If it turns out there really is a hell, I think it will look a lot like the life I was living about 15 years ago. Fortunately, I don't live there any more.
I have successfully transformed over the past 15 years or so as the result of doing mindset work. I struggled with jobs, with relationships, with parenting, with money, with self-esteem, with faith, with judgment and mostly with fear. My opinion of myself was dependent upon the opinion of those closest to me. 15 years ago I was a mess. I had already been sober and clean for 20 years at that time. But was recently divorced and in a new career as a mortgage loan officer.
I blamed myself and I blamed my second wife for my
unhappiness. I was searching for some
way to feel better, to get some relief.
I didn’t consider drinking again.
I was re-engaged with my recovery program but found it lacking. I had begun to attempt a meditation practice
but couldn’t sit still. Paying that much
attention to my thoughts was driving up the anxiety.
I think it was about this time of the year in 2002 that my friend,
Allen and I drove over to Seattle to check out Byron Katie at the Unity
Church. It was a profound turning point
in my life. Literally overnight, “The
Work” caught fire inside of me. I
realized I had been believing every thought without question. I had been reacting to
every thought as if it were true. No
wonder I had been so hot and cold, up and down. No wonder I blamed, felt like a victim and
had no power in my life.
I struggled for a while with the idea that my judgments were
causing my suffering. I could certainly
see that my suffering was making it nearly impossible to find success and
happiness in life. But I was pretty attached
to my stories about why I suffered. I
was convinced – it seemed so apparent – that my suffering was directly a result
of the circumstances in my life.
Slowly, I loosened my grip on that story and as I did, I began
to accept that it wasn’t what was happening in my life that caused me to
suffer. It was what I thought about what
was happening in my life that determined what I felt and how I reacted to
life. I began to see that I was reacting
to my own perspective.
I had always resisted “positive thinking” as phony,
inauthentic. At least I was real, I
would proudly think. Not like those phony people. Soon I saw that The Work; questioning my
thinking, was not about painting over rust.
I experienced an opening as I disarmed thoughts that had never been
questioned. And in that opening I found
clarity, peace, power and access to wisdom.
Simply by using my own suffering as the cue to do The Work, I
began to transform. I began to see what
I had never seen. I started accepting
responsibility for how I felt, what I did, and for the results I had been
creating.
This transformation has not been a straight line from hell to heaven. There have been setbacks. For a long time, I easily fell under the
spell of believing circumstances had to change to accommodate me. It can still happen. I still want to play victim. I still want to indulge in the delusion that
I have no power and that life is happening to me. As strange as it seems. I still want to
suffer sometimes.
And life is not heaven now but it certainly isn’t the hell that
it was 15 years ago. I have successfully
transformed. I barely recognize
myself. I get to do what I want to
do. I love what I have, I love who I
am, I love who and what is in my life and am willing, when I don’t love what is, to do my work.
