From Depression to Decompression

Here's a story, purportedly mine, that is only a couple of weeks old, yet it already feels like it happened to someone else.

One night, I did The Work with a friend on the thought, "I am getting depressed again." In spite of all the inquiry I have done and continue to do, and even though I no longer see myself as "a depressive," depressing thoughts return sometimes. Every now and then I get mired in them, temporarily.

I called my friend because I didn't even know what I needed to work on at first. I'd been afraid and bitchy for days. Sitting with my thoughts alone was excruciating. Sitting with others, the people I work with and mentor, I was concerned that if I were to be self-relevatory, I'd be taking away from their time, their needs.

Perhaps I had been overly honest while participating in a recent conference call; with the exception of writing, I'm not yet entirely comfortable with public vulnerability. Perhaps it was because, with the seasonal changes in temperature and light, I was experiencing a rerun of my old Seasonal Affective Disorder story. Maybe it was because I hadn't gone swimming outdoors in a few days; I get off track when I don't eat well, rest, and exercise in addition to working with my thoughts. Also I haven't slept well in over a year. When sleep doesn't happen, other things tend to go out the window.

Blah, blah, blah, and on the thoughts go.

While believing the thought "I am getting depressed again," I started back-tracking in many ways: punishing myself for being human, blaming the old brain chemistry story for my recent outbursts, feeling yet again that I ought to throw in the towel, take down my blog and website, get a "real" job, stop pretending that I am in any way qualified to do what I do. I was either forgetting to do simple self-care things, like brushing my teeth or eating breakfast, or putting them off until uncomfortably late in the day.

I revealed all this in the course of inquiry. And then came the turnaround: "I am not getting depressed again." It could be as true, I reckoned; I was not too depressed to reach out to my beloved friend, to stop being available for my clients, to recognize I was "off" and in need of inquiry.

Was there another turnaround, my friend wanted to know? My mind went to the opposite of "depressed." "I am getting elated again," I told her, and immediately burst into gales of laughter! In that moment, simply being a woman sitting in a couch taking on the telephone to her friend, there was absolutely nothing depressing. Even as I questioned my fear of returning to a painful story of the past, it ceased to be as powerful or compelling as it had been. Just naming the feelings, and the thoughts preceding them, began to take the edge off.

It's not a mere flick of the mental switch, mind you; without the deep education of the four questions and turnaround, to move from "I am getting depressed again" to "I am getting elated again" would be nothing more than an affirmation, largely meaningless.

In The Work, we don't exchange one thought with another, more uplifting one. The Work is a reductive process, what a therapist friend of mine calls "cognitive de-structuring" as opposed to, say, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is a re-structuring of thought patterns. When we inquire, we gradually work our way to the opposites, after calling the mind's bluff about what it habitually has held dear. Otherwise, there is no proof that anything else could be equally true or truer, and the mind needs concrete examples in order to shift its loyalties.

To move from depression to elation wasn't a goal in doing this inquiry, and I didn't even know it was possible. All I knew was that I was caught in a story that was excruciating and therefore may not have been entirely accurate, I recognized a certain stubbornness in clinging to my belief, and at the same time, the curiosity and wilingness to see if there was anything else available to me. I was tired of beating myself.

In retrospect, I am not surprised that I became elated after questioning my thoughts. Depression is compressed, heavy, dense, low. When we question our depressive thinking, we are left with less gravity, nothing to cling to, nowhere to go but up.


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

The Worst/Best Thing That Could Happen

Charles Dickens said, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us..." (From A Tale of Two Cities.)

Byron Katie tells us, "The worst that could happen is the best that could happen, but only always." (It's that "the universe is friendly" deal.)

If this reasoning makes you feel a little schizophrenic, you're not alone. We don't call it The Work for nothing.

Here's my recent encounter with that thing I call hellacious grace:

Thursday night, Sept. 27: I perform a routine software upgrade on my already troublesome new laptop. The machine makes an eerie noise, the screen goes black, and it shuts down. Naturally, it is fifteen minutes past the time my computer's manufacturer's customer care reps shut down for the night.

