Focus On Facilitation: Using "Is the Universe Friendly?" with a Hard-to-Find Story

Einstein purportedly said that there was only one important question to ask: "Is the universe friendly?" I've noticed that the more I do The Work, the more open I am to the possibility that I do live in a friendly universe, even though "bad" things happen. If an issue feels unresolved after inquiry, there is usually an underlying belief that I haven't found or that hasn't yet been examined.

If an issue is particularly sticky for your client, even after turning it around, this exercise can help the client uncover and work with underlying beliefs that haven't come out in the course of inquiry.

Let's say my client is doing The Work on the thought "There's nothing good about my job." I as the facilitator don't dispute this as the client holds his belief up against the four-questions of inquiry, and sees how believing it affects his life and work.

The client turns the thought around: "There's plenty that's good about my job," and provides examples (he gets a paycheck, he gets benefits, he likes to have lunch with some of his co-workers). He examines the turnaround, "There's nothing good about my thinking (about my job)," and he finds where that could be as true or truer He says he can't find any more turnarounds.

I suggest the turnaround, "There's nothing bad about my job." The client still thinks there is something bad about it and doesn't want to go there.

"Okay," I say, "Tell me about that. What specifically is bad about your job?" He makes a list of his "proof," including:

He doesn't have enough to do.
Data entry is boring.'
Our data entry system is cumbersome and outdated.
The commute to and from the office is grueling.
There is no room for advancement.

Next, we get to see if any of these "proofs" truly means there is something bad about the job.

We start at the top: "I don't have enough to do."

I ask the client, "If the universe is friendly, why is this a good thing?"

He discovers three examples:

1. It gives him time and space to find ways to improve upon the task he has been assigned; in doing so, he actually becomes a more efficient employee, more valuable to the company.
2. It gives him time to job-hunt; so many other people who would like to change jobs are so overworked they can't find a way to keep their position while they researching other possibilities.
3. Sometimes he has time during the workday to do The Work on the things he doesn't like about his job! (Not that we're suggesting using work time as Work time; but this was his reality!)

There are stories behind every story. When the client looked for proof that his story was true, he excavated those deeper stories. Investigated, some of what the client thought was terrible about his job could be seen as positive aspects. Some of those "benefits" made the job more tolerable in the meantime, while others showed him a clear path to his next career move.

In a friendly universe—the parallel universe of peace—a boring, dead end job can be a bonus, a teacher, the perfect bend in the path. We need only look more closely in order to find the gifts.


©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

A Perfect Universe: The Tao of Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

When I was a teenager, nearly every sensitive kid I knew had a parchment paper poster of the poem Desiderata up on their bedroom wall. Max Ehrmann's writings spoke to me then, as now, even though I didn't begin to understand most of it. (Glimpses are good.)

Recently I was invited to write a piece about the 19th verse of Desiderata, which for me is the essence of what The Work, the Tao Te Ching, and my entire spiritual path. I am reproducing it here for those who have not seen it on my friend Bob's very fine blog, Every, Every Minute.

Love,
Carol

A Perfect Universe: The Tao of Desiderata
by Carol L. Skolnick


"And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should"
—From Desiderata

"Open yourself to the Tao,
then trust your natural responses;
and everything will fall into place."
—Tao Te Ching, Verse 23


Albert Einstein is said to have told a reporter, "I think the most important question facing humanity is, 'Is the universe a friendly place?' This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves."

Einstein likely felt this question was so important because he knew that to believe in an unfriendly universe is to be at war with it. Einstein was all about understanding and working with, not against, what is.

The literature of spiritual wisdom from time immemorial points to this peaceful viewpoint as well, perhaps most significantly, the classic Chinese text, Tao Te Ching ("The Way") of Lao-Tzu, said to be a sixth-century contemporary of Confucius. In the 1920s, Max Ehrmann, a poet and lawyer from Terre Haute, Indiana, wrote the prose poem Desiderata, which was rediscovered and popularized by anti-war activists in the 1960s. The line, "no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should" crystalizes the message of Desiderata and is an echo of the Tao's wisdom. It is a reminder that we live in a perfect world, as long as we do not dwell in what Erhmann calls our "dark imaginings."

More recently, my mentor Byron Katie has expounded on the real-life application of this simple wisdom in her book, A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with The Way Things Are. In this book, the Tao and "the Now" are translated into "the How." "The universe is perfect" is a concept until and unless it is experienced. The good news is that it can indeed be experienced, by questioning the "dark imaginings" that, believed, give rise to suffering.

