4
Mar
2008
The Work of Byron Katie
This is just a cursory examination until I get time to go over the materials in more detail.
Byron Katie’s The Work could be superficially compared to the Sedona Method, The Work consists of a series of three or four questions to ask yourself to achieve emotional release, but the experience to me is very different. The gist of The Work is that only good can come, the only bad comes from the story you are attached too, the story of why you can’t be happy or have not succeeded. The idea of answering the questions is to find what Katie calls a “turn around” which provides a new way of looking at the story and seems to neutralize the original emotions behind it.
A turn around can be done without the questions, they seem to only be used when you’re having trouble finding one. For an example from a video of Katie doing The Work, a man says he wife became disgusted at him for his lack for masculinity, the turn around is that he’s disgusted at her for leaving him when he loved her so much, with this he realities he was in love with a fantasy and never gave her love at all, surprised by how self righteous he had been he achieves release. This is a difficult concept to explain in words but should become clear on seeing it in action.
The four questions are:
- Is it true?
- Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
- How do you react when you believe that thought?
- Who would you be without the thought?
If you are doing The Work by yourself you should write the answers down to better formulate your turn around. To appreciate the power of “is that true?” try asking it to the next person who confronts you with a reason they can’t do something, in my experience the answer is almost unanimously “no” and a bit of a brain miss-fire with they assimilate a new way of thinking. If that’s not the case follow it up with the second question “Can you absolutely know that it’s true?” Remember to do this sparingly to preserve it’s effectiveness.
Kate came to her enlightenment suddenly much like Eckhart Tolle (author of The Power of Now), she awoke one day to realize the if she was angry at somebody then they were just mirroring her own thoughts back to her, and as such had a tool examine how her thoughts were shaping her world. Katie’s writings have achieved praise from many well regarded sources such as Time Magazine and Eckhart Tolle himself.
“Byron Katie’s Work is a great blessing for our planet. The root cause of suffering is identification with our thoughts, the ‘stories’ that are continuously running through our minds. Byron Katie’s Work acts like a razor-sharp sword that cuts through that illusion and enables you to know for yourself the timeless essence of your being. Joy, peace, and love emanate from it as your natural state. In Loving What Is, you have the key. Now use it.” — Eckhart Tolle.