I try all the rebooting tricks I know. Look up user forums on my spare (very spare, and dying) older computer. Try calling my friend Loren, who knows everything about computers and most other things; he does not return my call.

I am up all night obsessing.

Friday: After a long time on hold, I manage to get ahold of telephone service representatives at Lemon Computers, Inc. Not one, but several of them, since the first one sends me to a "specialist" who knows no more than the first rep, and then, finally, to "customer care," a.k.a. "Where we send the irate customers who won't be appeased by us underpaid kids."

The news is not good. I have to send the computer in for repairs, which could take a few weeks, or get to the nearest Lemon store, a half hour away, and me with no car or public transportation option to get there. My data, I'm told, is likely lost. Lemon's warranty does not cover data loss or retrieval, even if the computer's malfunction is caused by a faulty product or the company's negligence. I look into nearby data retrieval companies; if they can even do the job, they will charge me almost as much as the computer itself cost. Most months, I don't earn what a computer costs.

I reach several friends, who commiserate or give redundant advice. One asks if I want to do The Work; sounds great, but my story is, I don't have time, I have more important things on my plate here (and besides, I'm right, damn it).

Friday evening: Loren finally calls back, and says he supposes he could take me to the store in Los Gatos the next day, but suggests we try a few other things first.

I am overwhelmed, and at a loss. I hadn't gotten to figuring out a system for backing up my files, because I was spending most of my computer time trying to coax out or exterminate the software and hardware bugs it shipped with. I don't have my precious manuscripts, my workshop notes, my online address book, or my client data, and I have a full schedule ahead. How will I be present with my work, for my clients?

I go to the movies, see a weepy chick flick, eat pizza (my first meal since lunch the previous day), and try to forget.

Friday late night through Saturday morning: I toss and turn. Finally it comes to me that I could be doing The Work as long as I'm not sleeping or tinkering with my Lemon laptop. Investigating the belief, "I am dependent on my computer," provides me with some enlightenment. I don't take care of my business or myself when I believe this thought. Obviously I can't sleep. I hate the people at Lemon. I hate the very machine I feel dependent on. Without this thought I would not presume disaster; I would do what's in front of me; non-computer tasks. I'd do all the research I've been doing but without all the drama. I turn the thought around. Wow. Truly speaking, I'm not dependent on anything; I'm still breathing. I can reconstruct whatever information I can. Creative oeuvre? I must not need it anymore. If the universe is friendly, what wonderful thing will take its place?

I don't feel better, but I do have some perspective; enough to get a couple of hours of sleep.

Saturday morning: I am, if not joyous, amazingly and entirely surrendered to what is. Que sera sera. I am going to live my life in the meantime. I go to my improv class; it is entirely enjoyable. Loren is there; he comes home with me to examine the "patient." After awhile, I ask if we could please just go to the Lemon store; he hesitantly, but kindly, agrees.

It's a perfect day in the South Bay. There's no traffic on the way to Los Gatos, taking us only 20 minutes. The Lemon store is hopping with young people needing their mp3 players fixed. The technicians can't see me until 3:30. Perfect; obviously it's now lunchtime. I treat Loren to delicious Vietnamese food, we window shop for housewares and clothing in funky-chic boutiques, and I purchase a half pound of some of my favorite childhood treats—mocha coffee beans, red Swedish fish, "likkerish" whips, and Sourpatch fruits—from the penny candy store.

We return to the computer shop. The tech, God bless him, gets me up and running in minutes. I get my data backed up on the spot, and my future backup solutions are mapped out for me. I tell the tech genius about a wireless problem I've been having, unsolved several attempts earlier by the phone "specialists." My Genius diagnoses the problem in a flash, and takes my computer to the back where it will be sent to the "depot" and returned, all fixed and cleaned up, straight to my door in a week's time at most.

