Loving What is

There is a book called "Loving What Is" by Byron Katie. I read it ages ago but I didn't understand it at the time. It was during the pandemic that I attended her live sessions and read about her four question "The Work" method that I finally appreciated what she is offering to the world.

Our lives are so full of drama. Especially mine, I hear anger and fear around me growing up. It's so easy to get sucked in and feel like you need to give a dramatic reaction to their dramatic emotions. This year I've learned to take it easy and put that emotional boundary between myself and everyone else. People can freak out and get upset, but "nothing's gonna change my world" jai guru dev.

I have learned to not fight with myself. We so easily dismiss ourselves and chastise ourselves for feeling a certain way or liking or going back to people and things that we are not supposed to, and in that process, we added more hate into the equation. Feelings come and go, and we all make mistakes and like unhealthy things and may not act in our best interest. Just let it be. We're so afraid of losing or looking stupid that we want to control the narrative, we want to make sure the next chapter puts us in the good light as if we were always this consistently smart and good person who was not influenced by any irrational emotion. We blame, ourselves and others, get ourselves all riled up for the injustice we endure. 

Byron Katie says "love what is". It means we accept and embrace reality as it is. I said something and made a fool of ourselves. Man that sucks and we move on with life with this information that we made a fool of ourselves. No lessons necessary, no need to teach ourselves new tricks to prevent our foolishness from happening again. It's okay and it was always okay. We accept reality and deal with it as best as we can. That deep pit of loneliness at the bottom of our soul, it sucks, we suffer from that hollowness and what do we do? Nothing because it's fine. So we're feeling lonely, it's not necessary to recreate our identity to get rid of this feeling, especially when it's ephemeral (someone described me with this adjective before, I didn't know you can be an "ephemeral" person). Feeling uneasy, incomplete or embarrassed? Join the club. I find comfort in accepting reality as it is. Without catastrophising, without minimising.

Making peace with reality and yourself is majority of the battle.