ByronKatie.com

The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.

If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, “Meow.” Wanting reality to be different than it is is hopeless. You can spend the rest of your life trying to teach a cat to bark.

And yet, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that you think thoughts like this dozens of times a day. “People should be kinder.” “Children should be well-behaved.” “My neighbors should take better care of their lawn.” “The line at the grocery store should move faster.” “My husband (or wife) should agree with me.” “I should be thinner (or prettier or more successful).” These thoughts are ways of wanting reality to be different than it is. If you think that this sounds depressing, you’re right. All the stress that we feel is caused by arguing with what is.

People new to The Work often say to me, “But it would be disempowering to stop my argument with reality. If I simply accept reality, I’ll become passive. I may even lose the desire to act.” I answer them with a question: “Can you really know that that’s true?” Which is more empowering? — “I wish I hadn’t lost my job” or “I lost my job; what can I do now?”

The Work reveals that what you think shouldn’t have happened should have happened. It should have happened because it did, and no thinking in the world can change it. This doesn’t mean that you condone it or approve of it. It just means that you can see things without resistance and without the confusion of your inner struggle. No one wants their children to get sick, no one wants to be in a car accident; but when these things happen, how can it be helpful to mentally argue with them? We know better than to do that, yet we do it, because we don’t know how to stop.

I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.

To learn more about the Work and how to live a fearless life, download this free booklet.

Use the following four questions and sub-questions to investigate a stressful belief-for example, "My mother doesn't love me." (Some of the sub-questions may not apply.)

1. Is it true?

(Close your eyes,be still, go deeply as you contemplate your answer.
If your answer is no, continue to Question 3.)

2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?

- Can you know more than God/reality?
- Can you really know what's best in the long run for his/her/your own path?
- Can you absolutely know that you would be happier if you got what you wanted?

3. How do you react when you think that thought? (When you believe that thought?)

- Where does the feeling hit you, where do you feel it in your body when you believe that thought? How far does the feeling travel? Describe it.
- What pictures do you see when you believe that thought? Watch it, be still, notice.
- When did that thought first occur to you?
- How do you treat others when you believe that thought? What do you say to them? What do you do? Whom does your mind attack and how? Be specific.
- How do you treat yourself when you believe that thought? Is this where addictions kick in and you reach for food, alcohol, credit cards, the TV remote? Do thoughts of self-hatred occur? What are they?
- How have you lived your life because you believed that thought? Be specific. Close your eyes, watch your past.
- Does this thought bring peace or stress into your life?
- Where does your mind travel when you believe that thought? (List any underlying beliefs, and inquire later.)
- Whose business are you in when you think that thought?
- What do you get for holding onto that belief?
- Can you find a peaceful reason to keep that thought?
- What terrible thing do you assume would happen if you didn't believe that thought? Write down the terrible thought, and turn it around to the opposite and test it for yourself - is the opposite as true or truer?

4. Who would you be without the thought?

- How would you live life differently if you didn't believe that thought? Close your eyes and imagine life without it.
Imagine you are meeting this person for the very first time with no story. What do you see?
- Who are you right now, sitting here without that thought?

Turn the thought around.

(Statements can be turned around to yourself, to the other, to the opposite, and to "my thinking," wherever it applies. Find a minimum of three genuine examples in your life where each turnaround is as true as or truer than your original statement.)

- If you lived this turnaround, what would you do, or how would you live your life, differently?
- Do you see any other turnarounds that seem as true or truer?

The turnarounds allow you to see the best course of action for you.

The key to experiencing The Work is to go beyond the quick answers of the intellect and tap into a deeper wisdom. Ask, then be still and wait for an inner voice to respond. With practice, this will become easier. You will learn to rely on yourself—not the world—to see what's true for you.

The following dialog appears in Loving What Is.

NOTE: Byron Katie's response to reader comments on this post may be read here>>

Mary, reading the statements from her Worksheet: I hate my husband because he drives me crazy — everything about him, including the way he breathes. What disappoints me is that I don’t love him anymore and our relationship is a charade. I want him to be more successful, to not want to have sex with me, to get in shape, to get a life outside of me and the children, to not touch me anymore, and to be powerful. My husband shouldn’t fool himself that he’s good at our business. He should create more success. My husband is a wimp. He’s needy, and lazy. He’s fooling himself. I refuse to keep living a lie. I refuse to keep living my relationship as an imposter.

Katie: Does that pretty well sum it up? [The audience bursts into laughter, and Mary laughs along with them.] By the sound of the laughter, it seems as though you speak for a lot of people in this room. So, let’s start at the top and see if we can begin to understand what going on.

Mary: I hate my husband because he drives me crazy — everything about him, including the way he breathes.

Katie: "Your husband drives you crazy" — is it true? [This is the first of the four questions: Is it true?]

Mary: Yes.

Katie: Okay. What’s an example of that, sweetheart?… He breathes?

Mary: He breathes. When we’re doing conference calls for our business, I can hear his breath on the other end of the telephone, and I want to scream.

Katie: So his breath drives you crazy — is that true?

I just received an email with this question: "What's the difference between the School for The Work and The Work?"

The Work is offered at no charge through many events, thework.com web site, and the booklet An Excerpt from Loving What Is.

The School for The Work on the other hand, is a nine-day event. It's for people who are tired of their suffering, people who long for freedom, who really want to know the truth and are ready for peace.

In the School for The Work, I take people through every nightmare I ever experienced. (No nightmare is foreign; we carry them all inside us.) I show them how to walk themselves through every one of their own fears, until they are confident that they have the key to the end of their own suffering alive within them. If they have a problem, real or imagined (all problems are imagined), we work with it. I take them into the depths of hell and out again. We travel. All are welcome, and I love that my staff is entirely made up of earlier participants in The School.

Imagine the most painful experiences you've ever had—with your parents, your partner, your friends, your children.

Now imagine your life without that pain.

How would things be different? What if you no longer felt attached to your fears, your self-judgments, or your disappointments? What if, for the rest of your life, you couldn't play the victim, and you even welcomed problems?

The School makes this a possibility. Only you can decide how The School will change your life. The deeper you go in, the more your world changes.

On the first evening, I sometimes ask the participants what they want to take home from The School. They say things like "I want peace of mind" or "I want to be free" or "I want to be a more loving person" or "I want to be less anxious about my problems" or "I want to be less self-absorbed" or "I want to live without fear" or "I want to be happy, whether I have a lover or not."

By the end of The School, they all say that they have found a way of to end their suffering, and that they got even more than what they originally wanted. People come out so changed that their families are entirely grateful and often astounded. The Work has awakened within every participant who comes with an open mind, and there is nothing that they can do to shut it down. Once the four questions are alive inside you, your mind becomes clear, and therefore the world you project becomes clear. This is more radical than anyone can possibly imagine.

You can listen to an MP3 clip in which staff members, a recent graduate of The School, and I answer questions about the School for The Work. I facilitate The Work with a women on her anger at God and with a man on his frustration with his wife's blaming.

The next School for The Work is being held October 20-29 in Los Angeles, California. Click here for details >>

At the School for The Work - Bad Neuenahr, Germany - July 2006.

Sometimes we get stuck in the prison of our own mind...

Terrorism at the World Trade Center: A Dialogue in Cambridge, September 13, 2001

I was scheduled to be in New York on 9/11/01. The morning I was to travel from Long Island, the planes hit the towers, bridges were closed and highways shut down before I could enter the city. I was free, however, to get to my event in Cambridge two days later. I worked with a woman who was terrified. She gave voice to the fears that many people were feeling. Amazingly, by the end of our dialogue, she was smiling. Her whole attitude had changed. Stephen and I wanted to include this dialogue in Loving What Is, but our publisher said that it was too hard for most people to believe. They wouldn't accept that such a major transformation could happen so quickly.

Deborah: I'm afraid that this is the beginning of the end. Our lives will become a living hell. We'll suffer just like all the people we've seen on TV. The terrorists will continue; we can't stop them. We have too many enemies. We've brought this on ourselves. Everyone hates us because we're Americans, we're rich, we have freedom. I might lose my life, my kids, my grandkids. I might never see them again. We're just at the beginning of the attack. Wait till they start chemical warfare.

Katie: Thank you, sweetheart. You're giving voice to many people's thoughts about what happened on Tuesday. Now let's look at what you've written, one thought at a time. This is the beginning of the end-is that true?

Deborah: It could be.

Katie: Can you absolutely know that that's true?

Deborah: No.

Katie: How do you react when you think the thought "This is the beginning of the end"?

Deborah: I get really scared and sad.

Katie: And then where does your mind go? Where does it travel when you think the thought "This is the beginning of the end"?

Deborah: It accelerates scary thoughts. I start thinking that I'll never see my family again.

Katie: That's what has to happen, because mind's job is to prove that it's right. When you believe the thought "This is the beginning of the end," you have to deny everything else that you see that's evidence to the contrary, and you have to be very selective. Does this thought bring peace or stress into your life?

Deborah: Oh, it's a very stressful thought.

Katie: Who would you be without that thought?

Deborah: Someone who can enjoy things.

Katie: That's really nice because there are a lot of things to enjoy. But only in reality. You hear the sounds of the people singing outside this church, you see the lights, the candle burning, the flowers in the vase, and if that's not enough, you have the smells, your feet on the floor, the people sitting beside you. Reality right here is really fine. It feels much nicer than the trip you just took into the end of the world. So, what I am learning from you-and I see you as an expert-is that with the thought, you experience stress as though two planes have crashed into your building and you collapse, and without the thought, you stand. So, how can anything that happens be responsible for your stress or your peace? "This is the beginning of the end"-how would you turn that around?

Deborah, laughing: What happened is the end of the beginning. I'm not sure what that means.

Katie: Feel it. I see that, whatever it means, it brings laughter to your face.

Deborah: Yeah. The end of the beginning… Well, something new is happening. It's the end of that. That disaster actually ended on Tuesday. I feel a little guilty saying that.

Katie: Of course, because you're a traitor to the story that causes suffering. You're not going to be very popular in the world. [The audience laughs.] You're going to be very happy, but you won't have a lot of friends in the government. Who would you be without the story? A vibrant listener, because there's no terrorist attacking you from the inside. A thought appears: "This is the beginning of the end." And without investigation, you're terrorized, you're war-torn. It was just a thought. We don't know how to meet our inner terrorists. Until we can meet these thoughts with unconditional love, we're going to suffer in the name of the world. Let's hear your next thought.

Deborah: Our lives will become a living hell.

Katie: "Our lives will become a living hell"-is that true?

Here's a dialog from this (hot) summer in Europe:

Participant: I’m angry at ***** because she didn't give me the job.

Katie: “She didn't give you the job”—is that true?

Participant: Yes.

Katie: Yes. She either gave you the job, or she didn't. So the answer’s yes.

Participant: Yes.

Katie: So how do you react when you think that thought—”She didn’t give me the job”? What happens when you believe it? What happens to your body, what happens to your mind?

An uncomfortable feeling is not an enemy.

It’s a gift that says, "Get honest; inquire."

We reach out for alcohol, or television, or credit cards, so we can focus out there and not have to look at the feeling. And that's as it should be, because in our innocence we haven't known how.

So now what we can do is reach out for a paper and a pencil, write the thought down, and investigate.

Thank you for allowing me to share this with our readers, Brian.

Dear Katie

I am a new subscriber to The Parlor, and have enjoyed the latest edition greatly, and am enjoying exploring the archive. I love the wisdom I'm finding there.

I just wanted to write to you to say thank you for sharing The Work. I am enjoying exploring this amazing process, and I'm feeling positive changes in my life already as a result. I want to deepen my practice, and am moving forward every day with it.