Without my computer taking up most of my time, I clean my apartment, swim, use the phone, watch Netflix. The mended laptop arrives in just five days. My business survives, as does my life's work, without my even needing any of it

Is there an example from your life of "The worst that could happen is the best that could happen?" Send me your comments; I'll compile some of your stories for a future post.

P.S. Upon reading this, my friend, Rev. Tami Coyne wrote, only half joking: "Wonderful article. There's something about computer problems that make major existential crises--like the inevitablitity of death--seem irrelevant."


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

Molly Gordon Was RIght

Yup. Molly Gordon was correct. I've been getting a lot of eBook offers in my in-box lately, and it seems that my popular and well-reviewed eBook, Tranformational Inquiry: Working on Your Work is indeed seriously underpriced for the marketplace, where eBooks of this magnitude are going for upwards of $50.00.

So on November 1, I'm going to raise the price of Working on Your Work to $19.95 (still seriously underpriced, I'm told, and that's fine with me).

That still leaves you a couple of weeks to order it for $14.95. And when you do, you'll receive the as-yet unpublished report, "The Top 10 Erroneous Business Beliefs: Are They Holding You Back?" as my early holiday gift to you.


©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.

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.

Days of Awe: At-One-Ment

"There does not exist any vow, oath, pledge, promise, or intention. But there does exist pardon, forgiveness, and atonement." —from Kolaynu Santa Cruz's Rosh Hashanah service

I attended The School for The Work right after 9/11; an amazing time to spend 10 days immersed in The Work, not that any time there isn't equally amazing. It's just that this was one heck of a story to undo. We spent exactly one evening on it together, in session. The rest of the week we focused on the usual suspects: mother, father, boss, partner, children, money, health, and in my case, cat.

Yom Kippur also happened during that week. I spoke about it in the work room with my classmates, remarking that what we were doing at the school was remarkably like teshuva (turning), tefilah (sincere asking), and tzedakah (right action).

I'd asked to sing something in the room that I would have chanted for my deceased parents in the synagogue, had I been at home. These words are part of the Mourner's Kaddish, the prayer for the dead:

Oseh shalom bimromov, hu yaaseh shalom, aleynu v'al kol yisroel, ve'imroo omein.

The translation is: The One who makes peace in high holy places, may this One bring peace upon us, and upon all Israel (literal translation of Israel: one who struggles—that would be most of us); and let us say Amen.

I realized then that the essence of the High Holy Days, and of our practice of inquiry, was about peace; peace within, peace without, peace with Creation.

In the concluding Yom Kippur service, the congregation admits to all the sins that we have ever committed, knowing that forgiveness is at hand in the recognition. Is there any one of us who has never done these things, if only to ourselves?

"We have trespassed, we have been faithless, we have robbed, we have spoken basely, we have committed iniquity, we have wrought unrighteousness, we have been presumptuous, we have done violence, we have forged lies, we have counseled evil, we have spoken falsely, we have scoffed, we have revolted, we have blasphemed, we have been rebellious, we have acted perversely, we have transgressed, we have persecuted, we have been stiff-necked, we have done wickedly, we have corrupted ourselves, we have committed abomination, we have gone astray, and we have led astray."

Only in our awareness that we have been confused and mistaken can we come to clarity. Only in seeing that we are what we thought our enemies were can we make peace with them. Only in realizing the truth about our loved ones can we honor them in life or death; they turned out to be us. At-one-ment.

After I sang at the School that day—a day during which I had believed myself to be bagging the holiest of holy days in the Jewish calendar—Katie said to me, "You're doing Yom Kippur big-time!"

I have endeavored to do Yom Kippur big-time ever since.

Let all who struggle be peaceful at last, in this high holy place. Today, I am blessed to know how to find peace within: Is it true? Can I absolutely know that it's true? How do I react when I believe that thought? Who would I be without this thought? Turn the thought around.

God is good.

Happy new you.

Love,
Carol


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