Forgive My Innocence

Today, which was a melancholy day for me, I feel moved to share this poem by the New England writer and Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Coffin, who died in 1955, published dozens of books of poetry and prose in his lifetime and was widely anthologized. Though now his work is largely forgotten, I never forgot these powerful words of confession and amends, which I first encountered at age 12; they never fail to bring tears to my eyes.

Whenever I feel irredeemable, I think of Coffin's poem and I just know that anyone who regrets their actions as deeply and sincerely as he did is instantly forgiven in the moment of asking. As he shares his heart, I see not his sin, not his guilt, but his innocence.

Recognizing this in myself is another matter; I'm working on it.



"Forgive My Guilt"
by Robert P. Tristram Coffin

Not always sure what things called sins may be,
I am sure of one sin I have done,
It was years ago, and I was a boy,
I lay in the frostflowers with a gun,
The air ran blue as the flowers, I held my breath,
Two birds on golden legs slim as dream things
Ran like quicksilver on the golden sand,
My gun went off, they ran with broken wings
Into the sea, I ran to fetch them in,
But they swam with their heads high out to sea,
They cried like two sorrowful high flutes,
With jagged ivory bones where wings should be.

For days I heard them when I walked that headland
Crying out to their kind in the blue,
The other plovers were going over south
On silver wings leaving these broken two.
The cries went out one day; but I still hear them
Over all the sounds of sorrow in war or peace
I ever heard, time cannot drown them,
Those slender flutes of sorrow never cease.
Two airy things forever denied the air!
I never knew how their lives at last were spilt,
But I have hoped for years all that is wild,
Airy, and beautiful will forgive my guilt.

The Work Is Child's Play

Here's some video of the Children's Workshop for Kids, Teens, and Parents that was held last weekend in Ventura, California; kids getting clarity and having fun doing it. Fun is actually an enormous part of the experience of this investigation. It's a kick to see the correlation between thought and feeling, and to discover "that snake is a rope." And children, not having lived long enough to gather as much evidence as we can, don't put out as many "yeah buts."

I especially love hearing the mom at the end, who says that an eight year old was the best facilitator she ever had. (Perhaps I should take down my shingle!)(NOT!)


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

Vintage Katie Video with Kate Wolf Music

I just love this interview with Byron Katie from October, 1998, where she beautifully and lovingly recounts her "moment of clarity" and explains The Work. The interview is interspersed with video clips of the singer/songwriter Kate Wolf, performing her original songs including "Give Yourself to Love."

"Just hear the heart, hear what you know," Katie says in this video. "People don't want to hear what they know; they think it's going to cost them something. But if they hear what they know and they honor it, it will give them everything they ever thought they ever desired, only the desire stops, and just when you don't need anything, it floods in. People call it a letting go, but for me it's just following the heart, the thing that I know."

I found "it" letting go of me as I experienced this tender hour of hearing the heart.

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

Loving the Questions

When Byron Katie suggests we not do inquiry with a motive to resolve a problem, or to feel better, she may be saying the same thing as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke did regarding writing:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 35

No session of The Work goes to waste, in my experience. Epiphanies happen in amazing places, and in their own time: during your 100th worksheet on your wife, six months later in the bathtub, while you're sitting with the next belief after you felt unresolved working with the first one.


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

All In the Family

Note: Names and some details have been changed to protect the innocent!

When my friend Eleanor came to The Work, she was just about ready to run away from home. In the past year, she has written dozens of Judge-Your-Neighbor worksheets on her husband and kids, most especially on her 12-year-old daughter, Ginger, whom she has found particularly challenging ever since Ginger was a colicky baby.

Not long ago, Eleanor wrote:

"Hey, Carol, thanks so much for yesterday. Things feel much clearer. And the funniest stuff has been happening since we worked on my one-liner 'Ginger's rudeness disrupts our family.'

"Last night, Ginger was going downstairs for a snack, and she voluntarily picked up her little sister's evening snack dishes which were on the linen chest in the hall, took them downstairs, and put them in the dishwasher. This morning, while I was making breakfast for the girls, Ginger got out stuff to put on her oatmeal, and also got the stuff that Margaret likes on her cereal, without being asked. She was incredibly sweet last night, she hung out with me for awhile late in the evening, and she was very sweet this morning as well.