Just yesterday, I had a profound experience of The Work, after a difficult argument with my partner. It was amazing - I started from a position of such blazing anger, such self-righteousness, such belligerent indignance...and then I did The Work, and I felt all of that dissolve, leaving a humbling and beautiful sense of responsibility, compassion, and love. It felt as though I had traveled through time - the "calming down" period that would normally take a day or more, took only a few minutes. And it was more than just "calming", the natural settling down after a storm...it was like the storm clouds were actually clearing, leaving just the light and the fresh air. What a beautiful gift.

I very much hope to join you at an event in the near future - I live in the UK, and will certainly be looking out for any events near here which you scheduled in. I would love for you to come to England again...

With best wishes and much gratitude to you, in Love,

Brian

Here's an excerpt from chapter 29 of my new book A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are:

If you have a problem with people or with the state of the world, I invite you to put your stressful thoughts on paper and question them, and to do it for the love of truth, not in order to save the world. Turn it around: save your own world. Isn’t that why you want to save the world in the first place? So that you can be happy? Well, skip the middleman, and be happy from here! You’re it. You’re the one. In this turnaround you remain active, but there’s no fear in it, no internal war. So it ceases to be war trying to teach peace. War can’t teach peace. Only peace can.

I don’t try to change the world—not ever. The world changes by itself, and I’m a part of that change. I’m absolutely, totally, a lover of what is. When people ask me for help, I say yes. We inquire, and they begin to end their suffering, and in that they begin to end the suffering of the world.

I stand in my own truth and don’t presume to know what’s best for the planet. Knowing that the world is perfect doesn’t mean that you withdraw or stop doing what you know is right for you to do. If, for example, you’re concerned about the environment, please give us all the facts. Do a whole study of it, go to graduate school if you have to, help us out here. And if you talk to us clearly, without an agenda or any investment in the results, we can hear you, because you’re on our level. You’re not talking to us from a superior, I-know position. If you know that we’re all equal, that we’re all doing the best we can, you can be the most powerful activist on the planet.

Love is the power. I know only one way to be an activist who can really penetrate the human race, and that is to give the facts, to tell your experience honestly, and to love without condition. You can’t convince the world of anything, even if it’s for the world’s own good, because eventually your righteousness will be seen through, and then you’re on a stage debating a corporate polluter, and you start pointing your finger in outrage. That’s what you’ve been hiding when you believe “I know what’s best for the planet.”

When you attack a corporate official for destroying the atmosphere, however valid your information, do you think that he’ll be open to what you’re saying? You’re threatening him with your attitude, and the facts can get lost, because you’re coming from fear and righteous anger. All he'll hear is that you think he’s doing it wrong, it’s his fault, and he'll go into denial and resistance. But if you speak to him without stress, in total confidence that everything is just the way it should be in this very moment, you’re able to express yourself kindly, effectively, and with no fear about the future.

By the way, the Dutch version of the book is called Katie's Tao.

Participant: I’m hurt by K**** because he left me.

Katie: So “He left you”—is that true?

Participant: Not really; in my heart he is there all the time.

Katie: So how do you react when you think the thought “He left me”? What happens? You're living your life, you're very happy, and then the thought hits, “Crrrrgh!”—“He left me.”

Participant: I feel inferior, or worthless. I feel very much alone, helpless, and I just don't know what to do.

Katie: And I would put “I don't know what to do” on a separate piece of paper, and Work it later. So, “He left me”—who would you be without that thought? Who are you without that thought as you live your life?

Participant: I feel free, secure, content.

Katie: So close your eyes. Now watch you, going to the market, doing the dishes, without the thought “He left me.” What do you see? Watch your life.

Participant: I see many people, and I join with them in a very good time, and I have freedom inside.

Katie: Yes, you have your life back.

Participant: Yes.

Katie: “He left me”—turn it around.

Here is a wonderful letter from Johannes about his experience during this summer's School at Bad Neuenahr and after. Originally published in last month's Parlor, it is worth reading again and again. Thank you, Johannes!

Dear Katie!
Sorry, that my English is so bad. Therefore I have to write in German. I hope, there is someone who can translate it for you.

[The rest of the letter is in German and has been translated (with some polishing by Stephen) by Gabriele Brunner, who does such an excellent job translating my words at the School for The Work in Germany. I highly recommend her. Her email address is gabribrunner [at] yahoo.de.]

I was a participant at the last School and am still full of gratitude for this great experience. I have invested a lot in my process of personal growth and spiritual development up to now, but what you gave me in the School certainly made it the best and most effective thing I have ever done. I got exactly the right tools for the rest of my life and I have the option now to explore to the depths the question “Who am I without my story?” and to find peace within myself.
My father was a Protestant minister like almost all my ancestors back to the seventeenth century. He was a man who was very torn inside, who could find no peace in God, but who fought as a warrior of faith against the evil world and wanted to convert it to his faith.
I was given my first name in honour of an eighteenth-century theologian who had written a catechism. I recently looked at the old book and discovered that, funnily enough, the theologians of the time did The Work in their own way to provide believers with answers to their religious questions. After each religious belief is stated, there is the question: “How can I know that this is true?” For example: “God created the world—How can I know that this is true?” And then comes the explanation.

When we did the exercise about the worst stories that had happened to us, I was dealing with my family history, the whole terrifying tradition of Christianity, all these warriors of faith and desperate God-seekers and how I ought to hold that. When I deleted the untrue thoughts from the story, I distilled it down to this: “Johannes Quistorp—the story of a family. His great-grandfather was manic-depressive, and he named his son Gottfried (peace in God). This man also named his first son Gottfried, and this Gottfried died at the age of eighteen. His second son (my father) was manic-depressive and gave his son the middle name of Gottfried name in memory of his brother. This Johannes-Gottfried (me) left the church, had himself sterilized and is doing The Work now. He is beginning like a child, over and over again, to find his peace in “God.”

I have to report another beautiful experience that happened during the School. I was in my room, still lying in bed when my roommate, Jim, came out of the bathroom and said something I misunderstood because my English is so bad. He said, “It’s all yours.” And my very first thought was: God shows Adam the Garden of Eden and says to him, “It’s all yours.”

During the morning walk, in the “Naming the World” exercise, I heard over and over again a voice within me saying, “It’s all yours.” It also crossed my mind that God had added a but: “But you may not eat from the Tree of Knowledge.” I had the feeling that once I had named the world with its original names, I had spat out the apple of the Tree of Knowledge.

Then, at breakfast, when I wanted to eat an apple I looked at the apple and looked at the world and said to myself, “It’s all yours.” I see the apple, I see the world and (!) I bite into the apple. I am no longer in the Garden of Eden, I have fallen into duality and this is why both are there: “It’s all yours” and the bite into the apple of knowledge—they’re equal and there are always both of them. I am a human being, who knows about the world and knows about where I come from, where my home is.

On another morning walk I had another exciting experience. We were walking down a street lined with trees, on the left and on the right, and after a while, when I looked exactly and saw “literally” what was happening, the truth was that it was not I who was walking down the street but the trees that were coming toward me, passing me and disappearing behind me: in other words, the world was passing through me and I was always exactly where I was. When I looked through the trees up to the sky the truth was that the trees were passing me as the movement happened, but the sky, just like me, always stayed in the same place. I am always connected to the sky when I am not hurrying through the world in search of some kind of experience, when I really am where I am.

The next morning, while we were walking in the woods, single file in a long line, I had the same perception and simultaneously felt deeply connected to the whole School family. You can also perceive the same thing when you drive your car in the countryside. The landscape comes toward you, passes you by and disappears in the rear view mirror, but I am in my auto (which literally translated means “self”), I always stay in my “auto,” in my self, and I am actually not moving.

During the next morning walk, I closed my eyes again and again in between naming things, to collect myself and to see the world with my inner vision. This resulted in the following rhythm: 2 steps—open eyes—breathe in / take in, 2 steps—close eyes—breathe out / give away—or vice versa. Or 4 steps—close eyes—breathe in and out, 4 steps—open eyes—breathe in an out, so that in the end the inner and outer vision, taking and giving, were one and there was no longer any difference between them.

Finally I would like to tell you about my experience sitting on a bench in Cologne. I closed my eyes, and in the beginning I was still identifying what I heard. Sometimes there were so many noises that I was not able to differentiate them: there was just space, listening and naming. Everything goes straight through me and I can collect myself. My ears turn more and more toward the inside and I become very vast. I hear/feel my heartbeat and I am all ears: I become one big ear. I am so open that even when there is a sudden loud noise, I notice, very precisely, that nothing contracts within me. At that moment an expression by the great German poet Rilke came to my mind—Rilke had named the experience so strikingly, with a single (!) word that is not a metaphor, but reality. He called it “worldinnerspace” - a true primal word for this experience.

Later I am standing at a spot close to the Rhine. I close my eyes again and listen to my heartbeat and feel that I am the center of my world. Many different sounds are coming from all sides. At first my closed eyes are still going in the direction where the sounds are coming from, but then they give in: the things outside fall into the inner world and pass through me as if there were no me at all. Outside and inside become transparent. The more I enter the receptive, the more subtly and clearly I can let everything through. All over my body I feel my heartbeat, every single heartbeat very precisely, then I open my eyes very slowly, slowly let my gaze go wherever it wants to go, always in contact with my heartbeat. And I see my heartbeat: the whole world moves in the rhythm of my heart. In the seeing I feel my heartbeat, each heartbeat, wordless seeing, without meaning. Moment by moment. When I look and feel my heartbeat, my inner world and the outer world remain directly connected with each other.

In front of the cathedral, in the midst of the many people, I stood again with closed eyes, and felt my heartbeat inside me. And there was a vast, open space and the world was flowing right through me. I have been living in and around Cologne for fourteen years, but in all these years I never perceived as much of the city as during these four hours. I was never so present in the city - and at the same time I saw nothing of Cologne: at the moment of the experience there was no Cologne, no city, no place. I was just in the world.

When I left Bad Neuenahr on the train and had to show my train ticket, I reached into my pocket and I accidentally gave the conductor the little yellow card with the four questions. I had to laugh out loud. That’s how I took The Work into my everyday life right away.

I had seven dreams the week after, in which I did The Work, three of them in one night. Usually I was not able to go back to sleep afterward because I was so moved by them. In one of the dreams I was in a big group and did The Work with two people. The result at the end was: I can honestly see the way it is; I can honestly say the way it is; I can honestly leave it the way it is - no more and no less. In one of the dreams I did The Work on three issues and each time I emptied myself even more, layer after layer, until only an outer contour of myself was left and the inside was nothing but radiant emptiness. And when this image came up, I knew that I had succeeded in the real turnaround: I am You and You are Me. I am just amazed and I am full of gratitude for how much I have obviously integrated The Work inside me already.

Many many thanks to the translator for her effort, since the letter has gotten pretty long.

Dearest Katie, I hug you full of gratitude

In love,
Johannes

Here's an article from the Japan Times about Nina and Ashik Peter Lynch as they move The Work in Japan. I can't thank them enough.

The Work: Four Questions for a Peaceful Mind
By Angela Jeffs

Nina Lynch and her husband, Ashik, share The Work of Byron Katie, a simple method to change our views of our lives from negative to positive, and so make better lives.

As Nina explains: "[Byron Katie] was able to see that her suffering continued as long as she believed her stressful thoughts, and when she questioned them she discovered that reality, truth, or 'that which is,' was much kinder and more benign than she'd been experiencing." In that realization, Byron Katie found a simple technique based on four questions that can be used by anyone to question their thoughts and radically change their lives. She calls it The Work.

Nina found The Work while staying in Kyoto some years ago. "A friend gave me Byron Katie's book Loving What Is. Having read it, I did The Work, then attended workshops, and the nine-day intensive School with Katie in Los Angeles."

