IT’S AFTER, NOT BEFORE

The point of everything I’ve been telling you here is that, while you may not be able to use it to control your thoughts ahead of time, you now have an extraordinary tool, a powerful, powerful device, with which to change your thoughts after the fact. Indeed, almost instantly after the fact. And that is nearly as good as doing it ahead of time.

Think about it. If you could have changed most of the thoughts that created the negative emotions that you have had in the past twenty years within minutes, or even seconds, of having them, transforming them on the spot into something much more positive and healing, wouldn’t you have loved to have been able to do that? I mean, do you think that would have changed some important moments in your life, or what . . . ???

Now think about this for your future—or even for the present moment in which you are now living. If you could transform negative emotions into positive emotions right now, and every day for the rest of your life—even if you did it after you first felt the negative emotion

—wouldn’t that be a wonderful gift?

I promised you at the outset—and I meant it when I promised—that when you’re through here you’ll be able to change Fear into Excitement, Worry into Wonder, Expectation into

Anticipation, Resistance into Acceptance, Disappointment into Detachment, Enragement into Engagement, Addiction into Preference, Requirement into Contentment, Judgment into

Observation, Sadness into Happiness, Thought into Presence, Reaction into Response, and a Time of Turmoil into a Time of Peace.

I didn’t say you would never have fear, never have worry, never have disappointment or sadness or turmoil. I said that you would be able to change them. And you will be able to.

You’ll be able to change them fast. As fast as they arise. You can watch them come up, and you can change them as fast as they appear.

Or you can take your time with it. You can, as spiritual teacher Mary O’Malley suggests, just look at them with simple curiosity, and observe how it feels to have that particular

feeling. Then you can hang out with your emotion—and the Distorted Reality that it generates

—for as long as you want. You are in total control. You can create whatever “aftereffect”

you wish. After you feel the first rush of emotion, how you wish it to affect you is up to you.

By the way, you can trust yourself on this. You will know when you’re “done” having an experience. You will know when your period of mourning is over, your time of anger has passed, your veil of tears is ready to be lifted, your fear seeks to subside, your unhappiness feels complete.

Again, you can decide that this will be just moments after the very first impulse of

negative energy flows through you—or you can choose to take weeks, months, or years. (We all know people who have been bitter for decades over an event in their past.) But now, at least, you cannot say that you have no control over these emotions or the thoughts that create them, that you have no control over the way you are experiencing your life, that you have no control over the reality in which you find yourself.

In my own life, I have reduced my experience of anger or frustration to about twelve to fifteen minutes. I just toss it away after that. Sadness takes a little longer. Sometimes a half-hour or more. Fear, longer still. I can hang out in fear, or waft in and out of it, for periods of time over days on end if I am not careful. And melancholy? Gosh, I could entertain

melancholy as a Constant State of Mind given the slightest encouragement. (It’s apparently too much fun for me to give up.)

The point: I hold on to the experiences that serve me, and only as long as they serve me.

And how I can tell when they are no longer are serving me? By my Happiness Meter.

You see, I know myself pretty well. I can actually be happy being angry—and I am willing to admit that. I can be happy being sad, and I can admit that. There are certain times when it feels good to feel bad. There’s a certain excitement attached to a particular kind of anger. (Self-righteousness is one of my favorites.) But when it no longer feels good to feel bad, I cut it off. I will not disserve myself.

You do not have to disserve yourself, either. So look at what is going on in your life right now, and see how you’re feeling about it. As long as you feel good about feeling whatever you’re feeling—as long as you are, at some level, getting a payoff out of it, enjoying the experience you are having—it is serving you. (The question is whether you will be able to admit that, even to yourself.)

As soon as you become clear that you are done feeling a certain way . . . when you hear yourself saying to yourself, I’m finished with this. I’m through with this. I don’t want any more of this!, then you can use the tools that are being described on these pages to be done with it. Instantly.

That’s the gift you’re giving yourself here.

Let’s make no mistake about something. You brought yourself to this book. You opened it.

And it’s you who’ve stayed with it through all of these deep explorations. You’ve done this.

You have given yourself this gift. Nice going. Nice, nice going. You’ve needed it. You deserve it. And you got it.

Now I am going to show you exactly how all of this works in real life. Not on paper. Not in a lecture. In real life.

They don’t set out to do anything grand.

They play, the three of them:

Black and Burr-ridden, Speckled and Bright-eyed,

Sleek and Questioning.

Every morning the play continues, tugging one another this way and that

along throughout a day.

If He sits, scratching and gazing out across the great divide of valleys,

She will bring Him an enduring piece of hat or garden hose or

the last fourth of a plastic ball and drop it at His feet.

If the One with the moon-colored eyes lies in the ivy, with sun on Her ribs

and leaves in Her ears the other two will attack mid-dream

with nip and tug at neck and tail.

It is pure genius and heart.

Three dogs living out the Mystery every moment

while it slips like water through all of my grasping.

—‘Three Dogs Knowing’ © 2005 Em Claire

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