The Big Peace: You're already there.

So if you've listened to the Michael Neil interview, you'll hear that I got the name of his book wrong. I called it 'Finding Happiness Now'.

It's called 'Feel Happy Now'. In that mistake.... was the biggest shift I could make., said Michael

If I'm forever seeking happiness or peace.... I'm making the assumption that happiness or peace is outside of myself - that it's something to get/achieve.... versus knowing that it's a choice. To feel happy now. And then he took us through a simple exercise where he asked us to think of someone we loved and let that feeling spread until it filled our body. Look, he said, you can feel happy and peace right now.

And he was right. There I was feeling happy right now.

It's about practice, said Michael. Often we have a default setting which could be anxiety or sadness or anger. and we're unused to feeling good. So we have to work at feeling good. It's a choice we make in that moment.

And that is perhaps where I've been going wrong. I'm a great wallower. I do make up big stories in my head and then wallow about how that makes me feel. My husband has just bought his second motorbike (mid-life crisis???!!!) but someone how I made up this whole story that it was all about me...that he was driving away from me (literally) and he didn't love me any more.

Obviously, huge rows ensued..... he couldn't understand why I was getting so upset about the motorbikes.... (Couldn't he read my mind???) and why I was so angry... (I couldn't say the words 'I'm afraid that you don't love me anymore' because that would show me up as being needy so I chose to be angry/self righteous instead)

And that's what I mean by wallowing. It's not even wallowing about something real that's happened. Maybe I will chose to wallow and be sad if my dog dies or something bad happens. But I chose to wallow about events that are not even real???

I think Byron Katie's worksheets have definitely helped me this month to question my stories.

And what I'm realising is that inner peace is a choice. and it's quite hard work early on. And I suppose, I thought...I'd be hit my a thunderbolt and I'd be peaceful, smiling and happy (ie something outside of me would come and change me from above!)But it's a moment by moment practice and I have to do it versus waiting to be transformed either by meditation or by a guru or a new whistling technique.

What I'm realising too.....I'm ashamed to say that there is a part of me that enjoys some of my dramas....by kicking off with my husband, he's ultimately had to reassure me that he does love me but surely there was a more peaceful way to get that piece of information??? There can be pay-offs to my dramas. But how I went about it was very costly for everyone.
I can't remember who said...that we only drop old behaviours when there ceases to be any pay-off?

Do listen to the Michael Neil interview below if you can. It really is brilliant - because it's simple but quite profound too.

Suzy x

Comments

I have to say I was very impressed with Michael's comments. (And, if I'm honest, I was prepared *not* to be impressed - because, at the time I was wearing my "skeptic's hat".) :)

It helped that he referenced "A Course In Miracles" which I've been a student of for some years - but the essence of what he said I have found to be true.

We're not really going anywhere, or attaining anything, We are already It - the ground of our being! We just tend to forget because we're too fascinated by what's going on in the foreground to notice the we *are* the (peaceful) background.

Tim

Posted by: Tim | Thursday, 20 September 2007 at 07:57 PM