Since then Nina has staffed Katie's schools and weekend workshops and takes every opportunity to participate in her events as well as working as a volunteer on the hotline, which is available to anyone through Katie's Web site. "If you have stress in your life, if you worry about money, if you have relationship issues, are depressed, unhappy, are an unsatisfied seeker of truth, or are in any way discontented with your life, The Work is for you.

"It's changed my life," she continues. "I'm a happier, more productive person and I know that life is kind and good to me. My deepest wish is to share The Work with anyone who wants to experience truth and be free from suffering."

Nina does sessions and worldwide teleclasses of The Work from her home. After introducing The Work informally to small groups in Tokyo in July, she and Ashik will be presenting The Work at Circle of Light in Tokyo's Ogikubo on Sept. 17, and then will facilitate a weekend workshop in Omote-sando on the 23rd and 24th, "The Way to a Peaceful Mind." The workshop will be primarily in English, though there will be Japanese translators available, and Nina and Ashik can be helpful in Japanese, German, French and Spanish if necessary.

"We're available in Tokyo from Sept. 15th to the 30th for in-person sessions, for individuals, groups and couples, and we do phone sessions, both classes and individually, with people from all over the world. For the teleclasses we use Skype Internet telephony."

Nina has always been a seeker. Her first memory of looking for answers was when at age 11 she went to every church in her hometown of Oxford, England, asking how to find God.

From then until now, Nina has not stopped searching "for myself, for peace of mind, enlightenment, whatever you call it." She began the study of meditation in India 30 years ago, and it's been a part of her daily life ever since. Since India she has traveled all over Europe and North America, where she now makes her home, and lived in Japan for four years.
"When I met Byron Katie and started to do The Work daily, my internal and external life totally changed. It is the key that I needed to unlock my meditation. Now my mind is clearer, stress is disappearing, joy is abundant."

Nina continues to do The Work on an everyday basis. Personally I learned how after commenting on a statement she made in an e-mail, "This house is a wonderful sanctuary up here in the mountains and it helps to make my life much easier," and asked her, "Why did you feel your life was hard?" Her reply gave me an idea of how The Work works, just four questions followed by a turning around of the original thought to its opposite:

"My life is hard. Is that true?

"Yes, sometimes I feel it is.

“Can I absolutely know that it is true?

"No, I can't know that it's true beyond any doubt at all.

"How do I react when I think that thought?

"I think of the things that I think are difficult, like: getting enough money, my feet hurt sometimes because I have stiff joints in my toes and sometimes it is harder to walk than other times, then that means I put on more weight and am not so healthy. Sometimes I think that living with Ashik is hard because, like me, he's not always easy. Or I think that life in America is hard because of all the negatives I can so easily get into . . . and so on, so I can end up feeling more unhappy."

Nina now turns her stressful thought around to its opposite: "Who would I be without that thought?

"I'd see my comfortable bed that I sleep on, that I slept on really well last night. I would see a fridge full of food, vegetables growing in the garden, friends close by who I trust, and we're supportive and helpful to each other. My blood family, though they live far away, don't give up on me, and one of my sisters is coming to visit soon. I'd see how many things are actually fine and perfect as they are and I'd feel full of gratitude."

Nina then looks for at least three examples of this opposite, which turn out to be actual examples of how reality is different, and more peaceful, than the stories her mind had decided to attach itself to:

"One, my life is easy, because I have a wonderful man in my life who is currently fixing the lights in our living room, something that I can't do, and it would take me a lot of time and energy to learn, so it's very convenient that he does it.

"Two, I have always been taken care of; it was only my thinking that said life was hard. For example, though I grew up being poor in England, we never starved, we always had enough.

"Three, when I first went to live in Japan, and arrived with no language and no money, people offered help, gave me a place to stay, took care of me."

Nina believes The Work can be just as much a powerful tool toward healing in Japan as in the English-speaking world. She is producing a Japanese edition of extracts from Katie's book, which is already available as a download from Katie's Web site.

Nina quotes Katie as saying that there are only three things we actually do in life: sit, stand or lie horizontal. All the rest is a story.

"The Work always leaves you with less of a story. Who would you be without your story? You never know until you inquire. There is no story that is you or that leads to you. Every story leads away from you. Turn it around, undo it. You are what exists before all stories. You are what remains when the story is understood."

Anytime you feel lonely, notice—just notice—and ask yourself, "Mentally, whose business am I in?"

Notice how this awareness can bring you back to the present, back to reality, where you really are, in this moment of grace where life makes sense right here, right now.

"All prejudice is self-inflicted pain."

"When the mind understands itself, that's the end of war."

"I only see my face in your face. I see me."

"You can’t do it wrong. That's not possible."

"The Work only works if you answer the questions. Your answers are the power."

"Question your mind - then terror and fear turn into gratitude."

"Open the mind, and the heart opens."

"Are you waking up to the original story-teller? That would be you."

Download this discussion from The School (mp3 file) >>

The Work is not about shame and blame.

It’s not about proving that you are the one in the wrong or forcing yourself to believe that someone else is in the right. The power of the turnaround lies in the discovery that everything you think you see on the outside is really a projection of your own mind. Everything is a mirror image of your own thinking.

Once you have learned to go in for your own answers and opened yourself up to the turnarounds, you’ll experience this for yourself. In discovering the innocence of the person you judged, you’ll come to recognize your own innocence.

The School is over. But we know that it never ends.

Thanks to everyone for coming—the participants, the volunteers, the staff. I love you all for the way you are. Remember, when you understand yourself, you understand the world. Everything you could possibly pray for you already have.

Here's a short clip from the School to take home with you: "The End of War" (mp3 file)

Loving you.

Just mention the holidays and it’s enough to send some people’s stress levels off the charts.

If this describes you during the holidays, it may help to know that you can call the HOTLINE service any time.

The hotline is for people who want to have a one-on-one experience with The Work now, and is offered at no charge by skilled and extraordinarily generous facilitators who have completed the nine-day School for The Work. These facilitators are available 24 hours a day to assist you with their love, dedication, and clarity.

Those of us who chase after money to find happiness never have enough. And in the process we create stress for ourselves and for others around us. Sometimes we worry ourselves sick.

Those of us who see money as unspiritual have trouble charging for our services or feel guilty when we do make money. This is the flip side of greed, and it is just as painful. What stories we assign to pieces of paper!

Rich or poor, we believe the same stories over and over again. Isn’t it time for you to end that suffering?

Financial freedom is not about manifesting new cars or high-paying jobs. It is about being absolutely secure and loving whatever reality brings you.

The truth is that you're supposed to have exactly as much money as you have right now. No more, no less.

How do you know when you're supposed to have more? When you do.

How do you know when you're supposed to have less? When you do.

Realizing this is true abundance. It leaves you without a care in the world.

However much money you have, do you love it yet? If not, I look forward to seeing you in Los Angeles in January...

Here's a letter from a friend about her children doing The Work. If any of you have stories about your children doing The Work, I invite you to post them.

Dear Katie,

I wanted to tell you about how we used the conflict resolution method of doing The Work with our children this Thanksgiving.

Claire, 15, and Zeffi, almost 9, were arguing, and the words and tones I heard from them felt tediously familiar. I started talking and my husband entered the room with his decisive, take-action energy and told me I had missed an entire episode of Claire-Zeffi dynamics the previous day. He asked them both what they planned to do about this, because an old pattern that we’d certainly looked at and talked about plenty just wasn’t budging. Everyone looked at him. Something they planned to do?

There was a confused moment when both girls started telling their story at once and Ravi stopped them and declared that we were absolutely not going to let this go on and we were going to do something about it right now. Both girls looked miserable. We had talked to them, pointed out patterns, pointed out alternatives to their habitual behaviors, asked how they would feel if . . ., and even done The Work with them separately on thoughts they had about each other.

I don’t know why I’d never thought of this before, probably because it seemed such a formal approach, but in that moment the conflict resolution approach to The Work rose to the surface of my awareness. So I said at once that all I could see for them to do was to fill out a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet about each other then do The Work together, with the parents facilitating. Ravi’s immediate reaction was “Let’s do it.” Zeffi agreed. Claire took a breath and said, “Ooooh-kay.”

She filled out her sheet where I was working toward our feast in the kitchen, and Zeffi went to the living room with Papa so that he could be her scribe. She cheerfully dictated all her judgments about Claire for him to write down.

Children are so good at filling out JYN sheets, and you don’t have to instruct them not to be spiritual or mature or nudge them toward pettiness. They’re just so happy to be completely honest. After Claire filled out hers, she did find herself a bit thrown off by the level of honesty she was reading back on her sheet. “This is mean,” she said. “I’m supposed to read this to her? I know I’m mean to Zeffi, but this is really mean to just sit here and read all this out loud to her.”

I told her that mean, just as she’d said, was the way she treated Z when she was living out of those thoughts she just wrote down. Everything on that sheet represented her thinking about Zeffi; the way she treated Zeffi didn’t come out of nowhere, it came out of those thoughts. The JYN sheet isn’t mean; it’s the place where we take the story in our mind and pin it down on paper. There, we can see it very clearly. Then when we do The Work on those thoughts, we’re on the road to seeing things differently. Behaving differently follows naturally.

So on Thanksgiving, as I chopped and sliced and mixed and spiced, my daughters sat with me and did The Work on each other. Ravi took the not-unpleasant job of playing with Gaelen in the living room to give us the space we needed.

Zeffi read her sheet first and Claire said thank-you for each item. I asked her to take each piece in and try to find it, and assured her she didn’t have to find it. She could just look and see what she saw. And whether she found it or not, she was to say thank-you. She did this. Sometimes she laughed at something Zeffi had written. I had to interpret Papa’s handwriting a couple of times. Claire was very patient with this.

Then Claire read hers to Zeffi. I saw what she meant about being mean and did have a few flashes of concern over how Zeffi would manage receiving harsh thoughts about herself. I found that what I had told Claire earlier held true: Zeffi had already received all of this in what she and Claire lived together. She was fine sitting there hearing “Zeffi is an annoying brat” and saying thank-you. None of the ways I’ve seen her melt into distress or fly into rage in response to Claire even began to show up here. Her face was open, her eyes were serious, she was fully present. And, as had happened with Claire, laughter just burst out of her a couple times: For her sister’s perception? Or the way it was phrased? I can’t say. I did have a strong sense of both girls being alive and alert.

Zeffi volunteered to be facilitated first. This was perfect. It addressed at the onset Claire’s frustration about having to work harder than Zeffi. In this story, Claire feels we, her parents, blame her more and expect her to take more responsibility. And in part, this is true. With The Work, both girls took turns looking at their thoughts and taking responsibility for them with the turnarounds. Both girls heard each other explore her own thinking and the effects of that thinking. They saw how the unhappy thoughts didn’t merely cause fighting between them but caused each girl to be unhappy in herself and usually to feel bad about herself and dislike her own behaviors. With The Work, both girls worked on themselves and their own thinking equally.

Claire explored her responsibility deeply, even before the turnarounds. She found that Zeffi couldn’t possibly tell on her but could only tell her story. When Claire ran after her to defend herself and tell her version, that was the moment it became “Zeffi telling on Claire.” Amazing clarity. She also looked deeply at the turnaround to herself—how she told on herself. Here and throughout The Work we did that morning, she was surprised to find that most of the statements she was exploring held something for her about her entire life, not just life with Zeffi. She found ways she told on herself with her friends, exposing or shaming herself by telling things about herself she would better keep to herself. She found ways that she told on herself to her parents, about things unrelated to Zeffi. At fifteen, Claire is fully capable of understanding the mirror principle, that Zeffi shows up only as her mirror so she can look at something in herself and see how it operates in every aspect of her life.

