|
We've been meditating, repeating affirmations, chanting, ritualizing, gathering blessings from this guru and learning that method, going to yoga class, to therapy. We've sipped at soulful soup, made four agreements, conversed with God. Sometimes we actually get that experience of whatever it is that we are seeking or seeking to drop. Then the boss yells, our spouse cheats, our mother nags, a child dies, the stock market and our weight go up and down, and inner peace becomes a distant memory. Why this dichotomy between the "spiritual life" and a mind that continues to judge, blame, fear, and react after years of sincere study and practice? According to Byron Katie, it's because everything's upside down. What we believe to be true isn't. What we've been told works doesn't. What we thought we wanted was our prison, and what we found unacceptable was perfect, all because we've not gone within to find out what's true for us. And we haven't done that because we haven't known how. For the last 15 years, Katie has helped an estimated 300,000 people worldwide to change that through a self-inquiry process she calls The Work. Neither spiritual path nor psychological modality, The Work contains elements of both, showing us how to be our own guru, psychiatrist, loved one, and teacher of the truth. In the pages of her new book, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, Katie's program — once available only at workshops and gatherings — is spelled out in plain American English for all to use anytime, anywhere. As the book's subtitle suggests, The Work basically consists of four simple questions. Can these questions really change your life? Transcripts of Katie's public sessions are convincing. People come to The Work with a broad spectrum of issues, from minor annoyances to seemingly insurmountable difficulties. With Katie's prompting, tears and fears turn to laughter, anguish turns to calm, and the false beliefs of a lifetime come undone. What Katie knows to be true can be summed up in one of her favorite sayings: "I am the perpetrator of my suffering; but only all of it." She learned this one morning in 1986, at the age of 43, after a ten-year descent into depression and hopelessness. Despite "having it all" — money, glamour, marriage, and family — Katie became increasingly paranoid and agoraphobic. Ultimately weighing over 200 pounds, hooked on pain killers, unable to bathe or leave her bed for weeks at a time, she landed in a halfway house, locked in an attic room at night because the other residents feared her rage. In unbearable pain, feeling unloved and misunderstood, Katie had long considered suicide. Instead, she awoke on the floor of that attic to discover that nothing was as it had previously seemed. In this rapturous state the past disappeared, the future didn't exist; only love remained. Back home in Barstow, California, Katie became known as "the lit lady." Attracted to her energy, people came to her for "healings." "Are you enlightened?" some would ask. "I'm just someone who knows the difference between what hurts and what doesn't," was Katie's truthful answer. As Katie's awakening expanded, agonizing old concepts threatened to derail her. It was then that self-inquiry took birth inside, allowing her to meet each thought with compassion and understanding. What hurts, according to Katie, is living a lie, arguing with reality. Her own "undoing," wordless at first, was about examining thoughts like "My husband doesn't love me" and "My children should understand me." Katie realized that she couldn't know anything except her own mind, and that she did not have the power to heal another; honest inquiry was the only way to heal. Katie's story is illustrative of the pitfalls of the American dream, and also in keeping with accounts of spontaneous awakenings like those of the Buddha, yogis, and Christian mystics. But unlike these mahatmas, Katie had no context for her experience; she'd never meditated, and had neither interest nor background in spirituality. (Her "religion" — or lifelong belief system — as she tells it, had been "My children should pick up their socks.") Eventually Katie was able to convey her experience of unfoldment as a simple written process that could be taught in the form of four questions, namely: Is it true? Can you absolutely know that it's true? How do you react when you think that thought? Who or what would you be without it? These questions are, Katie says, "the ones the heart has been asking for eons." Now, chances are that you haven't woken up in a permanent state of supreme bliss; perhaps you're someone whose boss yelled at you, and suddenly you're not feeling so spiritual. You want to live in the now? Uninvestigated, pain is your now. The boss raised her voice, and the mind creates stories about what that means: My boss doesn't appreciate me. Nobody respects me. Supervisors shouldn't yell at employees. I shouldn't feel pain. In The Work, thoughts like these are the route to freedom. Loving What Is provides the means to "undo" beliefs that cause suffering, along with dozens of examples of The Work in action with everyone from a disturbed four-year-old who hurts his baby sister; to survivors of incest, illness, and bad investments; to a man terrorized for fifty years by childhood memories of war. Beginners in The Work are exhorted