"So I don't know exactly what happened yesterday--are you sure you didn't call her up and do The Work with her while I wasn't paying attention?"

Yes, I'm sure, and I wasn't surprised to hear this. When we do The Work with a modicum of willingness, we can discover that we don't need our children to change in order for us to be happy. When we realize this, things often change in the family. The children seem to pick up on our energy.

Amy came to The Work at the end of her rope. Her adopted daughter Bianca, age seven, has a diagnosis of detachment disorder. One of Bianca's "symptoms" is that she usually refuses to do anything Amy asks her to do, whether it's brushing her teeth, eating her lunch, doing her homework, or going to bed. Often Bianca reacts by hitting Amy or destroying things in the house, showing no remorse. Amy and Bianca have had a battle of the wills from the time Bianca was a toddler. Nothing they had tried previously, from therapy to forging agreements, from screaming fights to medication, seemed to make much difference.

One day, Amy worked with me on her beliefs about Bianca's homework. Amy believed that if she didn't sit with Bianca and "make" her do her homework, it would never get done. Even with this belief, Bianca was not completing her work, often furiously scribbling in her notebook in the early morning on the way to school. Amy began forbidding Bianca to do her homework in the car, resulting in more battles, sometimes physical.

Seeing Amy's frustration and anger about the homework situation, Bianca's teacher had told Amy to back off and let the homework be a matter between the teacher and Bianca, but Amy would not let go. She felt strongly that it was her job as a mother to make sure Bianca's homework was done. We worked on that thought, and Amy left the session feeling she had gotten nowhere; she needed to be right about this one! Something terrible would happen if Bianca didn't do her schoolwork; she'd fail at school, have early sex, take drugs, drop out, live on the street. (I am not making this up; Amy really believed this.)

Later that day, Amy sent me an email:

"Good news...amazingly, effortlessly I gave up getting involved in Bianca's homework today. I didn't do The Work on it at all after our session, but something from talking with you this morning slid into place. One big thing I realized is that I have been holding back doing fun things with Bianca--such as reading aloud to her--until her homework was done. I saw that I didn't want to punish myself, so I decided to go ahead and offer to read, and see what Bianca said. She could have said she had to do her homework, but she didn't say that, so I read aloud to her, and enjoyed myself. She enjoyed the reading too. She will have to deal with the teacher on Friday if her work isn't done!"

How did The Work help this situation? Without realizing it, Amy became aware that night of Question 3, "How do you react when you believe that thought?" She realized that in being rigid and controlling with Bianca, she was being rigid and controlling with herself. There was no way for Amy to have a happy family life if she couldn't allow herself to be happy until all conditions were met. When I last heard from Amy, sometimes Bianca was doing her homework, sometimes not. Amy was still stressing about it, but less. It's a beginning.

What if your issue with your child has nothing to do with behavior? Corinne wrote to me as ask if she should use The Work with her young daughter, who was experiencing night terrors about death. If the child were interested in inquiry, she could certainly benefit from The Work, I told Corinne, and she might benefit most from having a mother who works with her own fears. I suggested Corinne work with the belief she was voicing, "My daughter is suffering," with her own thoughts about death, and with her beliefs about her daughter: "Allison is fearful and withdrawn, and it means that..."

Corinne wrote back to say that she understood she could not expect her daughter to overcome her fears if she as a mother wasn't willing to face her own. She discovered she was holding beliefs that were at least as terrifying as her daughter's fear of death, such as "I am the cause of Allison's suffering," and "I am responsible for my children's happiness." About death: "If I died, no one would love and care for my children as I do."

Children--like our neighbors, spouses, bosses, parents, siblings, friends, perceived enemies, cats, dogs, and elected officials--are here to support us, to point us toward the way to freedom. Whose business are you in mentally when you believe the thought, "My child should...?"

If we can look to ourselves for our happiness, it doesn't mean the kids aren't going to behave, or thrive, or grow up to be good citizens. It's like that old saw about the oxygen mask on the airplane: in case of emergency, affix your own mask before attempting to assist another. We can be of no use to our children if we are suffocating in the name of love.

