Free Your Mind Frees the World

It is interesting, the space I created by letting go of university. I am finding myself choosing what needs to be reflected on. I had a long discussion with a friend who is doing The Work and it is something I felt I must do this year, self development. It feels great. Now it is time to discover the true knowledge and how to find real peace and harmony. When we change, the world changes.

So let’s look at the work of Byron Katie and questioning your negative thoughts. We have to be discerning when we believe the media, that the world is ending. Can we be sure it is all true. The work removes suffering. It is the truth that sets us free.

www.thework.com

“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. That joy is in everyone, always.” — Byron Katie

The Work of Byron Katie is a way of identifying and questioning the thoughts that cause all the fear and suffering in the world. Experience the happiness of undoing those thoughts through The Work, and allow your mind to return to its true, awakened, peaceful, creative nature.

The Work is a simple yet powerful process of inquiry that teaches you to identify and question the thoughts that cause all the suffering in the world. It’s a way to understand what’s hurting you, and to address the cause of your problems with clarity.

People who do The Work as an ongoing practice commonly report:

* Alleviation of depression: Find resolution, even happiness, in situations that were once debilitating.
* Decreased stress: Learn how to live with less anxiety or fear.
* Improved relationships: Experience deeper connection and intimacy with your partner, your parents, your children, your friends, and yourself.
* Reduced anger: Understand what makes you angry and resentful, and become less reactive, less often, with less intensity.
* Increased mental clarity: Live and work more intelligently and effectively, with integrity.
* More energy: Experience a new sense of ongoing vigor and well-being.
* More peace: Discover how to become “a lover of what is.”

I’m in Love! With this woman. An Account by Richard Lawrence Cohen

Byron Katie story

Byron Katie is an authentic homegrown American spiritual
genius out of Barstow, California. Raised in ordinary
circumstances, she became successful in real estate, married
twice, and raised three kids. In her thirties she became severely
depressed, a state that lasted ten years. She suffered from bouts
of rage that terrified her children. Agoraphobia set in; she stayed
in bed for weeks at a time, neglecting to wash or bathe, and
eventually checked herself into a halfway house for alcoholics
and people with eating disorders, the only facility her insurance
company would pay for. At the clinic, her anger was so
frightening to the other residents that she was placed in a
separate attic room, where she slept on the floor because she felt
unworthy of a bed. About two weeks later, she woke up one
morning in a state of unalloyed clarity and joy. She felt that she
was no longer herself and that she wasn’t separate from
anything in the universe. An “it,” or perhaps a larger “I,” was
looking out through her eyes. And she understood that all
suffering comes from thoughts.

Returning home shortly afterward, her state of joyous
understanding endured. She reconciled with her astounded
family. She spent a good deal of time in the nearby desert, sitting
in the wind. Word of her awakening spread fast and people
began coming to her with questions about their lives. When they
told her of their perceived problems, she would ask, “Honey, is
that true?” and lead them to see that their sufferings were built
on misconceptions of what ought to be or of what was being
done to them.

Over the next two years, she formalized her approach into a list
of four questions, amazingly simple, :

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that
thought?
4. Who would you be without that thought?

The four questions are followed by a “turnaround” in which you
reverse the terms of the thought and find at least three specific,
genuine examples of how the turnaround is as true or truer than
the initial thought. For example, “He’s mean to me,” might
become “He’s not mean to me,” or, “I’m mean to him,” or “I’m
mean to myself.” (It’s important to find examples for each
turnaround before you go to the next one.)

Writing down the answers and the turnaround, dwelling on
them to see what emerges, is a profound meditation that leads
one to uncover the projections, the blamings, and the fictions
that one lives by. The approach is completely nonjudgmental:
one doesn’t try to eradicate the thought, one simply
acknowledges it and, eventually, even comes to be grateful to it.
Katie calls this process of inquiry The Work. One does it over
and over again, on any issue in one’s life, and it keeps generating
joy and clarity. And from what I’ve read, the more one does it,
the deeper and subtler one’s insights become and the more
automatically fruitful the process becomes. Apparently Katie
lives at some level of impersonal unity with the cosmos where
questions of identity, of life and death, hardly matter anymore.
Most people, operating at a more mundane level, use The Work
for its psychotherapeutic benefits, the changes it can create in
their self-identified lives.

The approach is so simple, many people are suspicious of it.
How can four rather obvious questions change misery into joy
amost overnight? Can the change really last? Isn’t there some
sort of flim-flam, some guru effect, going on?

Well, Katie has a powerful personality, and I think that was
responsible for both the depth of her crash and the height of her
rebound. Her enthusiasm and personal presence — which, while
consistently loving, can also be tough and no-nonsense — are
major factors in her material success. But I also get the feeling
that her material success is genuinely a side issue for her, that if
she hadn’t achieved it, she would still be asking those four
questions to any individuals who sought her out, and to herself.
I’m convinced that the technique works, because I’ve tried it over
the past few days. It’s premature to say how deeply or
permanently I’ve changed, and I don’t know if I’m qualified to
judge anyway. But I know I’ve gained insights into my
unproductive mental habits, insights that might have taken me
months or years to achieve in therapy, if ever.

And I know that I intended to keep up with The Work to see
where it takes me. There are elements in it of cognitive therapy
and elements that accord with Buddhist psychology, but Katie,
arriving at these ideas on her own, has instinctively stripped
away the clinical and cultural frills (or perhaps didn’t have them
to strip away in the first place) and presented only the core, the
pith, the essence. The reason the Work is so ridiculously simple
on the surface is that she’s gotten rid of the decoration.
Katie’s 2002 book, Loving What Is, encapsulates the approach so
fully that it is all the equipment you need to pursue The Work on
your own. No teacher is called for. She says, “You are the
teacher.” You can also learn the gist of The Work for free through
her website, which offers useful printouts and worksheets, a
schedule of Katie’s many public appearances, and offerings of
intensive weekends and week-long programs, at which Katie
herself presides. Busy nonstop, and having turned her simple
questions into a highly successful commercial enterprise, Katie is
remarkably available to answer queries and participate in
periodic free conference calls.

In the world out there, The Work is classified under “Self-Help”
and therefore crammed together with scores of other glitzy, self6
promotional techniques promising happiness to the anxious
American middle class. Glitz and self-promotion aren’t absent
from Katie’s business, but one senses an authenticity
underneath: a pragmatic directness flowing from the joy of real
knowledge. You can spend lots of money on The Work if you
want to, but Katie is glad if you don’t spend any.
When the student is ready, the teacher arrives, the saying goes,
and if I’m not ready now, I don’t know when I ever would be.
And while I might say that the teacher is Katie, she would say
it’s me.

If there is anything problematic at all in your life — a job, a
relationship, a health issue, money, anything — I suggest that
you look up The Work.

I thank Dilys at Good and Happy for posting about Byron Katie
so often that I finally had to check it out.