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Byron Katie (born 1942 under the name Byron Kathleen Reid)[1] )
Byron Katie
Byron Katie

is a popular American speaker and writer who teaches people how to question their stressful thoughts using a simple process of self-inquiry she calls "The Work". She is the best-selling author of Loving What Is: Four Questions that Can Change Your Life and I Need Your Love—Is That True?: How to Stop Seeking Love, Appreciation and Approval and Start Finding Them Instead.

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Teachings

Twenty years ago, when she was 43, Katie experienced what she calls "waking up to reality." By her own report, during her 30s she became severely depressed and was unable to do much for herself, obsessing suicide. She rarely left her house and she slept with a loaded gun under her pillow. Finally, after realizing that she needed some help, she checked herself into a treatment facility for overeaters. This was the only place that offered some sort of psychotherapy that was covered by her insurance.

According to her personal account, one morning shortly after arriving at the treatment facility (basically a group home for women suffering from various problems), a cockroach crawled across her foot. She "woke up" with a totally different awareness and understanding of the world. She says that what she realized was that when she believed her own thoughts (e.g., she was too fat, her husband didn't love her, her children were disobedient), she suffered; when she questioned these beliefs, and came to see that they weren't even true, she experienced freedom and joy. It was in this moment that the four questions, which she calls The Work, were born.

Katie states that she subsequently began to question every one of her beliefs that had caused her stress, doing The Work on her stressful thoughts. As she did, she reports experiencing greater and greater freedom. She feels today that she was able to transform herself from a depressed, suicidal young mother of three, into a person who could no longer find a problem in the world, experiencing each moment with great peace and understanding.

For the past twenty years she has been traveling the world, teaching The Work to hundreds of thousands of people who are interested in finding a way to end their suffering. Katie stresses that The Work is not therapy and she claims never to give advice. She presents four questions which a person can use to investigate their thinking, especially any thought that would cause a person to suffer from anxiety, stress, fear, anger, sadness or depression.

Katie is an internationally recognized speaker and writer who presents at conferences throughout the world with popular self-help teachers such as Wayne Dyer. She offers a variety of events where people can learn The Work, including weekend workshops and her nine-day School for The Work.

Katie's husband, and her co-author, is the popular poet and translator, Stephen Mitchell.

The Work

The four questions which comprise the basis of The Work are:

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

You apply these four questions to any thought that causes you stress. An example of this would be: "My mother never loved me."

Once you have taken that statement through inquiry, by asking yourself the four questions, you go to what Katie calls the turnaround. For the turnaround, you turn your original statement around to the opposite.

"My mother never loved me" turns around to "My mother always loved me."

Then you find three ways how your mother did love you - three genuine examples in your life.

You can also turn the statement around to yourself: "I never loved my mother." Could that be just as true or truer? You find three ways that it could be just as true or truer.

People use The Work to deal with painful beliefs about all sorts of topics, including relationships, parenting, children, illness, death, trauma and much more.

Comments by media and contemporaries

Time Magazine has named Katie "a spiritual innovator for the new millennium."

Eckhart Tolle says, "Byron Katie's Work is a great blessing for our planet. The root cause of suffering is our 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."

External links

References

  1. ^ http://www.aarpmagazine.org/health/quit_your_pain.html

Works

Books

  • Loving What Is: Four Questions that Can Change Your Life, Three Rivers Press, 2002, ISBN 1-4000-4537-1 (PB)
  • I Need Your Love - Is That True? How to Stop Seeking Love, Appreciation, and Approval and Start Finding Them Instead, April 5, 2006 ISBN 1-4000-5107-X (HC)
  • (forthcoming)A Thousand Names for Joy: A Guide to Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are." Harmony Press, 2007. ISBN 0-307-33923-8 (HC)

The first two books are also available as audiobooks.