Byron Katie has said,

"You live as the example of how lovely it is to serve yourself, to create for yourself the world you want to live in, by cleaning up what you want cleaned up. If you love it, [your children] begin to love it also. They become attracted to you and how you live, and all the while you can lovingly ask for what you want, and that is their help. You can ask over and over and over, from a place of love and gratitude for your own life lived well. And they will help you or not. And that is what is happening anyway. It's just, how are you going to live out what you are doing? In peace and joy, or in resentment? If doing what you do brings unhappiness and resentment, why would they want to do it? Notice what you are teaching--is it joy or grievance?"

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

If you were a subscriber to Transformational Inquiry, today you would have received an en excerpt from an exclusive and unpublished interview I conducted with Byron Katie in 2003 about The Work and parenting issues. Transformational Inquiry is my ezine, and subscriber benefits include a free report, subcriber-only discounts on my products and facilitation, and news of my teleclasses and in-person events. It arrives monthly (or bi-monthly, or weekly, or sporadically, truth be told), at no cost. To subscribe, visit my website, or go directly to http://www.clearlifesolutions.com/newsletter.htm

Why The Work Isn't Coaching (Yet, Coaches Love The Work

Every now and again I buy the story that my former creative marketing consultant self—who still lives in my head—likes to tell, and I start wondering if I could reach more people more effectively if I were a business or life coach.

However, every time I check out these options, I change my mind quickly. For my comfort level, there is too much emphasis in coach training programs on "effecting change," which is something I'm not interested in. Not that change isn't good; I just don't see myself as wanting or needing that for my clients, since I've largely stopped desiring change (even while I certainly welcome change) for myself. The Work has this way of making one realize that nothing ever has to change, no one ever has to change, I don't even have to change in order to be perfectly okay...although change for the good may indeed occur in an atmosphere of clarity.

This shift in consciousness doesn't allow me to write the kind of promotional copy that typically attracts business clients, so hoards of corporations aren't approaching me (yet). However, I can't think of a better skill to have in business than self-inquiry. (See my eBook, Transformational Inquiry, Working on Your Work, on this page.) Communication, mediation, stress reduction, Emotional Intelligence, crisis management...the applications of The Work to the world of work are numerous, and the modality is a natural for the executive coach with visionary clients.

Today I was looking at a website that shall remain nameless, a coaching institute in Southern California that I'd heard good things about. Their site is filled with terminology like "developing long term change strategies," "measuring coaching effectiveness," "assessment," "vision," and "executing and sustaining change." I lost interest in this school very quickly.

How is the effectiveness of coaching measured? I think it translates to this: you want something, I coach you, and if you get it, then my coaching was effective.

I try hard not to make promises about The Work based on what I think people want to hear. That's not the modus operandi of some practitioners, who promise the moon, with bonus stars and planets included if you act now. It always gives me pause to see this, because it's just too tempting for people to do The Work with the motive of "getting the goods." This, to me, misses the point of inquiry entirely.

Some business and life coaches latch onto The Work in this way: "Let's do The Work on the beliefs that are holding you back so that you can find direction, fulfill your vision, get what you want."

That's one way to use The Work, and here's what happens: if we don't appear to be getting what we think we want, we say, "The Work doesn't work." That's based on a belief: "It's working if I get what I want." We've been conditioned to live lives of wish-fulfillment, so no wonder the corporate structure is built on this. Try selling a business on the idea that "everything is unfolding as it should." It takes an enlightened captain of industry to recognize that sometimes, if we don't get what we think we want, we are spared...or that there are no mistakes...even while the success stories of Post-It notes (3M was looking to create a super-glue) and Ivory soap (it wasn't supposed to float), both product "failures," are legendary.

Say I am using The Work as a way of addressing body issues: I want to lose weight, or get buff. I work on my stressful beliefs about dieting or exercise, and I notice I'm going to the gym and eating better. Great; how long is this going to last if I have not touched upon underlying beliefs about the body and health? What happens if I don't get to the gym one week, should I do a worksheet and force myself? If I gain back a pound, does it mean I didn't do my work, or that The Work doesn't work? It feels almost violent to use The Work this way.