to "Judge your neighbor, write it down, ask four questions, and turn it around." We judge others at first, rather than ourselves, precisely because we've always tried not to. ("I had to begin with something I was good at," Katie jokes.) Writing down these judgments is an essential step; it stops the mind. So without censorship, we list on paper every petty thought we've ever had about alcoholic Dad, greedy sister, mean first grade teacher, screaming babies, men, women, Osama bin Laden. Later we're shown how to tackle abstract concepts such as God, the body, war, government, money, or death. Back to the boss who doesn't appreciate you. Using the first of The Work's four self-inquiry questions, you ask, "Is it true?" The impulse might be to answer yes. Upon deeper inquiry — question two, "Can you really know that it's true?" — you may find that you don't know what your boss thinks of you; you can only know your response to what she says and does. Question three asks, "How do you react when you think that thought?" How do you treat your boss, yourself, and others? How does this single story color your entire life, giving birth to other stressful beliefs? The final question, "Who or what would you be without that thought?" is a revelation: If it never occurred to you that the boss was unappreciative, how would you feel? What would your life look like? (It might look like the freedom you've always wanted.) Last comes the "turnaround": "My boss doesn't appreciate me" gets reversed to its extreme opposite, "My boss does appreciate me." Could this be just as true sometimes? Other turnarounds: "I don't appreciate me" and "I don't appreciate my boss" (especially when I think she doesn't appreciate me). Each turnaround is fodder for further investigation. Katie's Work has none of the soothing balm of mysticism. It's a surgical procedure that cuts to the core of reality; but that's the kindest cut, letting us know for ourselves that we are always okay now — even in annoyance, anger, terror, or on our deathbed. Katie says, "Confusion is the only suffering." Wanting circumstances — or people, or who you are — to be different, is a bad dream. Peace can be found when we look deeply into the dark and nasty thoughts we'd rather dismiss. Deconstructing the story ends confusion, which in turn ends suffering; we "love what is." Eventually, Katie says, we don't even have to write out The Work; it becomes second nature, continuing to "undo" us. Is it counterproductive to focus on the negative? Thought is not the enemy, Katie assures us. We're not even "doing" thoughts; they simply appear: innocent, unstoppable, not original, all "recycled." Detachment from thought happens, not by command, but when we inquire gently. If a child comes crying, "Nobody loves me," instead of snapping, "Don't say that," we might hold that child and ask, "Sweetheart, is that really true?" That's how The Work works. Instead of dropping our stories — difficult at best — we meet them as friends, or as a child whom we love. When I first encountered The Work early in 2001, I was amazed at both its power and simplicity. Having invested many years (and dollars) in spiritual retreats and therapy, still I didn't have a clue. Suddenly there was this woman out of Smalltown, U.S.A. who had been at least as confused and frightened as I and who asked me four questions about stuff I'd avoided all my life: "Your boyfriend should not have abused you, is it true? What is the reality of it: did he? Should a red rose be pink? This rose is red, and that man was abusive; that's what is." I came to see that I needn't condone abuse, but that I suffered because I wanted my abuser to change instead of changing myself. Yikes! Everything I thought I knew, out the window! And once the shock wore off, relief. You may come away from Loving What Is wondering, "Has all my seeking and studying been for naught?" My investigations have caused me to reconsider every concept I'd ever clung to, including the spiritual ones. Even so, I continue to enjoy chanting, meditation, and the study of consciousness; I find that The Work complements rather than contradicts them. Not surprisingly, many spiritual teachers now recommend The Work and invoke Katie in their own teachings. Since there's nothing to believe or disbelieve, The Work is compatible with any religion, philosophy, or therapy. What's more, if your story works for you, you can keep it; Katie reminds us to be gentle and go at our own pace. "The Work is just four questions," she says. "They don't even say 'answer me.' " But if a story hurts, you may want to ask why. All it takes is a pen and paper, and a willingness to get real. Byron Katie will be appearing on the University of Washington campus on April 25 at 7:00 p.m. Admission is free; call (206) 634-3400 for details. Carol L. Skolnick is a New York City-based freelance writer and creativity consultant whose work has appeared at Salon.com, Four Corners, pacific REVIEW, Glamour, The Sun: A Magazine of Ideas, and in anthologies. E-mail <sput6@aol.com>. |
Byron Katie, founder
of a remarkable self-inquiry process called The Work, had an
extraordinary "spiritual awakening" in the midst of
an ordinary small-town American life. But what makes The Work
of Byron Katie so radical is that it's so simple, so un-mystical,
so straightforward, so American.