel relief, joy and guilt all together. Whatever you feel remember it is just that – a feeling. It does not say anything about what will happen. It is not the predictor of the future.
Your feelings, when left to run alone, will transform into something else. How often have you started to weep, only to find yourself laughing a minute later? Feelings are like this – they naturally move from one state to the next. However, when you embroider your feelings with fearful concepts, you unnaturally attach an idea that is not existing in the feeling itself. You add the idea to the feeling, and think that both feeling and idea are the same thing.
When this happens, the idea carries you away from the natural enfoldment of your feelings. The idea suppresses your feeling, and you mistake the idea for being your feeling. Then your emotion gets fixed by the idea. The idea might be about Tokyo in disaster, the idea might be about losing your loved ones, the idea might be about your business collapsing. They are strong ideas, but they do not live in your feelings. You attach these ideas to your feelings.
You start to believe that this feeling and idea are the same thing. And then you are trapped. This terrible idea, together with a feeling, holds you day and night until you are unable to live any more. Do not let that happen to yourself. Undo that fixing of idea to feeling.
Free your feelings from the ideas that try to hold them. Let your feelings move from one state to the next. Undo belief in your ideas. Instead, see your ideas as just ideas – not truth, not real, not actual. Just ideas. When you can "undo" the idea, and let your feeling free, you will be free. You will be new. You will be more who you really are.
How can you do this? By sharing with others. By connecting truthfully with other human beings who are willing to listen and be listened too. Who do you have like this in your life? Go find them, go be with them. I encourage you to continue your normal life, but continue it with an honest sharing of your feeling. You do not need to pretend you are OK, but you do not need to collapse your life either. Stay with the life you have, and bring into that life the truth of your feeling.
And from this truthful space, you are far more ready, far more stronger, to deal with whatever will happen. It does not mean everything will go well, or everything will not go well – it means you are in yourself ready to deal with whatever happens. The only thing that is really true, is what you are feeling right now. Stay with that, not with your imaginations.
This is the deepest meaning of the undoing way.
***
Hi,
I am Jeremy from BodyChance, and I am writing to you from the Gold Coast in Australia.
I sometimes wonder why I left Japan the day before the earthquake hit - is there any meaning in that for me?
And the only meaning I can take right now is my determination to come back. It has tested my will, as a foreigner, to know if Japan is really a home for me. I discovered that it is. I plan to return on March 24th and do what I can to support you through this terrible crisis. I don't mind if my life is shortened as a result – I am only afraid to waste my life. I am afraid to go to my grave without being able to say "I did what I could."
I've just come off a conference call with the members of BodyChance's full-time staff, and I ended our conversation with tears in my eyes. I had not felt nor understood till that moment what a crisis of confidence is happening for you in Japan. I want to come back and be with you all. I want to tell you what a wonderful people you are.
So many people the world over care for you now – do you know that? My friends in Australia talk of nothing else - we are all concerned for you, for Japan's welfare. One beautiful outcome of this tragedy can be your discovery of how much you are loved by others in the world.
Right now, many of BodyChance staff are experiencing fear – they have many concerns. I asked to them - how can we offer leadership to others, when we our selves are feeling so unsure? And for that, we look to the deeper qualities of the work we offer at BodyChance. At the top of our website we say that undoing is more important than doing.
What is there for you to "undo" in a crisis such as this?
There is a lot to undo – beginning with all the 'noise' the voices in your head make as you try to understand and cope with what is happening. There are two reactions you have. The first reaction is primary – your feeling. It is strong, present and moving from one state to another. The second reaction is what you say to your self about your feeling – this is the 'noise'. This is the part of busyness that you can "undo".
It will not help to get caught up in your thoughts. Why? Because your thoughts always work to create the worst picture of things – they are biologically designed to do this. However, the design doesn't serve you now as it did 100,000 years ago.
Can it help you now to always be thinking and imagining the worst? Do you have the power to change the outcome now? Basically not. Your thoughts affect you deeply, but they do not, for example, make much difference to the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. And it is not those worries that are really your true experience. Your true experience is not about nuclear reactors, tsunamis or earthquakes.
Your primary, true feeling has no thoughts. Your true experience can be felt without noise of your thoughts. Quietly, silently, I encourage you to be present to whatever feelings you have. There is no wrong feeling to have. You may feel guilt. You may feel excitement. You may feel despair. You may feel frustration, anger, helplessness. You may feel relief, joy and guilt all together. Whatever you feel remember it is just that – a feeling. It does not say anything about what will happen. It is not the predictor of the future.
Your feelings, when left to run alone, will transform into something else. How often have you started to weep, only to find yourself laughing a minute later? Feelings are like this – they naturally move from one state to the next. However, when you embroider your feelings with fearful concepts, you unnaturally attach an idea that is not existing in the feeling itself. You add the idea to the feeling, and think that both feeling and idea are the same thing.
When this happens, the idea carries you away from the natural enfoldment of your feelings. The idea suppresses your feeling, and you mistake the idea for being your feeling. Then your emotion gets fixed by the idea. The idea might be about Tokyo in disaster, the idea might be about losing your loved ones, the idea might be about your business collapsing. They are strong ideas, but they do not live in your feelings. You attach these ideas to your feelings.
You start to believe that this feeling and idea are the same thing. And then you are trapped. This terrible idea, together with a feeling, holds you day and night until you are unable to live any more. Do not let that happen to yourself. Undo that fixing of idea to feeling.
Free your feelings from the ideas that try to hold them. Let your feelings move from one state to the next. Undo belief in your ideas. Instead, see your ideas as just ideas – not truth, not real, not actual. Just ideas. When you can "undo" the idea, and let your feeling free, you will be free. You will be new. You will be more who you really are.
How can you do this? By sharing with others. By connecting truthfully with other human beings who are willing to listen and be listened too. Who do you have like this in your life? Go find them, go be with them. I encourage you to continue your normal life, but continue it with an honest sharing of your feeling. You do not need to pretend you are OK, but you do not need to collapse your life either. Stay with the life you have, and bring into that life the truth of your feeling.
And from this truthful space, you are far more ready, far more stronger, to deal with whatever will happen. It does not mean everything will go well, or everything will not go well – it means you are in yourself ready to deal with whatever happens. The only thing that is really true, is what you are feeling right now. Stay with that, not with your imaginations.
This is the deepest meaning of the undoing way.
Living in, and with, and allowing Truth...Yes. You have put this way so beautifully, Jeremy. Thank you. I am blessed with being safe in the UK, but your words have still been so welcome.
ReplyDeleteJeremy, you are all in our thoughts. Thanks for your updates, Julie
ReplyDelete