The Work ceases to work when we do it with a motive (other than out of the love of truth), because motivation is a stressor, loaded with shoulds, wants, and needs—the stuff of uncomfortable beliefs. It ceases to work when we don't answer the questions, because we're so attached to outcome. It doesn't work when we use the turnarounds as affirmations. ("I can't be a billionaire." "I can be a billionaire! Woohoo, I'm a money magnet!")

We may want to have a spouse, a slender body, or a fat bank account. We may want to bring our company to the next level. There is nothing wrong with these things; they are wonderful. How are we doing in the meantime? If I love what I am, what I have, what is, I am so much more available to my coach's coaching than when I am coming from a place of criticism, frustration, dissatisfaction, or greed.

So I love that coaches add The Work to their toolkits for clients to know themselves better. (That's what my coach does.) And in the world of work, it could be that we can be more present and efficient, more approachable as supervisors, more creative as leaders, when we come from a place of clarity rather than a stressful place of the desire to effect change.

To learn more about The Work at Work, join my mailing list at ClearLifeSolutions.com. With your complimentary subscription to the Transformational Inquiry ezine, you'll receive The Nine Proficiencies of The Work at Work as my gift.


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

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Pop Music

My cyberpal Jennifer Jones has a lovely, uplifting blog called Goodness Graciousness. Her postings never fail to make me reflect, smile, and remember what we're all made of. Recently she added a YouTube clip of The Monkees theme song. I was a great fan of The Monkees' made-for-TV music back in the third or fourth grade, and enjoyed singing along to their simple lyrics: "People say we monkey around; but we're too busy singing to put anybody down."

I sang a lot of other songs too, some not so light and carefree:

"I just can't get over losing you
And so if I seem broken and blue
Walk on by, walk on by

Foolish pride
Is all that I have left
So let me hide
The tears and the sadness you gave me
When you said goodbye"

(Walk On By, by Burt Bachrach)

What an attitude to take on by the time you're nine years old! There's a painful belief in every line; ouch.

You know the way love songs take on deep meaning when you're in love? After I began questioning the concepts that caused me to suffer, the silliest songs took on deep meaning for me. I started to wonder if songwriters were all enlightened beings.

"Hey life, look at me
I can see the reality
'Cause when you took me, shook me out of my world
I woke up
Suddenly I just woke up
To the happening"

(The Happening, by Brian Holland et. al.)

The rest of that song isn't so uplifting, but you get my drift.

I didn't pay a lot of attention to the meaning of song lyrics in my youth. (As my mother complained, many of the words to the rock songs I listened to were barely audible anyhow.) However I can't help but think the words made an impression on me, consciously or not. While I wasn't too busy singing to put anybody down, especially myself...I wanted to be. I knew at at early age that being mean didn't feel right. I didn't know how to do it differently and not feel like an oyster out of its shell. Sometimes I still feel that way; unsafe, unprotected, broken.

And yet, moody or blue, I have always known my true nature. All of us have always known it.

"And when you stop and think about it
You won't believe its true
That all the love you've been giving
Has all been meant for you....
It's where we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need"

(Question, The Moody Blues)

Sometimes we appear to forget who we are, that's all.

And the remembrance—being mindful once more—is so sweet, and simple...like a popular song.


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

Can I Use The Work at My Job?

“Tell your boss what you really think of him and the truth shall set you free.”
—Patrick Murray

Beliefs may prevail regarding the appropriateness of self-inquiry in a business setting. We have been taught that it’s not professional (and also not safe) to expose our feelings at work; however, feelings are already abundantly apparent in every workplace, oftentimes expressed in unhealthy ways. It can be detrimental to a career or a business to react emotionally on the job and not explore our feelings sanely.

This doesn’t mean we have to air our dirty laundry in front of the boss or co-workers. Although group work may be preferable in certain instances (haven’t you noticed that what they really think of you is rarely as bad as what you thought they thought?), the beauty of The Work is that it is equally effective when done on one’s own in private, with others in a group setting, or one-on-one with a facilitator.

