Byron Katie will not Save the World, Your Truth Will

Courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Katie

Byron Kathleen Mitchell (née Reid), better known as Byron Katie, born December 6, 1942,[1] is an American speaker and author who teaches a method of self-inquiry known as “The Work of Byron Katie” or simply as “The Work.”

Byron Kathleen Reid (or “Katie” as she is often called) became severely depressed in her early thirties. She was a businesswoman and mother who lived in a small town in the high desert of southern California. According to Katie, for nearly a decade she spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and constant thoughts of suicide; for the last two years she was often unable to leave her bedroom. Then, one morning in February 1986, while in a halfway house for women with eating disorders,[2] she experienced a life-changing realization. She called it “waking up to reality.” In that moment of enlightenment, she says,

“I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment.”

According to journalist Allison Adato, soon afterward people started seeking Katie out and asking how they could find the freedom that they saw in her.[3] People from her town, and eventually from elsewhere, came to meet her, and some to even live with her.

Katie is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition. She is married to the writer and translator Stephen Mitchell, who co-wrote her first book, Loving What Is and her third book, A Thousand Names for Joy.

Katie calls her method of self-inquiry “The Work.” She describes it as an embodiment, in words, of the wordless questioning that had woken up in her on that February morning. Adato further writes that as reports spread about the transformations people felt they were experiencing through The Work, Katie was invited to present it publicly elsewhere in California, then throughout the United States, and eventually in Europe and across the world.[3] She has taught her method to people at free public events, in prisons, hospitals, churches, corporations, shelters for survivors of domestic violence, universities and schools, at weekend intensives, and at her nine-day “School for The Work.”

* Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, with Stephen Mitchell, Harmony Books, 2002, ISBN 0-609-60874-6 (HC)
* I Need Your Love – Is That True? How to Stop Seeking Love, Appreciation, and Approval and Start Finding Them Instead, with Michael Katz, Harmony Books, 2005, ISBN 1-4000-5107-X (HC)
* A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are, with Stephen Mitchell, Harmony Books, 2007. ISBN 978-0-307-33923-2 (HC)
* Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie, edited by Stephen Mitchell, Hay House, 2007. ISBN 978-1-4019-1730-2 (PB)
* Who Would You Be Without Your Story?: Dialogues with Byron Katie, edited by Carol Williams, Hay House (October 15, 2008), ISBN 978-1-4019-2179-8 (PB)

http://www.hayhouse.com.au/authorbio.php?id=474

Byron Katie, founder of The Work, has one job: to teach people how to end their own suffering. When Katie appears, lives change. As she guides people through her simple and powerful process of inquiry, called The Work, they find again and again that their stressful beliefs—about life, other people, or themselves—just aren’t true. Through The Work, anyone can learn to identify and question the thoughts that cause them pain. Katie not only teaches that all the problems in the world originate in our thinking: she gives us the tool to open our minds and set ourselves free.

http://www.byronevents.net/byronkatie/

“Loving What Is” is an experiential workshop designed to release limiting beliefs and mental stress utilizing The Work of Byron Katie. Instead of trying to suppress our judgements on others or on life we will use them as a starting point for self-realization. Doing so allows us to discover that the real source of distress in life is only ever our thinking. As we cease trying desperately to get reality to match our stories of how it “should be”, we start to experience the peace and happiness that comes when we stop wanting everything to be different than it is.

The Work of Byron Katie is a radical approach that doesn’t have any answers – it has something better – the questions. People who use The Work experience extraordinary and lasting impact on their daily lives.