Zeffi’s Work was more directly about Claire. For her, the magic happens with finding very concrete answers to number 3 and very concrete examples of the turnarounds. One thing I love about doing The Work with Z at her age now is that it shows me the process at its simplest. We’re just asking and answering questions. The answers are simple and pure and honest: when I believe this thought, I get mad and I want to hit her and sometimes I do hit her. I try to make her mad. I ignore her when she says stop. I hate her. I feel bad. I don’t like myself.

I also love the purity of the answers to 4 in Work with a 9-year-old. Who would you be if you couldn’t believe that Claire excludes you with Gaelen? Zeffi shrugs. I’d be fine. I’d just go do something I want to do. It reminds me of how easy it all is, really.

I took Zeffi and Claire through one long exploration each. We did the first statement on Zeffi’s list, and Claire chose one that seemed the most potent to her. From there, we went through the sheets doing turnarounds, though I think I did a couple of quickies—when a statement seemed especially rich, or in a different vein from the others, I asked the four questions briefly and moved into the turnarounds from there.

Zeffi and Claire did not fall weeping into each other’s arms at the end of the process and swear to be sweet to each other for the rest of all time. What did happen was that they both left feeling very solid, present, and calm. They both had a lot to be with after the process, and it was fascinating how it was no longer about Claire and Zeffi. It was about Claire for Claire and it was about Zeffi for Zeffi. For me, it was about falling more in love with The Work and with my amazing daughters.

Zeffi had trouble staying put at some point in our process and actually wandered into the other room to see what Papa and Gaelen were doing. Claire and I were so focused on what we were then looking at that neither of us responded to this initially, then Claire said, “Uh, is Zeffi coming back?” I asked Z to bring in her drawing pad and pencils and told her to stay here with us during the process and to feel free to draw the whole time. Z is capable of drawing for at least two hours straight. This worked perfectly. The drawing gave her a focus and a structure that held her while she gave her mind to the inquiry process. I didn’t learn until days later that what she chose to draw was a picture of Claire going off with Gaelen and the dog, above which she wrote, “No you can’t play Zeffi Go that way.”

If we had done this four years ago I would have given Zeffi a catalog and a pair of scissors. She used to sit still for nothing except cutting. She could go-go-go and move and talk all day, but with a pair of scissors in hand she would drop into perfect stillness except for her little hands intently following the shapes as she extracted them from a page. I would now recommend to any parent sitting down with a serious inquiry project to find whatever works best for the particular child and use this tactic of keeping hands busy and eyes focused so that the mind and body can be still for The Work.

The one thing I noticed about doing The Work with Claire and Zeffi in this situation as compared to Working with two adults was that I gave them a lot of praise. I told them often they were doing great Work. I told them when I thought something they’d located was a great find, and then stayed quiet a moment for them to take that in. All of this was completely genuine.

I don’t know how long we hung in there exactly, but my husband and I both estimate two hours. This may sound like an insanely long time to do this with children, but they were fine with it. They were completely immersed in the process. Truly, they were just as tired of the issue as we were. And finally, they would rather do The Work for two hours than be on the receiving end of five minutes of tense and angry lecturing or fifteen minutes of restrained and reasonable lecturing from their parents. The children can see just as we can that The Work takes them through a process to know themselves that is actually interesting to them, leads them to new insights, and leaves them feeling better. Lecturing can sometimes lead to new insights, usually later when some bit of wisdom breaks off from the rest and sinks in, but they hate it. They feel attacked or at the very least overwhelmed and dictated to. In no way do they find it interesting and they do not feel better—sometimes feel worse—when it’s over.

That’s my report.

Love, Jaya

Participant: I’m mad at me because these days I don't succeed in earning my living on my own.

Katie: Is that true? “You don't earn a living on your own”—is that true?

Participant: I’m supported by my husband, and there's scarcely anyone in my practice these days.

Katie: So sweetheart, do you make your husband support you?

Participant: Yes.

Katie: So he does not have a choice?

Participant: Yes, he has a choice.

Katie: Yes. He doesn't have to support you. So “You are not making a living on your own”—is that true? Few people come to your practice, your husband never has to support you, and you're supported—on your own!

Participant: Right now, I’m so much in my mind.

Katie: And are you supported?

Participant: I am supported, yes.

Katie: So “You're not supported on your own”—is that true?

Participant: I can't understand right now.

Katie: Okay . . . so, thank you. Who would like to do The Work? And I hope everyone in this audience just did “I am not supported on my own.” Is there anyone in this room that has never been supported? Including you, sweetheart? I invite everyone in this room to find one time when you were not supported. It's not possible. There's no time in your life when you have not been supported. I’ve never met any human being that can find one moment that they were not supported. On your own! With or without a job. Can anyone find one moment when they were not supported? [Pause] I can't either. So sweetheart, sit with it for a little while and we can come back to you. Because I hear from you that you’re having trouble putting it together.

Participant: I’m afraid of not being able to financially keep up my existence. I’m mad at me because I don’t succeed at standing on my own feet financially. I reproach myself for not having sought a job during the year of separation that would provide a living for me. And I don't forgive myself for having spent the money I got from my husband—the biggest part of it.

If this describes you during the holidays, it may help to know that you can call the HOTLINE service, offered at no charge by skilled facilitators who have completed the Nine-day School for The Work. These facilitators are available 24 hours a day to assist you with their love, dedication, and clarity.

Another wonderful letter from a friend of The Work:

I was thinking about the conversation that we had about my own experience with the School of You in L.A. last October . . . and about sharing a little of that with you before the Cleanse.

What was so remarkable about my experience with the School is that my miracle was so unexpected.

In fact, as I consider where I was in consciousness at that time, I'm quite surprised that I even noticed anything miraculous had occurred at all.

I went with two primary thoughts: the first was that I was about to spend a week learning a superficial intellectual tool and calling it deep work (by the way, I was wrong about that!!). The second was that I was dying, and that I would rather die with an intact secret than experience the shame of revelation. I have spent the whole of my adult life as a lung doctor who was a secret and closet smoker. I preached against, in the daytime, that which I practiced under cover of night. I had spent many years creating ritual around keeping my secret . . . and telling myself stories about how vilified I would be if I were discovered. Then, on the verge of leaving for the School, I discovered a lump in my neck . . . and I imagined the worst of everything. I was dying. I could not tell anyone about this lump because my shameful secret would be discovered. I was surrounded by a lifetime of friends who were doctors, and I did not dare speak a single word to any of them because I was ashamed. I thought I would rather die than let them know. It appeared I probably would die rather than let them know.

So I went to the School prepared to die and I will tell you that in the miracle of the School . . . in the doing of The Work . . . the cigarettes that had been my best and most secret friend for forty years said goodbye to me. I have not smoked a single cigarette since October 20, 2006. I am, miraculously, free of my attachment to smoking. Just as importantly, in the process of doing The Work, I realized that cigarettes supported my inner story of needing to be hidden and separated from the world. Each process taught me more and more about my lack of willingness to be revealed, to be integrated, to be intimate. Cigarettes had become the way for me to be separated, alone, outside the circle of tents. I share this with you not so much because I think my story needs to be heard, but because I can actually share it, now. Two months ago, I was unable to say any of this out loud to anyone. I would—remember—rather have died than tell anyone!

I came home from the School, called a friend, had some tests and found that the lump in my neck was absolutely nothing but an enlarged gland that appears to be attached to NOTHING (I loved THAT).

I can't describe the joy of liberation that I experience. Certainly I love being liberated from the habit of cigarette smoking. What I really love is being liberated from the shame and the separation I had lived with for so long. I am liberated from the belief that lung doctors don't smoke (Is that true? YES . . . IT'S TRUE FOR ME!! I DON'T SMOKE. O JOY!!)

With loving, Carla

Two letters about the HOTLINE:

Dear Angels,

I was just looking at the hotline page and saw this request for feedback for the first time. I already had tears of gratitude in my eyes when I noticed it. I had been thinking for the millionth time what an incredible gift the hotline is.

I have called pretty often, and had some just amazing clearings and deepenings with these wonderful facilitators. Just beautiful intimate human-to-human moments, such generous and sweet support, it blows my mind, and that's better than anything! I learn so much from the round robin also. The NetWork is a total life line. Thank you all from the bottom to the top of my heart.

love, Jude

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If I were personally to award the Nobel Peace Prize, I would award it to the hotline.

I've probably used it a dozen times in the past three or four months, and every single experience has been tremendous, peaceful, respectful, and revolutionary. What more could we ask?

P.

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The HOTLINE service is for people who want to have a one-on-one experience with The Work now and is offered at no charge by skilled friends of The Work. Thanks to our volunteers for their dedication and generosity!

The following is a list of the stressful holiday thoughts which we got from our vets. We had them draw 3 thoughts each out of a "treat jar," pair up, and apply the 4 questions and the turnarounds.

Love,
Jean

I have to go home.

I have to do all the work.

I don’t have a family.

I might not behave.

I have to buy gifts. (I have to have money for gifts.)

I have to be around people.

They might ask me to do something.

I don’t have enough money.

I won’t feel anything (joy).

I’m not being helpful.

I’ll be depressed.

I’ll be alone.

Shopping is a pain.

Cooking is a chore.

All the drunks will be on the road.

I’ll miss my family.

My mom died on Christmas.

I won’t be straight on Christmas.

I have to see family I don’t like.

I have to lie (about Christmas).

I can’t give them what they want.

The white Christmas doesn’t come. (It’s supposed to snow on Christmas.)

I can’t go home (and see certain family members).

I’m not wanted.

I have no input.

I will be judged.

Taking time off from work will put me behind.

I can’t participate.

I should have prepared for the holiday.

I have no girlfriend to share the holiday with.

They’ll be upset with me.

I wish the whole family could be together.

It takes too long to get there.

I might run out of booze.

I have to listen to my mom complain.

I have to stay longer than I want to.

The weather will be lousy.

I might steal the presents.

I have nothing to wear.

My friend was murdered on Thanksgiving eve. (I was supposed to be there.)

I haven’t talked to my family in a while.

The hospital is the loneliest place on a holiday.

They can’t be here. (We won’t be together.)

Talking on the phone makes me upset (miss them more).

I’ll miss my kids.

I have to go into detox. (I have to wait to get into Cat-5.)

I might use.

My family will think I’m relapsing.

I’ll be depressed if I can’t go home.

I’ll spend more money dining out and eating.

I can’t spend time with my kids. (They’re locked up.)

I have to go into my savings to purchase gifts.

Everyone should get together.

They’re not around. (I wish my family was around.)

I have to remember. (It’s disrespectful—it means I don’t care.)

I’ve never had a sober Christmas.

I can’t give my son what I would like.

I’m always the one giving. (I’d like to receive.)

Nobody thinks about me.

I can’t celebrate. (She died on Christmas.)

I have to shop.

Holidays are another reason to get high.

It’s too much.

It has to be perfect.

Everyone has to get along.

I have to get the right thing for everyone or they won’t love me.

I have to like my gifts.

I’m supposed to like my gifts. (People should know what I like.)

Here are a few audio clips from the New Year's Mental Cleanse:

- My mother doesn't accept my African side...

- I don't want to be rejected by a woman again...

- I need my computer to always work perfectly...

Notice how our stories stop us from embracing reality.

A famous artist used to say that the best way to see things as they really are is to bend down, look back between your legs, and observe the world upside down. Because your mind doesn't recognize this "reality," it doesn't interpret or judge what you're looking at. Now you are free to see the world as it really is. Unfortunately, this kind of "ambush" on the mind doesn't last very long. Your mind catches up to you and brings back all the stories that you still believe in.

For me, reality is very simple. I begin and end with "Is it true?" And The Work follows.

Next stop: Mountain View

Next Stop: Portland, OR

Download the audio file here [MP3 file].

Photos by Michael Biskup (thank you, sweetheart!)

Next stop: Santa Fe

The other night a friend of mine was discussing the Arabs/Jews event in 2006, and Stephen asked her to send it to him in an email. The following is one Israeli woman's view of that event.