I have facilitated people who work in (and have been fired from) all kinds of business situations: coaches, therapists, and counselors…white, pink, and blue-collar workers…executives, managers, and home-based entrepreneurs…the overextended, and the underemployed or unemployed…those who can’t wait to retire, and those who feel unfulfilled in retirement. A pair of squabbling business partners were among my very first (and very satisfied) clients.

I have come to see that in every moment, even when I was temporarily disabled, lying flat on my back, and doing nothing but “being breathed,” I have always had the perfect job. I am always working with the right people. I have always been successful. Until I can see this as the truth 100%, my real work—the work of the heart—is not done.

“Your true job is to appreciate what is; your primary profession is to be clear.”
—Byron Katie


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.

This article is an excerpt from the introduction to the new eBook, Transformational Inquiry: Working on Your Work.

If you order by midnight May 30, PST, you can still receive it for at the discounted pre-publication price of $9.95. On the 31st, I'm changing the settings to $14.95.

So don't wait. Be among the first to let this practical PDF guide enhance your experience of The Work as it applies to your professional life.

To learn more and to purchase your own copy, visit
http://www.clearlifesolutions.com/clearlifestore.htm



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

Mother's Day for Peace

I saw this video today at Inner Light Ministries in Soquel, California, a wonderful spiritual community dedicated to peace, unity, healing and stewardship of the planet, the global and local community, and the self. Before viewing this short film, I was not aware of the decidedly non-Hallmark Cards origin of Mother's Day, which was created as an anti-war statement by the Bostonian Julia Ward Howe in 1870. You can read the original Mother's Day Proclamation here.

I appreciate the message of this video; it promotes a worthy cause, to be sure, and I say, to myself, let me not make a gender issue out of ending the war, which only creates more war between the sexes. Let me not make it solely a political issue either, since violence begins internally. Let me not make it about these children alone, not others. Let me realize that I am, as Alfre Woodard says in the film, "responsible for every child that comes through," whether they live on the other side of the world, the other side of town, here in our own homes...and let me also include myself, for I am like a child victimized by my own unexamined beliefs.

"No More Victims" means no more victimizing, beginning in our daily lives, in our own bodies. How many wars did you wage today? I noticed I engaged in several, all before lunchtime, and the day isn't over yet. Let there be peace on earth...and let it begin with me.


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

Why Is Mother's Day Stressful?

Got a mother? Wish you were a mom...or, sometimes, that you weren't? Wish yours were alive...or dead?

As the anonymous Middle English lyricist might have written, if he'd had mother-issues and the holiday had already been invented,

"Mother's Day's icumin in
Lhude sing Cuckoo!"

If you are feeling a bit nuts in anticipation of this holiday, you are not alone. Many of us dread Mother's Day either because we want our mothers to love us, we want our children or partners to appreciate us, we hate family gatherings, we have no family, or we think it's a silly holiday. It's a great time for inquiry.

Here is a sample from Chapter 6 of my eBook, Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others:

Your Mother is Your Projection

I became interested in The Work when I heard about Byron Katie’s life story; before her “moment of clarity,” she was remarkably like my own mother: overweight, enraged, paranoid, addicted to pain-killers, bedridden for years. Depressed for most of my life and still despairing after having done all sorts of therapies and spiritual modalities, I was certain that one day I would follow in my mother’s footsteps…except it would be much worse because, unlike my mother, I had no husband or kids as enablers.

I’d been scaring myself half to death with that “my mother, myself” story for many years. So when I heard that there was someone who had been in that same kind of sickbed and had gotten out, I knew that whatever she was selling, I was going to buy it, however weird it seemed. (And it sure seemed weird to me at the time.)

Years later, when I met Roxann, Katie’s daughter, I introduced myself and said, “I’ve always wanted to meet you because we had the same mother.” She replied, “Hopefully we have the same mother now.”

I’m not quite there. However, my mother is no longer who I thought she was…and that frees me up to love her.

“Sweetheart, when you take the medicine, we get better. It’s a law.”
—Byron Katie


In Mothers and Others, you will find exercises and insights that can help you with your "mother story." What better gift can you give your mother, or your children, than getting clarity around the stressful concepts of Mother that we have held dearer than the person herself?

