The following is an excerpt from Byron Katie's
Loving What Is.
"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, author of The
Power of Now
Meeting Your Thoughts with Understanding
A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It's
not our thoughts, but the attachment to our thoughts, that causes
suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it's true,
without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we've been attaching
to, often for years.
Most people think that they are what their thoughts tell them they
are. One day I noticed that I wasn't breathing—I was being breathed.
Then I also noticed, to my amazement, that I wasn't thinking—that I
was actually being thought and that thinking isn't personal. Do you
wake up in the morning and say to yourself, "I think I won't think
today"? It's too late: You're already thinking! Thoughts just
appear. They come out of nothing and go back to nothing, like clouds
moving across the empty sky. They come to pass, not to stay. There
is no harm in them until we attach to them as if they were true.
No one has ever been able to control his thinking, although people
may tell the story of how they have. I don't let go of my thoughts—I
meet them with understanding. Then they let go of me.
Thoughts are like the breeze or the leaves on the trees or the
raindrops falling. They appear like that, and through inquiry we can
make friends with them. Would you argue with a raindrop? Raindrops
aren't personal, and neither are thoughts. Once a painful concept is
met with understanding, the next time it appears you may find it
interesting. What used to be the nightmare is now just interesting.
The next time it appears, you may find it fanny. The next time, you
may not even notice it. This is the power of loving what is.
Becoming Aware of Your Stories
I often use the word story to talk about
thoughts, or sequences of thoughts, that we convince ourselves are
real. A story may be about the past, the present, or the future; it
may be about what things should be, what they could be, or why they
are. Stories appear in our minds hundreds of times a day—when
someone gets up without a word and walks out of the room, when
someone doesn't smile or doesn't return a phone call, or when a
stranger does smile; before you open an important letter, or after
you feel an unfamiliar sensation in your chest; when your boss
invites you to come to his office, or when your partner talks to you
in a certain tone of voice. Stories are the untested, uninvestigated
theories that tell us what all these things mean. We don't even
realize that they're just theories.
Once, as I walked into the ladies' room at a restaurant near my
home, a woman came out of the single stall. We smiled at each other,
and, as I closed the door, she began to sing and wash her hands.
"What a lovely voice!" I thought. Then, as I heard her leave, I
noticed that the toilet seat was dripping wet. "How could anyone be
so rude?" I thought. "And how did she manage to pee all over the
seat? Was she standing on it?" Then it came to me that she was a
man—a transvestite, singing falsetto in the women's restroom. It
crossed my mind to go after her (him) and let him know what a mess
he'd made. As I cleaned the toilet seat, I thought about everything
I'd say to him. Then I flushed the toilet. The water shot up out of
the bowl and flooded the seat. And I just stood there laughing.
In this case, the natural course of events was kind enough to expose
my story before it went any further. Usually it doesn't; before I
found inquiry, I had no way to stop this kind of thinking. Small
stories bred bigger ones; bigger stories bred major theories about
life, how terrible it was, and how the world was a dangerous place.
I ended up feeling too frightened and depressed to leave my bedroom.
When you're operating on uninvestigated theories of what's going on
and you aren't even aware of it, you're in what I call "the dream."
Often the dream becomes troubling; sometimes it even turns into a
nightmare. At times like these, you may want to test the truth of
your theories by doing The Work on them. The Work always leaves you
with less of your uncomfortable story. Who would you be without it?
How much of your world is made up of unexamined stories? You'll
never know until you inquire.
Looking for the Thought Behind the Suffering
I have never experienced a stressful feeling that wasn't caused by
attaching to an untrue thought. Behind every uncomfortable feeling,
there's a thought that isn't true for us. "The wind shouldn't be
blowing." "My husband should agree with me." We have a thought that
argues with reality, then we have a stressful feeling, and then we
act on that feeling, creating more stress for ourselves. Rather than
understand the original cause —a thought—we try to change our
stressful feelings by looking outside ourselves. We try to change
someone else, or we reach for sex, food, alcohol, drugs, or money in
order to find temporary comfort and the illusion of control.
It is easy to be swept away by some overwhelming feeling, so it's
helpful to remember that any stressful feeling is like a
compassionate alarm clock that says, "You're caught in the dream."
Depression, pain, and fear are gifts that say, "Sweetheart, take a
look at what you're thinking right now. You're living in a story
that isn't true for you." Caught in the dream, we try to alter and
manipulate the stressful feeling by reaching outside ourselves.
We're usually aware of the feeling before the thought. That's why I
say the feeling is an alarm clock that lets you know there's a
thought that you may want to do The Work on. And investigating an
untrue thought will always lead you back to who you really are. It
hurts to believe you're other than who you are, to live any story
other than happiness.
If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to
move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn,
it moves. You don't have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the
same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue
thought causes suffering, you move away from it. Before the thought,
you weren't suffering; with the thought, you're suffering; when you
recognize that the thought isn't true, again there is no suffering.
That is how The Work functions. "How do I react when I think that
thought?" Hand in the fire. "Who would I be without it?" Out of the
flames. We look at the thought, we feel our hand in the fire, and we
naturally move back to the original position; we don't have to be
told. And the next time the thought arises, the mind automatically
moves from the fire. The Work invites us into the awareness of
internal cause and effect. Once we recognize this, all our
suffering begins to unravel on its own.
Inquiry
I use the word inquiry as synonymous with The Work. To
inquire or to investigate is to put a thought or a story up against the four
questions and turnaround (explained in the next chapter). Inquiry is
a way to end confusion and to experience internal peace, even in a
world of apparent chaos. Above all else, inquiry is about realizing
that all the answers we ever need are always available inside us.
Inquiry is more than a technique: It brings to life, from deep
within us, an innate aspect of our being. When practiced for a
while, inquiry takes on its own life within you. It appears whenever
thoughts appear, as their balance and mate. This internal
partnership leaves you free to live as a kind, fluid, fearless,
amused listener, a student of yourself, and a friend who can be
trusted not to resent, criticize, or hold a grudge. Eventually,
realization is experienced automatically, as a way of life. Peace
and joy naturally, inevitably, and irreversibly make their way into
every corner of your mind, into every relationship and experience.
The process is so subtle that you may not even have any conscious
awareness of it. You may only know that you used to hurt and now you
don't.