It was a night like any other night—except it wasn’t and I knew it wasn’t—because I was greatly anticipating an event that was about to take place at the university. It was an evening designed especially for Arabs and Jews by Byron Katie, and all day long I felt I was thinking about it and wondering who the heck is going to show up, because on that same night Pink Floyd were getting back together again to play a concert for peace in Israel, and anyone who was even remotely interested in coming to the event with Katie decided, of course, to go to the concert instead.

Not me, though. I felt strongly that a truly fresh new thing would be happening, and there was no way I was going to miss this. I had heard Pink Floyd so many times, and as great as they are, it was history, and here was Katie, who I only saw on the web, coming to do something for peace that had never been done before, and I felt truly interested. So I managed to convince a good friend to join me, and off we went.

My friend let me know that she was only coming for that one night, just to keep me company, and anyway—the workshop Katie was offering for the next few days was sold out, and even the overflow room was sold out. As my friend was talking and while we were driving, we saw a young woman on the sidewalk who looked like she needed a ride, and I had a sense she was heading in our direction. “Stop,” I said. “Let’s give her a ride—I bet she is going to the event.” Sure enough, she was, and when she got into the car, she thanked my friend for the ride and said, “I’m in charge of the overflow room in the upcoming workshop, and I can add your name to the list of names, though the room is almost full.” Needless to say, my friend came.

When we entered the hall, it was completely full, and the whole front of it was filled with Arab villagers, Arab dignitaries, women with their faces totally covered in black (Katie had sponsored buses that brought them to the event), Jewish students, political activists who came because they saw it was an Arab-Jewish thing and had never heard of Katie before, and all kinds of other people—and the place was full and noisy. A man was standing on the stage speaking in Hebrew, and on the side of the stage I saw a woman standing, and I realized it was Katie (I recognized her face from her pictures).

Katie began working with an Arab man, the principal of a secondary school, who was dealing with his stressful thoughts over the Israeli occupation. The noise and restlessness in the hall was almost embarrassing to me. An Israeli left-wing political activist behind me was yelling at Katie, “Go home, you American, this is not a soap opera, this is a real occupation.” I turned to her and said, “Be quiet,” and my friend said, “You be quiet, you’re making more noise than anybody.” “My goodness, what a mess,” I thought, “what Katie must be thinking about us —probably that it’s such a third-world country.” In that moment Katie turned around to the audience and said, “Let’s just do the best we can with what we have. This is a first, and there are a lot of things to work through, but if we do, then from a resolution here, something will benefit the whole world, and in my experience what happens beyond what we can see is very powerful, so I am okay with the noise, and let’s just be with it.” Then she turned back to the man she was working with. I felt relieved and was able to hear and appreciate how hard Katie was working to hold the space so that the man on the stage could get a glimpse of the truth that it was his thoughts about the occupation that were causing his suffering. Finally, with Katie’s patient and gentle help, he did the turnaround: “The occupation is not the worst thing.” It was amazing to see him even consider this, because he seemed to believe with all his heart that it was the worst thing, and many of the Arabs were shouting that it was the worst thing. He had a hard time opening up in front of his peers, and yet he said, reluctantly, that maybe, just maybe, murdering somebody might be worse for him than the occupation. I don’t know what he understood in that moment, but he seemed to be very moved.

The second person to volunteer to do The Work was a Jewish Israeli who had been very angry at a group of Arabs (he called them “terrorists”) who had severely beaten him and his friend when they were fourteen years old.

“Tell us what happened, honey,” Katie said. So the young man began to describe his ordeal. He and his friend were walking through the field one sunny day when a group of Arabs jumped them and beat them up so badly that he had almost died. And he went into each and every gruesome detail. He spoke in a very calm tone in spite of the noise in the hall, and the audience became quieter so that they could hear him. He described how they broke his bones and put a knife through his neck.

“What were your thoughts in those moments, sweetheart?” Katie asked.

“Well”, said the young man, “all of a sudden, a thought flashed through my mind: ‘I’m going to die,’ and in a split second I found myself hovering over my body, looking down. I was just being a light or something. It was amazing. Meanwhile, the terrorists thought I was dead and ran away, and my friend ran off to get help, and in a flash, I was back in my body.”

“What if I told you, honey,” said Katie, “that the only way for you to experience that you are not the body was to go through this ordeal—would you be willing to go through it again?”

“Yes,” said the young man very clearly, and a total hush fell upon the audience. “I would go through it again in a second. It was the single most important experience of my life. I’ll never forget it. It totally shaped who I am.”

"Without the terrorists," Katie said, "how could you have had that experience? And did you send them a thank-you note?"

The young man smiled.

I felt that everyone, Jews and Arabs, came together in that moment, and that a new understanding was being born. There was total silence, and then there was loud applause. “My God,” I heard myself think. ”She did it. She penetrated something old and stale and got to people’s hearts. Unbelievable.” Even the rowdy activists in the crowd had to agree.

As we were leaving the hall, we were all much more relaxed. Arabs and Jews were even mingling. I found myself walking alongside the Arab school principal who had done The Work with Katie, and he said, “She is doing cognitive psychology. I am sure of that.” “Maybe,” I said. And we kept talking. Then all of a sudden, he said some political thing, and I could feel an argument rising up inside of me, but before I had a chance to say anything, the activist I thought of as “rowdy” came along and said to him—right in my face—“Don’t even bother talking to her” (meaning me). “She always has to be right.”

“You know,” said the Arab man, “you’re right. She has no active listening."

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and was just about to react when it occurred to me that maybe I needed to really hear what they had said. Maybe wisdom was speaking to me through these kind people and reminding me that we had just spent time in the company of a very wise teacher who had opened up a whole new way to communicate by listening inside, and I needed to listen. I backed off and thanked them for telling me that, and I left the event a much different person than the one I’d been when I came.

Next stop: New York City

UPDATE: View the rest of the book tour dates here>>

Thanks for the photographs, Mary!

Beyond Katrina: The Voice of Hurricane Disaster & Recovery is sponsoring two free teleconferences for survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to learn how to use The Work of Byron Katie, a simple yet powerful process of inquiry that is helping people all over the world find a greater sense of well-being in the context of life challenges such as hurricane recovery.

In this teleclass, facilitated by Dr. Maggie Carter, Ph.D., participants will have opportunities to fully experience the effectiveness of The Work and learn how to apply it to everyday situations in their own lives.

The free teleconference will be held March 15 from 7-8 p.m. CDT and March 22 from 7-8 p.m. CDT. Attendees simply need to call 218-486-1300 PIN 745633 at the time of their choice and be prepared to be transformed. They do not need to register in advance. (Thank you, Chi).

Steve Maraboli will interview Stephen and me on his "Empowered Living" show on Monday, March 19th at 10am Pacific (1pm Eastern).

You can listen to it through the Internet here; and it will be archived there as well, available as an on-demand podcast.

The topic? A Thousand Names for Joy.

Listen to this short audio excerpt (MP3) from Your Inner Awakening: The Work of Byron Katie: Four Questions That Will Transform Your Life

Stress is an alarm clock that lets you know you’ve attached to something not true for you.

An uncomfortable feeling is not an enemy. It’s a gift that says, "Get honest; inquire." We reach out for alcohol, or television, or credit cards, so we can focus out there and not have to look at the feeling. And that's as it should be, because in our innocence we haven't known how. So now what we can do is reach out for a paper and a pencil, write thought down, and investigate.

Dear Katie,

I spoke with you on the book tour in Asheville about using the work during my political campaign and you asked me to send a note about it, so here it is.

I live in a fairly conservative county in North Carolina, at least as far as elected officials go. I believe the idea that politics are local and that the best place to start is where you are. In my county we have not had a Democrat elected to 7 of the 9 seats on the board of education in 15 years and the belief was that it can not be done.Many good and well connected people had tried. I filed anyway and several others did as well. I ran a co-ordinated campaign with 2 other candidates and focused on the ideas rather than personality. I was an unknown, never having been involved in politics before.

The short story is I won, getting over 34,000 votes and am now having the time of my life being on the school board.

The work was amazing for me as a way through the process. >From the idea, it can't be done, to I don't have enough support, I need more money, I don't know what I need to know, on and on I would work with my WONDERFUL round robin partner George. He worked with me the month before the election as a special favor and kept the process not only sane but possible. How do I react when I think that thought? what would I do without that thought? It kept me on track only doing the one next thing. The great joy on election night, was having done the whole thing beginning to end, the outcome was really secondary. Being faithful came first. I learned so much about bringing myself back into present time and not believing all the scary thoughts. It was also a great way to find the beliefs that I had used to limit myself in the past.

It also prepared me for what followed. Of a field of really great candidate challengers I alone won. The thought I should not be the only one, is it true? etc. I have learned that we all won, it just looks like me sitting in the seat. I am making friends with all the people I ran "against" and am seeing all the goodness in their hearts. and the children! my goodness I go into the 74 schools we have and they are all mine! sometimes I cry for joy, their beautiful faces like flowers and I am so grateful that I can do my best to serve them.

I never thought of doing this before. nor imagined what a privilege it could be. When I thought about this I heard your sweet voice saying " you're the one". What's so amazing to me is how being the one has dissolved into being the no one, only playing for all of us.

Thank you so much for the great gift of the work and thank everyone for creating this great game we call living.

Loving you,
Elizabeth

Another short audio excerpt (MP3) from Your Inner Awakening: The Work of Byron Katie: Four Questions That Will Transform Your Life

Dear Katie,
I’ve been hoping “The Secret” craze would pass as quickly as the Hula-Hoop, then this afternoon I saw it featured on Oprah.

Please consider commenting on this movie/book in the Parlor.
Much love,
Susan

Dearest Susan,

Here are Stephen’s thoughts:

The Secret: “You can have whatever you want.”
The Work: “You can want whatever you have.”

The Secret: “My will be done. I know what’s best for me.”
The Work: “Thy will be done (=Thy will is done). What’s best for me is what actually happens.” (In A Thousand Names for Joy, Katie says, “God’s will and your will are the same, whether you notice it or not.”)

The Secret: “You can control your thoughts.”
The Work: “You are not the thinker. It’s not possible to suppress your stressful thoughts. But when you question them, they let go of you.”

The Secret: “You can manifest your positive thoughts as reality.” The Work: “Reality already is the best thing that could be manifested. When you realize this, you’re home free.”

Thank you, Susan, for your work during the Los Angeles relationships weekend, and thank Gayle also for being so amazingly generous and present as she gives the Work to people in this world through her excellent recordings. I and thousands of others are so very grateful.

The Secret? So, let’s discover for ourselves if there really is a secret, if in fact one exists. “There is a secret”—is it true? I don’t know, I just don’t know, could be, and how would I know when I have found it? Wouldn’t it mean (if it were really powerful) that when I truly found it, my life and the lives of everyone I love, which is everyone on the planet without exception, would be perfect? That I and all of us would no longer have to suffer from needing, wanting, and shoulding, and would be excited and grateful for what we have as we watch more and more flow in as we need it and always on time, just loving what is here for us right now in this moment? Hmmm. Okay, let’s keep moving.

“There is a secret”—can I absolutely know that it's true that there is a secret which, if known, would give me the key to having everything that I want and need that I don’t have now in life? One that will give me later what I don’t have now (examples: a BMW, the necklace that I really want, weight loss, a bike)? No, I can’t know. How do I react when I think the thought that there is a secret and others know it and I don’t? I must live in a past and future that don’t exist as anything other than unfulfilled imagination, yearning for what I don’t have and believing that material wealth and better health are the key to my happiness, left out, isolated, unhappy, trying my best to get the things that I want and often failing and feeling like a failure. I begin to believe that I cannot harness this “secret” and end up with the same life that I started with in the first place, with or without material success. Who would I be without believing that there is “the secret?” Loving life, being “the obvious,” rather than being the secretive.