You may purchase Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others at my website, http://clearlifesolutions.com/clearlifestore.htm

Do The Work for Sunday brunch this week, and have a Happy Mother's Day!

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

A Mind Like a Sticky Trap

Unlike the overpriced aeries of many other cliff-dwelling New Yorkers of my acquaintance, my small one-bedroom apartment in a non-luxury building had been blissfully free of bugs and other wildlife for most of the sixteen-or-so year I lived here. However, in 2004 when the housing market reached new heights, a lot of my neighbors were renovating what they had instead of buying up. Ripping out walls and such tends to stir things up in the bowels of a building...and soon I found myself with a very messy mouse for a roommate.

For awhile I thought I was going crazy because I heard things, but I had no evidence. Then I found my proof: sickening mounds of it, in and around my oven and under the toaster. Immediately I did a Lady MacBeth on the kitchen, cleaning everything with bleach, feeling nauseated and out of control of my life. How was I going to get rid of this beast I had never even seen, that I didn't especially want to see? I called my super; he said, "Not my job." I called the management company; they said, oh, yes, terrible, we can't wait for the exterminator, we'll talk to the super. Weeks later, no action had been taken. And while my cat, Amanda, was amused by and interested in our uninvited guest, she was no mouser. Meanwhile, every morning I would lie awake at night listening to this critter squeak and chew and scamper in the walls, and every morning I would clean up his messes.

I got my first glimpse of the little guy (first mistake: thinking of him as a "little guy" instead of a pest) late one night as he zoomed across the kitchen floor to get away from me. My cat used to hack up hairballs larger than this critter; he was minute. I had been obsessing over the tiniest thing...something as wee and innocent and yet all-consuming as...well, an obsessive thought. And my thoughts had been:

*There should not be a mouse in my apartment. (But of course there should be. There is!)
*Amanda should eat him. (Not my business.)
*I should not have to deal with this. (Well, no one else wants to...)
*Mice should not use my stove as a toilet. (Just as dogs should not bark, thieves should not steal, murderers should not murder, and terrorists should not terrorize, this is hopeless.)
*I don't want to dispatch the mouse. (And yet I don't want to share my living quarters with him so what's the use of thinking this way?)

Finally I went out and bought some sticky-traps, which I baited with the thing the mouse loved most: toast. And I dreaded checking the traps each day because I discovered I didn't want the mouse to die or suffer; I just wanted him to leave.

Some of my animal-loving friends got mad at me because of the traps. They wanted me to get the kind of cruelty-free contraption where you are left with a live mouse…which you then have to dispose of…meaning I could trap the little fellow and set it free, releasing it to find yet another apartment in which to spread its excrement.

Second mistake: naming my vermin. I began referring to the mouse as "Mickey." Sometimes I even thought of him fondly, he who besmirched my kitchen and tracked germs into my home. Truth be told, I was getting attached to him. Had he not been so destructive, if he had been tame and lived in a terrarium that someone else would clean, I might even have called it "love." I mean, I've had human relationships similar to this, such as messy boyfriends with apartments of their own; it's doable.

On a metaphysical note, the situation made me think of how we name and objectify everything, which is the beginning of separation from the totality of what is and, therefore, the origin of suffering. Not to mention what a waste of time and energy it is to expect anything or anyone will change just because that's what we want.

But I did have some responsibility to others in my building, who would not have appreciated being the beneficiaries of Mickey's long and healthy life (and probably offspring). Eventually I purchased one of those cruelty-free traps...although the mice I trapped tended to have heart attacks and die when I opened the lid, so I’m not sure about the cruelty-free part.

What if I had learned to co-exist with the Mickster? What if I had just treated him like a beloved husband with poor bathroom aim who always leaves his smelly socks on the bedroom floor...or a cherished child who won't wipe her feet before coming in the house, and insists on dribbling Cheerios all over the living room? Could it be that in my zeal to have my way, in my insistence on ownership of my apartment, that I missed out on The Perfect Love?

Yes, and…I notice I don't love undomesticated mice yet.


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

How Many Lives Have You Saved Today?

A friend sent me a great note today in response to my post on the Virginia Tech shootings.

