Evaluation of facilitators of The Work

We had a busy weekend. Had 7 awesome beings being evaluated for the associate facilitator and facilitators for The Work in our association, The Work for The Chinese Speaking community. It is a privilege to arrange the time slots, getting the current facilitators to sit in to evaluate, to give feedback, and to celebrate the candidates’ sharing of how far they have come in finding freedom for themselves in their lives and to witness their willingness to share it with the world.

I still remembered when I embarked on a 7 or 10 days so-called certification evaluation with Katie back in year 2007, I was in Malaysia then and flew into California just for this event. I didn’t know I had to share about my journey and what I think of The Work with a group of like mind people, had to facilitate people and be evaluated for it. I thought I was going into an immersion of The Work.

After being certified, I spent about 1 year working on thoughts “the world needs The Work” and all the limiting beliefs that would limits my excitement and “pleasure” in sharing The Work.

And with the ending of the Certified Facilitator title from Katie, I realized that I never really cared about having it. I just couldn’t find a reason not to continue maintaining it. Thank you for giving everyone the freedom to share it the way that they want to.

Shenzhen Emotion Code Workshop 24

Time flies. Another round of workshop at Shenzhen, China again. This year we look at Emotions and using The Work to investigate our limiting beliefs around the one thing that many of us are most afraid of.

We all had a lot of fun, with our morning walks starting at 7:30a.m. up to small group sharings and facilitation practice at 9:30p.m.

People asked me what kept me going back to do workshops in China for the past 13 years, except during pandemic period. My answer is very simple. When I see the sparks and A-HA moments they have when they have done The Work, that people are empowered to look inside for answers, everything is worth it.

This is the basis of my playground:)

Love Yourself, Return to The Original Self, August, Shenzhen 2023

This is the workshop participants photos we had last August in Shenzhen, China. Always fun to old and new faces, faces I see over Zoom for months and years before and finally we got to meet in person.

Zoom classes are great, but live workshops are a lot of fun. There are many things and exercises you just can’t do over the internet. That is what I always enjoy.

Looking forward to the next Emotion Code workshop in Shenzhen this July.

Playtime


It’s been a while since I last attended a live event of The Work. Sally has been inviting me to The Heart of The Work down-under for the past few years, never got to go as I always have workshops around mid of March in China.

This time I said “yes” and the workshop was held at The Swarmi Retreat at Kenthurst. A beautiful venue out in the wood. It was such a treat meeting up with my dear friend Sally, Rosie and also Tanya.

It was great that we get to share a piece of three-hour workshop with participants. And we had great topics like aging, body, heaven, etc. I shared about using The Work in making difficult decisions. It was such an honor to witness all the dear ones peeling off layers and layers of old stories of the past, releasing traumas that suppress so much hurts, anger and frustrated of the past.

I love how life can be so simple sometimes.

Passing on of a Bestie


My very dear friend passed on on March 15, 2024. Her health was deteriorating from the wide spread of cancer cells in her body. She was becoming thinner and weaker. Other friends told me she already arranged for her funeral. And that day came when in a whatsapp group, she mentioned that her petscan results was better than before. We were all cheering for her. Then, in the evening, a message came that she was in hospital ICU followed by a message that she passed on….

Deep inside, I couldn’t/didn’t register that she was going to leave this playground so soon. We shared so much fun trips together for the past 20 years. Was it a denial, I still don’t know. I felt a loss of a physical person that I can see and move around with, someone who always speaks with supportive and encouraging words in all my life endeavours that I shared with her.

However, her moving on gave me a sense of reality to this short life we have on earth. It anchors me more into the impermanence of life.

Here I would like to share a passage name, “Imagine God Said …”

Imagine God said, “I’m sending you to Earth to play a game for awhile and then I’ll beam you back. 
It’s a grand experiment. 
Whatever you do, don’t get caught up in the results. 
You’ll be given some lucky cards and you’ll be forced to face some dragons, just like everyone else. 
There are really no rules, except that what goes around, comes around. 
Let truth, curiosity, and the expansion of happiness draw you forward along your path. 
Enjoy the game.  Follow your spirit. 
Observe your reactions to the phenomena you encounter. 
See what it feels like to pretend to be an entity that is separate from me. 
But, remember your origin. 
Don’t worry about losing or winning the game because nobody actually wins and nobody actually loses, regardless of appearance.
Be more concerned about losing yourself.

A Class about Goals


I ran an online class about getting what we want using The Work.
I created a playground for all of us to set goals for the new year. We look at things that we wanted to achieve, to do, to complete but have postponed, not putting as our priority, things that we are not willing to face it, kept procrastinating on.

I noticed that some of us are so used to be driven by stress, by things that we need to do out of survival and when we have worked and undo the stress, we don’t move forward. It’s like there is no reason to move forward, and people became stagnant, and they wondered what happen to them.

But, if we can simply work on the mental blocks, won’t we be more open to trying new things, freer to explore, play and experience….

And if we set an intention for our goals, and we identify the inner experience we would like to have when we have achieve our goals, then we are playing an inner game. And it becomes a lot more fun and best of all, you can never fail in this little game of life.

“If I allow it…..”

Got to share The Work with a group of trainers and we got into a discussion about what The Work entailed.