There is a secret? Now it’s time to look for the turnarounds that are as true or truer for you, dear Parlor family. The one-liner is “There is a secret.” What turnarounds do you see and are willing to share with us? Post your comments below, at the end of this post.

If I believe it and cannot find it, see it, bring it in as fact, then I cannot prove it to “myself” in this world. There is nothing that isn’t manifested by mind, everything is as we see it, and that isn’t much of a secret. It is only when time and ownership of “things” (and body is also a thing) are misunderstood that you attempt to dictate and manipulate these two factors (time and ownership).

The secret is that wanting what I don’t have leaves me wanting what I don’t have again when I have what I thought I wanted then. I don’t need to map out a plan for the future, and I would if it made sense to me or if I needed to, but I would have to distrust the nature of the universe and myself first, and I trust “myself” totally without question to love all of life. There is never a limit as to what to do now, as what “I do” is what we all get, and it accumulates because I don’t argue, I follow the simple directions that are always kind. I don’t do later what I am to do now, and no one does. Later is now.

The secret is to love what is. I love what is because this “what is” right now is all that is and all that ever will be! Right now, not later, all my needs are met, all my desires, my wants are visibly in plain sight and my eyes are open to it, and the feeling is love and gratitude for all that is right now at my beck and call without beckoning or calling or having even asked for it, prayed for it, planned for it.

I didn’t see Oprah’s show hosting the Secret guests, I was traveling, but I have heard from others that they more or less ended the show with two, maybe three, of the Secret guests showing their prior plans and desires, wishes, wants, imagining, imaging, making real in their minds whatever it took to “manifest” themselves as guests on the Oprah show and that is why it worked. There may be millions of people doing the same thing, just wanting to meet Oprah in person. They may really want to meet her with all their heart, and it isn’t enough. This could easily move into despairing thoughts such as “It doesn’t work for me, I’m doing it wrong,” and for some of you that I have met on the book tour, this opens the door to “I created my own cancer,” “What did I do to create this cancer?” “If I knew what I did to create my cancer I could uncreate it, and if I can do that it means that I never have to suffer again. I must know the secret or suffer and die unnecessarily,” “I am going to die if I don’t know the Secret; after all, the doctors say they can’t save me. What did I do to create this in me?”

True creation is like this: There is no cancer until the doctor tells someone that they have cancer and then until they believe it they can’t have it. If they have never heard of cancer before, they must first be taught that it exists, and then they can believe that they have it, and that must be taught too. If they don’t believe it from the doctor, then the family has to teach them. We teach them to have it and then we teach them to try and get rid of it, and if they can’t, then they die. We have to teach them that they live first, though. If we haven’t been taught, how can we believe? And we ourselves create “it” (cancer, everything) the moment we believe. All the evidence shows that it’s true, and that is how the belief is held in place. The mind goes from nothing to crazy with fear (really crazy, sometimes). This is the way people create, reinforce, and maintain their beliefs: “I am going to die, they can’t save me, my children can’t make it without me, God is punishing me, I don’t know how to unmanifest my cancer,” on and on. When the phone rings and it is someone you love talking to, you are laughing, talking, enjoying life in that moment: where is the cancer in that moment? Do you have cancer or are you absolutely cancer-free in that moment? Of course, we are absolutely cancer-free until the mind brings back the unquestioned cancer story into reality. I use the term “absolutely” on purpose. The mind creates who and what we are when we believe our thoughts and experience the concepts, feelings, and images in our heads in the moment. This isn’t right or wrong, it is just so in the moment we believe what we seem to be experiencing as our identity.

In my world, cancer has a right to live or die. Everything has a right to life and death, because I know what everything is, and its true nature. If “I” have cancer, that is my identity (that is who mind identifies me as) and as that identity, I may choose to have chemotherapy, do alternative medical practices, medical practices, change my diet, think positively, even though we continue to believe the “negative” unquestioned thoughts, the opposites of what we want to believe, even though we don’t want to believe them. We believe them until we don’t, and inquiry breaks the spell of “negative” thoughts and therefore what we negatively feel and believe. The negative thoughts, unless we question them, override the positive thoughts that we want to believe, and negative thoughts win out, and the positive thoughts are just powerful and ring true enough to make us feel better occasionally. They don’t work when we really are believing the stressful ones, the one that we don’t want to believe: “I have cancer, I’m going to die, they can’t heal me, my condition is hopeless, it’s not fair, I have created this,” etc. With or without cancer, my life is what it is, and I am grateful for that. With or without cancer, I am still sitting in this chair writing to you, and there are two ways to sit here. One is happy, and the other is stressed out.

I look forward to the turnarounds and examples from you, dear family. I want everyone to come to understand what so many of you are coming to understand about the ease of internal life. Please share your secret thoughts with all of us.

Loving you all,
kt

Katie,

Christine

I felt transformed. I was transformed. It was a miracle. I know there is more work to do--every day of my life. But it doesn't feel like work to me. I feel like a different person, except that I simply found the person that was already there.

Richard

If you want something to be different than it is, you might as well teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, "Meow." Wanting something to be different than it is is hopeless.

Q: Have you ever been to a Katie event?

A: No, but I have listened to the Loving What Is tapes. I listen to them when I go to sleep.

Q: Is it ever hard for you to hear people’s stories?

A: Sometimes, a little bit. I like the endings when sometimes they laugh a lot and they realize it’s really not true what they were thinking.

Q: Do you experience that when you do The Work?

A: Yeah, I do.

Q: Can you tell me about a specific dialogue that helped you?

A: Yeah, I can remember one. This is from couple of years ago. I was watching TV. There was this really scary preview—it was of a horror movie—and I didn’t have enough time to change the channels, so I saw it. That really freaked me out.

So my mom helped me with that. I did The Work on it and after that I realized it was not actually something that could hurt me. It was an image that was made up and was not real. That was helpful.

[Emma’s mom described how the turnaround “I’m going to hurt the monster” was a fun one for them. Emma saw that she could destroy the monster by questioning her thoughts about it. She also saw how she hurt herself (“I’m going to hurt me”) by bringing back in her mind an image of something unreal—that wasn’t in her room in reality—and believing it could actually harm her. It hurts to make up and imagine what the monster will do to me.]

Q: Did you feel peaceful after that? Were you able to sleep in your room?

A: That night I slept in my mom’s room just in case. After that I felt a lot better and just comfortable with going to sleep. I was clear-minded. Even if I pictured the image, it didn’t actually scare me anymore.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about The Work in your life?

A: Something happened that was kind of big and it sort of caused me and my mom to separate a bit. I was really angry at her. And I was worried that it would cause our relationship to be permanently wounded. She did The Work with me on that and it helped a lot. So it’s more peaceful now.

Q: After The Work, were you done with that belief? Did you find the relationship wasn’t permanently wounded?

A: Yeah, I did.

Q: Emma, why do you think The Work works? What do you think it is about The Work that helps people totally change their mind?

A: Oh, wow. When you do The Work, especially with “Is it true?”—if you think for a couple of minutes you realize this thought can’t be true. Like, “I need oranges.” You realize if you needed them, you’d be unhealthy. If you’re perfectly healthy, you wouldn’t need anything else. You’re only unhealthy emotionally if you think that thought.

And then “How do you react when you think the thought?” You realize there’s a really big chain of suffering you go through if you just think this one simple thought.

The turnarounds are the most important—especially the part where you have to give a reason why it’s true. It might not even be part of The Work you’re doing. “My friend doesn’t care about me anymore.” If you do the turnaround “I don’t care about myself,” you find a moment where you didn’t care about yourself. That points the flashlight at you, not your friend. Sometimes when I’m angry I pinch myself or hit myself to numb the emotional pain and focus on physical pain.

Q: Do you ever find the turnarounds surprising?

A: Yeah, it just comes at you kind of suddenly.

Q: What do you like about hearing Katie do The Work with people?

A: Well, Katie’s funny. She has some funny quotes that are fun to laugh to. It’s also interesting and can give you a better idea of how The Work works—because you can think it’s a weird process and probably doesn’t work. When you hear someone do it and hear how they’re happy when they get to the end of the process, you get how you can use it to make your life happier and not suffer.

Q: Do you imagine you’re going to keep using The Work?

A: Yeah, I do. If you get introduced to it and it works on one of your problems, you really can’t stay away.

This came in via the Parlor >>

I'd like to share how the work has been helping me lately. Often a picture will come into my mind and tempt me. Something like a Braum's burger, fries, and an ice cream cone sundae. This may sound silly, but I am often a slave to such thoughts. So what I've been doing lately is to focus on that tempting image- what it is I believe I want. Then I pose the question that this picture implies to myself. This items promises that if I engage it,it will give me pleasure, it will be a good experience. It also demands that I satisfy it immediately, because I can not survive with out it. I'm am hopelessly incomplete without it. I take that false promise to inquiry.

When I believe that thought, I leave my perfect universe and battle this temptation. Believing the thought, and struggling against it is the war BK speaks of. Far better to doubt the thought & never struggle! Also I've been testing it- for instance, I disobeyed the thought and found that I was still breathing and in fact was very happy! Wow, without Braums too! :)

I find that I have a same pattern to my aversions that I have with my desires. For me a project that I'm behind on starts to represent something bad, to be avoided. Why? B/C when I look at it, what I actually perceive is a promise that if I tackle it, I will be frustrated, overwhelmed and
incapable. Yet when do I actually tackle such projects, I experience the opposite in reality.

I realized that I created a whole universe in my head this way. I create a personal relationship with everything in my mind- I call this thing a "goodie" and this other thing something terrible- aweful. In this way, I am driven, emprisoned by my desires and aversions.

The crazy part is that I'm almost always wrong in my attributions. Things I dread turn out to be great, and things I desire aren't that great. I always hate it when someone tells me how great a movie is before I watch it. If they build it up too much, I leave disappointed- at a great movie too!

I'm back from West Virginia, where I was at the veterans’ hospital to work with clinicians who want to know the what and how of The Work—to train them, answer questions about The Work as applied to Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, addiction treatment, rehabilitation, and more. What a privilege to represent all of us and to speak about what is, for so many of us, the miracle of The Work and how it works. It is a war-torn veteran’s dream! It works quickly, and they love it.

I visited Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C. with Patricia Parrott and her daughter Becky, as well as our own Tina from BKI, and introduced The Work to veterans, clinicians, nurses, etc. They were amazing! I hope to see some of them at the East Coast School in a couple of weeks. Also, some of you came to the two-day intensive in D. C. to work with more than a hundred veterans and clinicians from surrounding V. A. hospitals in three states. There is an amazing team of doctors in this area who are into what is cutting edge, and The Work is the one method that works well and fast, that holds, and that is simple to process patients with.

Thank you, family, for being there.

Also, thanks for traveling with me also to West Virginia to continue to process these amazing men and women who have returned from Iraq as well as those in the hospital. One veteran, William, told me that he had been living on the streets just to be sure that he could be at all three days of the event. The hospital could only bus people in on Saturday, and he had read Loving What Is and had to experience The Work with us.

The following is a compilation of April 2007 School participants' answers regarding "Aftercare." The questions they were asked were:

1. Have you kept The Work alive since leaving The School through the partnering exercise? If yes, what was your experience?

2. Do you have any specific questions for Katie about integrating The Work into your daily life? (As Katie did not have enough time to answer the conference call questions below, she has invited all of you to jump in with your own answers and to serve others with your own experience.)

3. Any general comments?

Dear Family, I would love that your responses go up on the blog, and that you answer through your own experience, enlightenment, and generosity, to share with anyone who may want to learn from you what you have come to see for yourself.

