| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| yogaluz |
Posted - 10/25/2009 : 11:33:22
I just read the last post "Anger at Daily Show guest and her book" and it got me thinking. I too have read reviews of Barbara Ehrenreich's new book: Bright Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, and I personally am grateful for her voice in a world that seems to have gone crazy on 'The Secret' etc. (just my personal opinion). I don't feel that positive thinking does my TMS any good. Realistic and truthful inspection of my experience, my thoughts and fear reactions are what get me feeling better.
Along the same vein, I just had a close encounter with going to Byron Katie's School for the Work in Los Angeles. In the past, doing the work on certain aspects of my life has been very helpful and I wrote BK to tell her so. She responded to my letter and offered me a scholarship to go to the school (started this past Friday). At first, I was excited to go and then I developed this deep apprehension. I couldn't figure out what was bothering me so much so I revisited "The Work" and went online to learn more about the School.
I'll spare you all the details of what I found out but I will say that the School and the Work are basically reincarnations of tried and truth methods of ego dissolution. Questioning your thoughts and 'turning them around', as Byron Katie does, cuts into the very core of who you are and what you believe.
"This is a good thing", TMS sufferers might say: "my thoughts and fears about what I'm experiencing are perpetuating my suffering." But if you truly dive into the work and follow it to the level that Byron Katie does, my feeling is that you are looking at an extreme form of positive thinking that can be damaging to your sense of self and completely invalidates your experience and your feelings. One example I'll cite was from an interview BK did with Oprah wherein she explained that if someone hit her, boom, she would be grateful because it (the punch) was over. The person doing the hitting - well that was his business and his job is to hit. If you get hit a second time then it is you doing the hitting. It just got absurd and oversimplified the emotional/psychological experience of being battered. Her claim that the civil rights struggle was necessary for its time but now we are to move beyond those struggles into a kind of loving acceptance of what is.. get this: the work is the answer to all the pain in the world including such things as genocide, poverty, etc.
Where I'm going with all of this as it pertains to TMS is many people here have been helped by doing 'the Work' on their experiences and symptoms and so I am curious to hear people's thoughts on this topic. We all know that the subconscious can bring about physical manifestations but do we believe that we should alter our entire experience by turning the conscious mind around on itself? I dunno, I'm left questioning the Work because I feel like I was duped by some very persuasive techniques. BK's claim that the Work allows you to love reality seems to me to be false when it draws you out of your own reality into some sort of blissed out construct. The example of her being joyful at seeing a man on the sidewalk having a stroke and not helping him because he was experiencing his reality - "it was pure love" (from "A Thousand Names For Joy") doesn't seem...well.... healthy.
I don't have answers, just questions and a sudden sense of peace: I'm breathing a huge sigh of relief that I'm not in LA right now at the School for the Work, fasting and having cathartic experiences on a stage while being filmed. Barbara Ehrenreich's book sounds like a breath of fresh air to my TMS riddled self. |
| 8 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| jerica |
Posted - 02/24/2010 : 07:50:02
Sometimes I think people are just being taken advantage of. Charging thousands of dollars for 9 days or a month etc. is I'm sorry just crazy and discompassionate. I hope that if I am ever in a position to offer help and healing to anyone that I would not be so greedy to think only the wealthy "deserve" it and set prices so high. I know some would argue about that but if you went to the store and found a gallon of milk to suddenly cost $300 I think you might start to question just why that is. (last cow on earth?) |
| yogaluz |
Posted - 10/27/2009 : 19:41:28
Skizz, I'll buy your book if I have a job by the time it comes out. Along those lines, while we may chuckle a bit at the BK 'kook' factor, let's not forget that there are people spending big bucks to buy into 'the Work'. Though I would have been on scholarship, the school costs roughly $5,500 for 9 days (BK estimated 200-300 participants - that's a lot of money!). There are books, CD's, workshops and then the big whammy: 'Turn Around House' - a month long residential program costing $20,000.
There are a lot of vulnerable people out there - some TMS'ers included - who feel desperate and are willing to open their pocket books for some relief. Again, balance in all things and be alert to the 'cha-ching' ringing in your ears.