What struck my mind was when someone mentioned that, when I believe the thought that he hurts me and I do not allow it to happen, then it is not true for me. When I heard this, I had to step back and really imagine what it is like in my experience to hold this thought and live this way.

The thought that one hurts another, can be physical or emotional. For example, if you scream at me and I label that as hurting me, if I do not allow it to happen, I can ask you to stop screaming, but what many people do is to cut off the feeling where we feel hurt by the action and bandage it or disown that part of us. And I come to see how people feel numbed after a while when they have cut off too many parts of them that were hurt and did not move through the painful emotions.

They continue on functioning in life until one day they couldn’t contain all these disowned parts of them and then crashed.

I love how we all get to take our own story and go inside and find what is true for us. To give an answer to an experiential trip is such a disservice to one self.

Go within and find what is true for you.

Boredom

With the new Covid-19 lockdown in the entire Malaysia, I felt the feeling of not wanting to do anything. It’s not that I don’t cook or do what is needed to be done. I just feel the restlessness that I haven’t felt for a long long time.

A dear friend suggested that I sew, another suggested I read, run workshops…. etc..

I realized that it isn’t the outside doing that is causing this unsettled feeling. As I sat and looked inward, I noticed that we are constantly reacting to what life brings us. And if there is no stress or events that we must attend to, there is like a loss of an identity. To many this is like a hopelessness. “You must be lost!”, “there has to be a purpose in your life”.

As I tune into these voices of the masses, I realize that there is a lingering feeling that tinted my life. Thus, a constant connection with the inner self helps to re-establish oneself back to the reality ——a reality where fullness and abundance is always there, waiting to be experienced.

Doing what is in front of me. That is my entire purpose for this precious moment until the next thought or the next thing that show up and I move on. From this place, life can be lived very simply.

If The Universe Is Friendly…

A dear friend asked if I can do a free class for our dear friends. I asked her for a topic and she said, “Katie always says, “The Universe is Friendly”, if this is true, how can COVID-19 pandemic be good for us?

I pondered for a while and my mind went to a time when a friend in Singapore who attended my workshop three years ago, told me during a dinner gathering, “Sue, you know, when I question the statement — “my dog shouldn’t die” in your workshop, when we came to the turnaround — my dog should die, I was really upset and couldn’t even face it. Now, three years later, I could see how his death was a gift for me.

Wow, really? Tell me more about it!” I asked.

After his death, I felt so sad and miserable and I started to seek for deeper meaning of life and did some healing work. Then I started to come out and meet my old friends and made new friends. I feel happier now than before. ” she said.

When we are going through hardship in our lives, it is very hard for the mind to think beyond its circumstances in the moment. At some level, we are resisting to even consider the possibility of how this pandemic is a good thing for us.

It takes quite some willingness and stillness to contemplate a big topic like this. And sometimes the gifts come many years later.

How could this pandemic or the motion control order (MCO) happening now in Malaysia a good thing for me? This question requires me to get still, looking at before the MCO, and now. What is happening within me, me with my family, my work and my financial standing.

The mind would rush to look for all proofs, flood our minds with images of businesses that are closed, reports in the media about the amount of people who lost their jobs, the thinning of our bank accounts, the rise of domestic violence cases reported in the news….

Take some time, go in and find what is true for you, not for the purpose of proving someone right or wrong, but simply for the love of truth because only that can take us deeper into ourselves and allow us the experience of peace and goodness that is always there, waiting to be discovered.

Enjoy the trip. 🙂

About Forgiveness

A dear friend asked the other day how she can understand Katie’s words of wisdom. To me, those words are for the heart, not the mind. When we let the I-Know-Mind try and understand those words, we become more confused.

For example, Katie always says, “forgivenness is seeing what you think happened actually did not.” Just looking at these words, I don’t see how one can understand what it really means. These words are the outcome of one who experiences an inquiry and seeing for itself that whatever it thought happened was actually a misunderstanding, it didn’t happen, except in our minds.

Let’s explore an inquiry here. “She criticized me”, my proof is she said “why are you not doing it” and she gave me the look. Isn’t this a common encounter for us as human. 🙂

Is it true when she said “why are you not doing it”, she is criticizing me?

Can I absolutely know it is true that when she said that, she is criticizing me?

How do I react when I think the thought she is criticizing me?

Answer: I am upset with her, I cut her off, I don’t listen to what she has to say after that, I ignore her.

Who would I be without this thought she is criticizing me? How would I react taking in her words within the thought she is criticizing me?

Answer: I would simply answer her simple question why I am not doing it.

So, by mentally going into the situation and answer the 4 simple questions, I get to experience for myself that when I believe the thought I was upset with her, and when I don’t have the thought, I simple answer her question without stress. So, in other words, I forgive her for something she didn’t do — that is to criticizing me.

I experience for myself that when I have the thought she criticizes me, I am angry with her, I take her words personally, I think she is criticizing me when she could be really wanting to know the reason why I don’t do it.

Could it be that it is just my own interpretation. Could it be that everything I see on the outside is an interpretation of my own beliefs and thoughts?

How would I live my life from this place? Isn’t life starts to get very exciting? Take a moment and contemplate that 🙂