UPDATE: the archived teleconference is here >>

June 5, 2007 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. (Pacific Time)
Phone No. 646-519-5860 (PIN 6741#)
Guest Facilitator - Kathleen Sepeda

Join us as Kathleen shares how she moves The Work. She will answer questions and facilitate a volunteer from the caller audience.

Kathleen Sepeda is a Deputy Probation Officer at The Justice Center in Boulder, Colorado and a student of New Ventures West Personal Coaching Program. She has been a student of The Work since March of 2004. She has been in the process of self-observation since 1997. She facilitates The Work Group in the Jury Assembly Room at The Boulder JC every Monday afternoon. The participants are teenage girls who are on probation.

Dear All,

I’m sitting in front of my computer, listening for words that could give adequate voice to the life changing experience of visiting San Quentin. It’s been over half a year since I walked through the prison’s five security gates to enter the world “inside”, a world that unexpectedly opened my mind to understanding true freedom, a reality that took me inside my most prejudiced thoughts to meet the depths of my heart.

It was really my heart that called me to go to San Quentin in the first place. I was listening to Katie describe the Prison Project to a group of people and suddenly, something in my heart just moved me to volunteer if help was needed.

Love takes me to the most amazing places, and I’m learning to trust its lead completely.

What can I possibly say that would accurately describe the insights that continue to surface, the changes that take place still after sharing The Work with men in maximum security, on The Hill, and those living in the H block? I can tell you that their searching eyes and earnest, inquiring minds stay with me, inspiring me every day. Their dedication to seeing the truth and willingness to share honestly give me courage to do the same, no matter what the circumstances.

After a morning session in which Katie did The Work with incarcerated veterans living in maximum security, we all sat with one another for about twenty minutes.

The man next to me had lived on The Hill for sixteen years. I experienced him as a shy man, seemingly a dedicated worker by day at his job in prison, and artist by night while locked in his cell.

He looked deeply into my eyes as he quietly told me he had killed his brother in law, all those many years ago, and why. He told me how he could begin to see, for the first time, that the actions he had taken, though drastic, were directly caused by believing the thought that he was doing the right thing to protect his sister. He told me of how, for the first five years in jail, he felt as though he was in a nightmare, and couldn’t wake up; he couldn’t believe how everything had changed so radically and that he had actually killed someone.

Over many more years, he lived remorsefully with the realization that the action he thought was going to bring more peace to his family actually brought loss and generated even more confusion. Retrospectively, he saw that there were many other ways he might have been of help to his sister that didn’t require violence. After practicing just one morning of The Work, this man said that he couldn’t claim to know what was right for anyone else, ever again.

He spoke of how, whenever a possibility of parole came up, his nephew would angrily argue against it, saying that his uncle was a murderer and should pay the price, should stay safely locked up in jail. This insightful man told me that he could understand his nephew. He said, “He’s just doing what I used to do. He’s just like I used to be.”

We sat then for a while in silence, just taking each other in. In those moments, something opened beyond my knowing to fully embrace our equality; it was subtle yet profound. It was as if I’d been humbled by his plain honesty and was left with only a sense of empty humility as a greater understanding of my own ignorance and innocence dawned. How often had unquestioned beliefs led me to reflexively take action based on fear? How many times had this confused mind justified drastic reactions in its search for security and happiness?

Suddenly, aversion toward people I had judged as scary or harmful melted away as I received a clearer understanding of projection and saw the futility of protection:

Any projection = reflection = possible “self” observation = an opening for introspection = connection = unification = love.

Protection = separation = defense against fear of imagined loss or harm = action to secure against loss or harm = conflict and opposition = suffering.
It was as if some tense and hidden little place within my mind took a deep breath and made space for a new world; instead of self protection and other projection, sitting face to face there, I felt only quiet love.

Then I shared how for many years, after having had four abortions, I carried the heavy burden of believing I was a murderer. In my mind, I had myself made out to be some kind of serial killer, even though doctors had told me the babies might be deformed or that I could lose my own life if I carried those pregnancies to term. I admitted how I had incarcerated myself with guilt and shame, how I hid my painful secret from the world and lived as though I deserved to be locked up and punished for the rest of my life. I was living a nightmare where life became more and more frightening as each new horrible thing that happened was proof of guilt in my mind. I was a fugitive on the run believing I was doomed to suffer and pay the price for the rest of my days.

There was more silence and an unfathomable sense of connection as we sat there, unmasked, our painful mistrust of life nakedly exposed between us. We shared a tender smile. Inside, it felt like such a relief to recognize and release the ancient illusion of control, to surrender the story of a past and plans for a better future, to love.

How can life know? How does love create the perfect circumstances and opportunities that allow me to see reality ever more clearly? How can the universe be so unfailingly kind? I needed to visit maximum security to find the one who could help me see beyond security, to maximum freedom.

What I really want to say is thank you. Some mornings, these days, tears just flow out of the gratitude that fills this heart. Thank you, Katie, and thank you to all kind souls who are, even at this moment, graciously, lovingly holding the space open for us to see through answering four questions, and turning our lives around.

I bow down…

In Love,
Mollie Shea

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which he has obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

photos by C. Pratte

Dear friends,

It is nighttime in Tel Aviv. In the last three days I have immersed myself in The Work here in Israel by attending all of Katie’s events. They were so impressive for me, and for everyone I have spoken with, to come face to face with someone who has taken total responsibility for her own thinking and to see how the whole world is changed as a result.

The events were so sweet and smooth. You couldn’t even tell that 1,200 people each day were in the hall; you could hear a pin drop, and anyone who knows Israelis knows that it’s highly unusual for them to be so quiet. Katie’s depth and amazing penetration blew everyone’s mind and swept us off our feet.

The first two people who did The Work with Katie were women who worked with her last year on sexual abuse in their family, and both were so grateful. One of them said how after not speaking for years with her father who had abused her, they are now on speaking terms again and are even able to hug each other, and she said that instead of meeting the monster, for the first time she met the human being who is her father.

All the people who came on to do The Work with Katie dared to expose their deepest fears in front of more than a thousand people. Among others, there was a mother who lost her son in a car accident and a girl with burn scars all over her face because a terrorist blew up the bus she was on. In working with these traumatized people, and with “normal” people as well, Katie was so skillful, so intelligent, so wise, she knew so well when to push hard and when to let go, and as my skeptical friend sitting next to me began to sob, I noticed how many other people in the audience crying as well.

That burnt girl—so innocent, so delicate, with such a complicated, sad story— rediscovered herself again right in front of our eyes, showing us and seeing for herself that in the midst of the suspicion that her mind created to protect her, her beautiful soul lives on and is entirely untouched by any of the outer scars. The power of her choosing life was overwhelming. I felt that no one in the audience was a bystander, that we were involved and doing our own Work.

The weekend culminated with a huge inquiry circle. More then 1500 people sat in pairs facing each other on the lawn outside under a beautiful blue Israeli sky. I was overtaken by the blue sky for a minute; then I noticed how involved Katie was, that she missed nothing: here she saw a person needing a partner, there she asked the Hebrew translator to wait a moment and she asked for an Arab translator as well, so that all would be included. I noticed how, just by watching her and her tremendous compassion and inclusiveness, I felt as if I was becoming more compassionate and inclusive myself, and I begin to feel love looking at itself as I looked around me.

Even the TV news people seemed touched and came to talk with the Arab translator, asking her to talk to them about The Work and how it had affected her life. “Well,” she said, “I’ll give you an example. Someone from Europe just asked me if I felt discrimination in Israel, and I noticed how different my answer is now after I have been doing The Work for a while. The charge is gone. Discrimination? Well, yeah, maybe, but it exists all over the world, not just here, and not just because I am Moslem, but everyone sees everyone else from their own world. And I can also find how I am prejudiced against all kinds of things, even toward some animals, so I guess you could say that I don’t take it so personally anymore. The Work freed up my energy, and I can do other more productive things with my time.”

The next day by 7:30 a.m. Katie was already visiting inmates at an Israeli prison, and at 10:30 had arrived at Baka-el-Garbiya, an Arab village, for a session dedicated to the Arab audience (although a few others like me snuck in). I was watching history in the making; it was nothing short of that.

The event for Arabs only was amazing. Hundreds of Arabs came, mostly women, and I recognized an important editor of a very well-known magazine hiding in the crowd. It was very impressive. She adapted so well to that tradition and so skillfully enabled everyone to understand the meaning of being kind to one’s self, how war starts with us, how we can also end it. We have a choice. It was so important.

I watched people get empowered as she was speaking and felt that everything she said was of outmost importance. The fact that Katie’s love and clarity could sound and reverberate in that space today, maybe for the very first time, enabling these people to find their way out of suffering, was a magical moment with immense proportions. I felt such a powerful focus develop in the audience, and it all seemed to penetrate and touch people’s hearts. Katie couldn’t contain her tears, it was moving to the depths.

Much love,

Orly

Hi Katie,

I've just got back from attending today's event with you in London, and I'm so full of gratitude to you and to everyone involved and present (including me!) for making it possible, and for giving the gift of a wonderful, open-minded experience.

I was particularly moved by the Work of the gentleman who had the thought "my father shouldn't have died when I was 9 years old". As I listened and watched, I did the Work for myself, because my mum died when I was 9 years old (is it true?).

Soon, I found tears of gratitude flowing, because it gave me the opportunity to remember what I had discovered when I worked that very thought: the joy of my memories of my mum, and of how they are always with me (and so SHE is always with me); the privilege of becoming closer to my dad, and of being a comfort to him in his own grief; the amazing experience of getting to know my stepmother (and falling absolutely in love with her - I always say I had one wonderful mother for the first nine years of my life, and I've had another wonderful mother since I was eleven!); of learning, through my bond with my stepmother (and her family) that water is JUST as thick as blood; of becoming independent at a young age, learning that "I can make it" which stood me in such good stead when I moved away from home and came out as a gay man.....the list really is endless. And in all of that, my love for my (first) mum remains absolute and unbroken, yet I am able to be open to the amazing realisation that her death was a gift, just as her life was a gift.

(I would love for you to publish this email in your blog, or in The Parlor, in the hope that that gentleman may be reading. I'd like to extend my thanks to him.)

It was also wonderful to see you "for real" for the first time, although I found myself smiling to think that thought, because when you walked on stage, I had also the thought "oh, I've met her before, she's a friend of mine"! Thank God for YouTube! I had the same thought with everyone who joined you on that stage too! Truly - no new thoughts.

I continue to do The Work. I've been making use of the resources on your wonderful website. The Hotline, the Round Robin....thank you for them.

I hope you'll come back to the UK again soon. I echo one of the questions you were asked at the end - "when will you bring the School to the UK?", and on the one hand I repeat it in earnest - it would be so wonderful to have it and you here, reaching so many people who may not "find" it otherwise - and on the other, I hear your answer: "when you answer the four questions for yourself, in your own mind, whenever you need to". What a hoot!!

Thank you Katie, it was an amazing day, and I'm coming to realise, bit by bit, that they all are.

I love you, and your Work.

Brian
x

This is from Jaya Walsh. It came with a note: "To my imagination, this could be used to stir up more interest in the upcoming Workshop for parents and children."

Children are very good at following the simple directions: "I’m hot, I’m thirsty, there are popsicles in the freezer—let’s ask Mom." It’s a simple question: “Can we have a Popsicle?” But Mom has no simple answer because she is operating under the delusion “I should be consistent with my children.”

She leaves the present and travels to the past: What do I know about Popsicles? What have I told them before about Popsicles? What have we said about when we can have them and when we can’t? She travels to the future: What will happen later if I give them a Popsicle now? What will happen if this isn’t when I said I’d give them a Popsicle? What patterns are being created or broken here?