Jamie, I think you're correct - we think too much. But somehow I'm reveling in that fact at the moment. |
| MatthewNJ |
Posted - 10/27/2009 : 17:28:40
I haven't read either BE or BK. But I can tell you we think too much! And that is the difference between us and the other animals on this planet that don't have our thinking brain.
I am not a big one on "positive thinking", but the statistics do show that people who are more optomistic do get sick less. There IS a positive correlation there.
Right now my money is on early recognition by being in tune with my somatic experience as much as possible. Then I can act on it by relaxing or meditating and allow that "bad" energy (other wise known as adrenaline caused by fight/flight/freeze ) flow through me.
The other animals don't think about it, they just let it go. And none of them have TMS. I think.... :-)
I hope I didn't stray to far off topic there folks.
The difficult we do right away, the impossible just takes a little longer. |
| skizzik |
Posted - 10/27/2009 : 16:46:19
flexible is good. I was appalled by Byron's lack of concern over her daughter's health and possible death in the hospital, and how she was amused by everyone elses concern and shock at her non concern because she was stress free because she accepted fate and no-one else could.
She freed herself from too much worry and too much holding on to too much letting go. And I get the feeling from her books as she alienated her family via anxiety originally, she now alienates them by being a "kook".
She made her daughter do the "work" when the daughter was upset that she wasn't attending her grandaughter's birthdays because she had to give seminars across the country.
yeah, there's too much emphasis on "positive thinking" and "letting go" lately.....
I'm going to write a new bestseller......it's called:
"Being averagely normal" .....Your key to peace and happiness!
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| yogaluz |
Posted - 10/27/2009 : 13:29:50
I agree with you all about flexibility in thinking - the Middle Way. Thanks for your comments. |
| Monte |
Posted - 10/26/2009 : 17:54:48
I like what westcoastram says about flexible.
The more we can be a little more open and flexible in our thoughts and attitudes the more open and flexible our body system will be. We are always communicating to our nervous system - conscious and subconscious --If it is closed-off, tight, scattered and unbalanced our nervous system takes this and responds accordingly.
If I am a person who generates inner tension and represses emotional energy through certain thoughts and behavior patterns ( and I am - striving, self-conscious, worry, pleasing ) I have two choices. I can remain in these patterns that are generating inner tension/repressing emotions and this is manifesting into pain or I can choose to redirect into a new pattern that is more open/flexible/balanced/aligned. This will always generate less tension within my system. The key here is to make sure we are not redirecting out of patterns via pollyanish thinking and still repressing.
I totally agree that simply switching to positive thinking in many many cases is leaving the underlying issue/cause repressed.
Different approaches will work for different people and are appropriate for different circumstances. Chronic, daily, habitual worry over everything needs to change- period; whereas having some real unfinished business that is repressed cannot be left untouched and ignored while a person goes off into positive land. We know that comes back to haunt us in many ways.
The bottom-line is always about being open and honest with oneself. That is the inner work imo.
Monte Hueftle
monte@runningpain.com |
| westcoastram |
Posted - 10/25/2009 : 23:07:33
Yogaluz,
Perhaps you can take what you will from BK and leave the rest... it sounds like you just may have already. BK tends to speak of a nature - a level of acceptance - that many of us will never reach. And that's okay. Because what I took from her, what I took from many like her - Tolle, Joko Beck, etc... is that we need to be less rigid. It's not so much: accept like BK does, think positive like The Secret says, it's developing the flexibility that can be accessed in some small and some large ways (from these philosophies) of being a little less rigid and a little more okay with things. It just so happens, the more we end up like that, the less TMS becomes an issue.
WCR |
| n/a |
Posted - 10/25/2009 : 21:00:47
yogaluz, I completely agree with you. I read one of Katie's books and really tried to go with her methods, but in the end it seemed like trying to twist my mind into a pretzel and it made my brain hurt. Sometimes, something that happened is _not_ good and was not "necessary" in some deep cosmic sense. I have many thoughts that to me are perfectly true and there is no "turnaround" that is nearly as true. Personally, I am done with her stuff. |
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