"I would hope," Vilasini writes, "that if I could save others I would act on it.... Saving [lives] can be sending money to the poor, eating vegetables, giving loans to the poor, teaching others and the list could go on and on. We do count, and we all have been life-changers whether we are aware of it or not. I support your work and your role in saving lives."

The last line of this note surprised me. How does someone like me save lives? I've always seen myself as fear-based. The last time I stood up to an angry mob to defend someone, I was in the seventh grade, 37 years ago. The angry mob (four or five 12-year-old girls) followed me home from school that day and a couple of them threw me to the ground, punched and slapped me around and, if I remember correctly, bloodied my nose and bruised my ego. So I've never done anything like that again, much less taken a bullet for anyone.

I don't deny that my actions have, on occasion, helped others. I acknowledge that words I have written and other expressions of caring have made a difference to people who were confused or in trouble; they've told me so. I also make a practice of donating my time and my resources to worthy organizations, as well as to individual people in need. Have I saved lives by sponsoring a child in Colombia for a year, by serving dinner to homeless families, by sitting with a man and asking him questions about the beliefs that nearly drove him to suicide, by giving away 10% of my very small income? It is possible.

Does facilitating The Work save lives? What I can tell you is that it has saved mine. Being facilitated by Katie years ago woke me up to a way to save my own life, and every day above ground is informed by and dedicated in gratitude to that work. Every time I give the inquiry to a client, I get facilitated as well; your work is my work. I have signed up for the hotline on days that I thought I wanted to die, whether of a bad cold or a broken heart; so many of you have healed me as you've healed yourselves.

How many lives have you saved today? Find at least three ways in which you can experience yourself as a hero, and please let me know.

©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.

Virginia Tech Shootings in a Friendly Universe

Today I found myself ruminating over information I read regarding the sale of guns and ammunition to the Virginia Tech student gunman Seung-Hui Cho. It's been speculated that, because Cho killed and injured so many people in such a short span of time, he must have used a high-capacity magazine with as many as 33 rounds in each clip. A federal assault weapons ban used to limit magazine capacity to 10 rounds of ammunition; the ban expired in 2004.

What does a clean-cut college boy, albeit one with no criminal record, need with high firepower weapons? Why aren't questions like this asked at point of sale?

When a tragedy occurs, we human beings like to figure out why something happened and what could have been done to prevent it. Why? (See, I just did it again myself.) It could be that we think the event should not have happened...that believing this will motivate us to elect officials who will put preventive measures in place...that if we understand the "why" then we can control the future.

Oddly enough, the shootings also seem to have sparked a surge in legal gun sales across the United States, as people become increasingly concerned about defending themselves. Somewhere we have gotten the notion that fighting violence with violence can result in peace. If you don't believe it, look at how you treat your children or spouse when they don't do what you tell them to do.

We cannot reverse what happened on April 16, 2007. We can't bring 32 victims back to life. We can't go back in time and help a man with a mind so confused that he believed his only way out of his pain was to kill. We cannot, in spite of our best efforts, keep murderers and other criminals from buying guns (most obtain theirs on the street). What we can do is to understand where our own suffering comes from. When we do, we can be compassionate to the families of the victims; we can help to quell the fears of our children (and our own fears); we can open our minds to clear and creative solutions and be available to do peaceful service in the world.

Deepening Transformational Inquiry: "It Shouldn't Have Happened"

Find and, using the four questions and turnaround (and three genuine examples) of The Work, inquire into a "should" or "shouldn't" thought that troubles you about the Virginia Tech shootings or another tragedy.

I was particularly struck by the story of the Romanian professor Liviu Librescu, who had survived the Nazi Holocaust as well as the totalitarian Ceausescu regime, only to be gunned down at the age of 76 in his own classroom.

Stressful Belief: He died violently.

Is it true? Yes, he was shot to death when he barred the door to his classroom with his body in an attempt to protect his students.

Can I absolutely know it's true he died violently?
No; I only know he was shot to death; I cannot know his state of mind as he died.

How do I react when I believe this thought?
I judge and mentally attack God and the gunman for taking a good man before his time. (Underlying belief: it is possible to die at the wrong time.) I imagine the pain I might feel in his situation and project that onto him, onto his wife and children, and also onto the students who witnessed his death. I feel horror and see images of the professor riddled with bullets, his body jerking, blood everywhere, the screams in the classroom.

