When I mentally went into my mother’s business, for example, with a thought like “My mother should understand me,” I immediately experienced a feeling of loneliness. And I realised that every time in my life that I had felt hurt or lonely, I had been in someone else’s business. If you are living your life and I am mentally living your life, who is here living mine? We’re both over there. Being mentally in your business keeps me from being present in my own. I am separate from myself, wondering why my life doesn’t work.
To think that I know what’s best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what’s right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve your problems for you. If you understand the three kinds of business ( mine, yours, and God’s ) enough to stay in your own business, it could free your life in a way that you can’t even imagine. The next time you’re feeling stress or discomfort, ask yourself whose business you’re in mentally, and you may burst out laughing! That question can bring you back to yourself. And you may come to see that you’ve never really been present, that you’ve been mentally living in other people’s business all your life. Just to notice that you’re in someone else’s business can bring you back to your own wonderful self. And if you practice it for a while, you may come to see that you don’t have any business either and that your life runs perfectly well on its own.
Sometimes you may not feel comfortable with your yes to questions 1 and 2. You want to go deeper, but the statement you’ve written, or the thought that’s torturing you, appears to be an irrefutable fact. Your suffering may be caused by a thought that interprets what happened, rather than the thought you wrote down. Let’s say you wrote, “I am angry at my father because he hit me.” Is it true? Yes: you are angry, and yes: he did hit you, many times, when you were a child. Try writing the statement with your added interpretation. “I am angry at my father because he hit me, and it means that _____.” Maybe you would finish this statement with “and it means that he doesn’t love me.”
Let’s play with the statement “Paul should appreciate me.” First, turn it around to yourself: I should appreciate myself. (It’s my job, not his.) Next, turn it around to the other: I should appreciate Paul. (If I believe it’s so easy for Paul to appreciate me, can I appreciate Paul? Can I live it?) Then turn it around to the opposite: Paul shouldn’t appreciate me. (That’s reality, sometimes. Paul shouldn’t appreciate me, unless he does.)