In A Thousand Names for Joy, Katie writes:

"The burglars have taken my money, my jewelry, the television, the stereo, my CD collection, appliances, computers; they've left just the furniture and some clothing. The house has a clean Zen look. I go through the rooms and see that this possession is gone, that one is gone. There's no sense of loss or violation. On the contrary, I picture the recipients and feel what joy these items will bring them.... My gratitude comes from the obvious lack of need for each item. How do I know I don't need it? It's gone. Why is my life better without it? That's easy: my life is simpler now. The items now belong to the burglars, they obviously needed the items more than I did; that's how the universe works.... I find it odd that the way of the world is to try to retrieve what is no longer ours, and yet I understand it. Filling out the police report is also the way of it. If the items are found, I'm ready to welcome them back. And because they are never found, I understand that the shift in ownership is the best thing for the world, for me, and for the burglars."

Whatever happens—whether it is a birth or a death...war or peace...that ship finally coming in, or a business in ruins...a life lived with a soul mate, or in solitude—we can know that the universe is unfolding as it should because it is unfolding as it does; what is, is. When we believe that the universe is not unfolding as it should, we are arguing with God, reality, what is...and this does not make for a happy life.

This doesn't mean we sit back and do nothing; Ehrmann's message to "go placidly" is not at odds with being proactive and productive in our personal lives, or with social justice. It is not about being aloof, or a victim. It is, like the Tao Te Ching, an invitation to expand our awareness, to strive for clarity within, to open our eyes to the natural flow of things, to see reality in between and beyond the pairs of opposites, and to become the Taoist Master who lives in perfect harmony with a perfect world.

"There's no mistake in the universe.
It's not possible to have the concept 'mistake' unless you're comparing what is with what isn't.
WIthout the story in your mind, it's all perfect."
—Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

More Depth Than I Thought

Here's one of those forwards we all get a gazillion times apiece, created by Aude Oliva, PhD. of M.I.T.'s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Look at the pictures of "Mr. Angry" and "Ms. Calm" close up. Then stand back a few feet and look at them again. They will appear to have traded places. (I discovered this also works when you look at the images from a side angle.) The email asks, "Does this prove that things (or people) aren't always as they seem?"

I was ready to simply delete this email yet again, but something prompted me to research the picture, if only to assign proper attribution. When I did, I found Dr. Oliva's website of cool hybrid images, including the hilarious "Marilyn Einstein," at http://cvcl.mit.edu/hybridimage.htm.

According to Dr. Oliva: "Hybrid images change interpretation as a function of viewing distance. Hybrids combine the low-spatial frequencies of one picture with the high spatial frequencies of another picture producing an image with an interpretation that changes with viewing distance."

You knew I was going to find something analogous to The Work here, didn't you? Here goes: everything we think we know is an interpretation of what is real. Inquiry is a way of stepping back from what we appear to see, or know. Questioning what we believe and turning our thoughts around provide us with a different perspective, in which both the original perception and the new one could be equally valid. Let's say I think I'm Ms. Calm. I look at the gentleman on my left and I perceive him to be one angry dude. Is it true that he's always angry? Yes, I have proof, look at that face. Can I absolutely know that it's true? I've just stepped back from the "I know" mind. No, in fact, I can't absolutely know this; he doesn't appear to be angry any longer. How do I treat him when I see him as angry? I feel separate from him. I can't meet him where he is.

Turn it around: "He is angry" becomes "He is not angry." Turned around to the self, I can see where I am angry sometimes, especially when I am judging "Mr. Angry." I turned out to be just like him, and with some perspective, I am able to see that he is not so different from me.

Cool, huh?


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Would Einstein Have Dug The Work?

Albert Einstein is said to have told a reporter, "I think the most important question facing humanity is, 'Is the universe a friendly place?' This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves.

"For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly—and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process.

"If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially 'playing dice with the universe', then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning.

"But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives."

(Sourceless quote from http://www.nlpu.com/Articles/Sept_11.html)

Byron Katie, riffing on the good physicist/philosopher, has lately been asking as part of the "turnaround" portion of The Work, "If the universe is friendly, then why is _______(insert apparently detestable reality-based turnaround here)______ a good thing?" How is it that the very thing we most fear or object to could be for our highest good, best for our loved ones, or serving the planet? It's a marvelous exercise for opening the mind and preparing it to embrace all that is.

I think Einstein himself would have liked The Work, as a "technology" for understanding our universe through understanding ourselves.


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.