When I believe he died violently, I feel my body go numb and get cold; my mind travels to all the senseless violence in the world and in my own neighborhood where there are drug-related killings, drive-by shootings, hunting accidents and violent incidents against women, not to mention police brutality perpetrated by young police armed with deadly weapons that I assume they just can't wait to use.

When I attach to this belief, I am angry with the NRA and people who enjoy owning assault rifles in spite of all the risks. I see everyone who has a gun (this includes members of my own family) as stupid rednecks whose selfishness in insisting upon their Constitutional right to bear arms often results in tragic death (rarely their own, unfortunately).

I can find no peaceful reason to hold onto this belief (self-righteousness is never peaceful). When I am thinking it and experiencing the effects, I am out of my business mentally and into the business of the professor, his students, his family, gun owners, gun sellers, the world.

Who would I be without this thought?
I can imagine Professor Librescu being like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, doing what he knew to do. I can relax and let him rest in peace. I can rest in peace myself. I feel my shoulders going back into their sockets as I type this, I am breathing normally, I am calm and present. Out of this presence, I can write to my representatives to suggest, in the wake of this tragedy, that they give more of their effort and attention to gun control laws. I can find ways to work with young people in my neighborhood, perhaps set up a "drop in" center where they (and I) can learn, literally, to "drop in" and clear their minds, as opposed to acting out of stories that don't serve. (Please send me your ideas for establishing such a center; I would love to help make this happen anywhere in the world.)

Turned around: He died peacefully.
It could be just as true. Three ways:
1. According to his students, Professor Librescu never made an attempt to leave the classroom, so he may have had no internal violence in the form of fear, as he put himself in the path of the gunman and urged his students to exit via the windows.
2. At the moment of death he might not have felt emotional or physical suffering or pain. We don't really know if death is experienced as violent.
3. He did not die violently at the hands of the Nazis even though his family was captured by them. He was not murdered by the Ceausescu regime even though he was a refusenik. He died in a place he purportedly loved, where he was productive and enjoyed personal freedom.

I died violently.
Truer. In the moment I heard the news I was there, in his place, imagining the worst.

If the universe is friendly, why is it a good thing that Professor Librescu was killed by the gunman?
1. It's good for me because his actions have shown me what heroism, love and compassion look like in the face of death.
2. It's good for him because he went to his death willingly, preferring to spare his students' lives rather than his own.
3. It's good for his students because he lives on in their memories and gratitude. As one young woman put it, "He's a part of my life now and forever. I'm changed."
4. It could be that this man's death, and the deaths of the other 31 people from around the world who were killed, brings us closer together, as a human race, in love.

Yesterday I saw a photograph of Palestinians planting olive branches in memory of those slain, as Israel soldiers carrying weapons stood by. What's wrong with this picture, I asked myself? And the answer came: nothing. This is what I needed to see, my own peaceful and violent feelings about other people as embodied and mirrored back by the world. Recognizing this is not meant to diminish the losses of young lives, the grief of the victim's families or that of the family of Mr. Cho; it also does not mean I condone what happened. However, I am very clear that a disturbed and armed young man, like everything else that upsets me, had to come to my attention in order to show me where I create an unfriendly universe.

For more assistance with deepening inquiry, read the source book for The Work: Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life by Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell.

©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.

Byron Katie's Book Reviewed by Carol Skolnick in Noumenon Journal

The Summer 2006 issue of The Noumenon Journal, an annual published in South Africa by Dr. Kriben Pillay about nondual perspectives, is available now for purchase at the Lulu.com website.

My book review of Byron Katie's I Need Your Love—Is That True? is included, as as well as "Far reaching explorations of our transformative potential… Touching the Universe with Steven Harrison and Patrick McCarty; Corporate Trainings and the Cult of ‘Me’; Krishnamurti and Dramatherapy; Joan Tollifson on Death and What Is; Leadership perspectives by Robert Rabbin and Jim Dreaver; Peter Francis Dziuban on Consciousness" and more.

©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.