Mom looks down at the children’s little faces and sees the enemy looking back. They will run over me if I don’t defend myself against them with consistency. I must maintain a sense of power and control with consistency. I know what they’re thinking: “We want as many Popsicles as we can get, no matter what it does to our relationship.” They don’t know any better.

She is now totally disconnected from them and totally disconnected from herself. The search engine of her brain is so muddled as it sifts through the data around “Popsicles and consistency” that she can’t make a simple decision. She can’t trust herself as a parent to make a good decision—about Popsicles—and she has a moral imperative to make a good decision, because the ramifications are huge and far-reaching and she needs to weigh them out carefully before she can give a balanced answer.

Chances are good that by the time she chokes out an answer through the clutter of thoughts—“Well, no, this doesn’t seem like the right time”—it’s going to feel disconnected to the children. So they ask a question to get clarity—“Isn’t this when we always have a snack?” They might even add more data because, obviously, Mom needs help here—“It’s really hot and we haven’t had any sweets yet today.” Now, anything they say becomes the proof that they’re manipulating her!

What’s really going on here? They asked a simple question and their mother left the planet. She’s trying to show she’s a reliable person by being consistent about Popsicles but all they’re seeing is a total lack of presence. Is it any wonder everyone’s confused and cross?

A Canadian mom named Caitlin, who loves questioning her parenting notions with The Work, noticed that her stance on consistency was creating what she was trying to avoid: internal muddle, confused, combative discussions, stern tones in her voice, and whining, complaining tones in her children’s. What she was especially after was being present, staying connected to her children, and living out of integrity. Instead, she was gone, disconnected, confused.

She took the statement “I should be consistent with my children” to The Work. This exploration revealed to her all the behaviors and thoughts from the Popsicle story above. She found that the belief was founded on distrust: she couldn’t trust her children to have authentic interactions with her, and she couldn’t trust herself to be a good parent to her children in the moment. As she witnessed her life following this session of inquiry, she noticed how many times a day a new opportunity arose for “I should be consistent.” Only now she was no longer believing the thought.

Caitlin’s inquiry led her to trust herself to simply check in and give an answer in the moment. “I can be consistently myself,” she realized. “I can show up in each moment and trust that.” What followed was a new ease in her interactions with her children. The ease was in herself, with a huge reduction in mental work and no more separation—which feels dense and heavy. Now her children ask a question and she gives a response after a two-second check-in. Caitlin’s new modus operandi is “Put in the question and see what it says. It knows the answer.”

In the moments when the answer doesn’t come right away, she notices that now curiosity arises instead of confusion and panic. She tells her children, “I don’t know yet. Can you come ask again in about ten minutes?” Then she does The Work to get back to clarity. The children respond well to this: they, too, seem to prefer the clear mother with the clear answers.

Caitlin marvels at how often her children simply trust her answer these days. When they get a no, they’re more likely to carry right on with what they were doing than to argue about it. Sometimes they do have a response: “I’ll say, ‘No, I don’t want you to have a Popsicle.’ They’ll say, ‘We didn’t have one in the last couple of days, what do you think?’” Then she checks in again—new moment, new information. In her mind, she doesn’t go to, I’ve answered. I have to be consistent or it will mean . . . What she loves is that her children present the new information in a very peaceful way. They don’t speak with the charge they used to put into it, with a torrent of “It’s not fair . . . You said . . . We never get . . . That’s not the way . . .”

And then there are still those moments when a child really doesn’t like the parental answer and responds with tears, anger, and accusations. Even this has become welcome in Caitlin’s world because she doesn’t feel instant anger well up inside herself, worry about or judge the child, question her decision or whether or not she’s a good parent—all the confused craziness this response used to yield for her. Her daughter was raging recently when Caitlin’s answer was “Yes, in ten minutes,” instead of the desired “Yes, I’m jumping up right away.” Caitlin found no judgment or anger in herself as she met her daughter’s response. What she found was true love for her daughter and a clear holding to her true “Yes, in ten minutes.” Her daughter’s emotions spent themselves quickly and, ten minutes later, both were happily engaged in their shared activity. And Caitlin spent the interim ten minutes at peace in her own mind.

A bonus she has discovered in her new way of being is that her children involve her more in their processes. They trust her to be present and simply curious with them about whatever they’re dealing with. Together, they come up with ideas and create solutions to problems and conflicts. “They know I’m with them—present in the moment and not gone, lost in all those thoughts as I search for my Parenting Plan and Theory on Popsicles. In that clear place we can really hear each other and connect, and there are so many more options and possibilities.”

Finally, trust has moved into their home: mom trusting herself, children trusting themselves, and all trusting one another. It’s a good life—and it’s amazing how consistent it looks once the religion of consistency is dropped.

hey, my name is tamar and i don't really have a question right now. i would like this e-mail to be a direct line of gratitude to katie.

i had heard her name for the last few years, but never got deep into the work. last week i was at my father's home and saw a pamphlet of katie coming to israel. something deep in my being urged me to visit her web site when i got home, and I've been doing that daily since and starting to recognize the endless opportunities of the work. it is endless beauty for me, and i thank you for that.

the reason I'm writing this letter is that today was my first day of manifesting the work in my relationship with my lover. after talking to him and really listening to him and giving him the chance to be as he is and by that being me, i saw his beautiful essence. what became present since then is a sense of responsibility in my life, and even though I'm still new to this process, my being is at peace more than with any of the stories i have been telling myself for my 33 years of life (and believe me, they were big glorified stories attached to a never-satisfied ego).

thank you, katie, from the essence of my being. thank you, thank you, and thank me :-)
with love,
tamar

Here are some School aftercare experiences sent in by participants at The School (Trumbull, CT 2007) in answer to the question: Have you kept The Work alive since leaving The School through the partnering exercise? If yes, what was your experience?

Barbara:
Yes!  My experience has been profound. One of the things that I have noticed is an empty feeling. This has been somewhat disconcerting because suddenly my stories are not relevant, and I have somewhat of an experience of not knowing who or what I am. I guess this is where “It” comes into play. It is noticing certain things today.

Some of my children are expressing displeasure with me but I believe this has been accumulating for years. And, even though I have some fear that they will always feel displeasure with me, I am just as hopeful that expressing themselves will in some ways contribute to more intimacy, maybe. At any rate, I find myself being more okay with them expressing their “stories” of who I have been and am.

I have been amazed at how similar my situation has been to those of my partners, who were selected at random. One person whom I had some initial judgment about and who ended up as a partner turned out to be most like me. I have found some incredible unconditional acceptance coming from perfect strangers.

Also at home, which I dreaded returning to, it’s been a more peaceful and loving experience. My partner, ex-husband, has been very supportive even though I had anticipated that he would have a problem with me talking on the phone long distance every day instead of joining him in front of the TV set. Some of my grandchildren have actually asked for The Work and one plans to accompany me to see Katie in Kansas City next spring.      

I am doing The Work and seeing results. I am sleeping better than I can remember in many years, maybe ever. I am addressing some problems and issues that I have spent years being fearful of and procrastinating over. I feel no need for medicating my problems or myself for the first time since I was a child. I know there is more but these are my initial responses to the questionnaire.

Thank you all and Katie, God Bless

Tania:
Yes I’ve kept it alive and it has been an amazing blessing; it creates a space of openness and presence that stays with me until the next stressful thought. I’m doing The Work all the time and am offering it to others with very open responses. It’s like Katie says: When you think things are so good that can’t get any better, they have to.

Suzy:
When we received the original assignment I was in resistance. I didn’t really want to have to do the 28 days! I am so grateful, now, that we were asked to do it! Connecting with others to do The Work has been very gratifying and helpful.

Toward the end of the School Katie asked, “What is the worst thing that could have happened at home while you were gone?” My reply was that my grandsons were kidnapped. Because I was still having angst around that thought, I did the one liner “My grandchildren SHOULD be kidnapped” with one of my partners. As a one liner, I was terrified to even say it out loud. The awareness and clarity and peace that came from doing The Work on that one liner was very powerful and healing for me. One point that came to me was to experience my grandsons as first generation thought: boys. NOT as the source of my happiness and fulfillment...just boys!

Laurie:
I have kept The Work alive.  I am doing The Work usually twice a day with my 4 day partner and my round robin partner.  I’m also reading in between and looking at underlying beliefs that have come up.  I have found the experience of going home fantastic.  It’s really neat to see how my friends and family are my mirrors.  At times when I normally would get angry, I can laugh because I can see where I do that too.  I now also see when something happens, it happens for me.  It also helps me to see what I need to work on next.  Just recently, I came upon a big underlying belief.  I thought by punishing myself with my thoughts I was helping me to do better.  That was such a nice find because I can see where that belief is underneath a lot of my stressful thoughts.

Deborah:
I love the partnering; it has been very helpful. I used it partly to “inoculate” myself in anticipation of a multi-generational, once a year, multi-day family gathering. And, not surprisingly, nothing really fazed me in interactions with others. In fact, I was able to casually mention this cool thing I’d just done (the School) and how it was helping, when others were having meltdowns, were trying to pull me in, and I wasn’t buying.

It’s also helpful in business and other personal relationships.

My partner is most appreciative of my School experience, so much so that I only mildly get flack on the extra hour a day on the phone...teasing flack. Also, we worked through the biggest regret in her life; that seems to have won some appreciation for The Work and my participation in it.

Lora:
Recently I was struggling with an issue; I had done many Worksheets and was at a loss. I was in the car and oddly lost despite the map I had printed before leaving. I turned on the CD, A Thousand Names for Joy, and the idea came to me to turn the question around to ask myself, “What in me does this person represent? What part of me is being mirrored?” That changed my perspective and gave me the piece I was missing and, interestingly, I found the right street in that moment.

The nine days was life changing and this follow-up is vitally important in my opinion. I feel I can call several of the people I partnered with for support beyond the end of this exercise.

Thanks!!!

Neige:
This has been a wonderful way to keep The Work alive and to demonstrate how easily I can make time for it in my life. I’ve been impressed at how my partners and I have been so flexible and persistent, and how we’ve succeeded in making connections even when one partner was on a beach in Hawaii and I was sitting on a stoop in Chinatown, New York City! Having so many partners was a great idea as well, not only because I got to do such a variety of Work through them, but experience a variety of styles of facilitation for my own Work. It was fascinating.

Trudy:
I’m grateful that the partnering exercise was part of the School because I am now a much freer person emotionally.  Even while at the School, I often didn’t know what to work on. NOW, as thoughts come up, I’m able to label them as something I should question.  On of scale of one to ten, I think my experience was an eleven!  I’ve concluded that you can’t take $10 out of the bank when you only deposit $5.  Also, I’m taking The Work into the addiction facility I volunteer at.  I use it for Relapse Prevention. (I’m a Drug and Alcohol Counselor)

Jean:
I have had a phone session every day except the 4th of July. And I have sessions lined up to cover all the days ahead until I have a round robin partner. I am listening to the BK Rap in the car, and have listened to various other CDs as well.

The weeks since the School have deepened my commitment to doing The Work a lot. It is so wonderful to have a tool to pick up whenever stress arises. It is like having the right screwdriver at hand for just that screw. I get discouraged when the same old stuff comes up, but then I just do The Work on it again, and I can see that the ground of my responses is changing. And I love that there is nothing that can’t be addressed by inquiry.

Another experience I want to mention is the sense of seeing down through a root system of beliefs, each of them linked to the others in a web. I call this the knot. I have worked on many of these issues for years in other modalities and I have made progress… but here they are still, and I had never seen how they are connected until yesterday.

Rosemary:
Yes, I have kept The Work alive since leaving the School, through the partnering exercises. My experience was very interesting.

I stayed at the hotel for 2 days after the School, so did the partnering exercise in my hotel room the first day. Then for the next 3 days I was at home. After that I had a 14 day holiday in a very remote resort with NO technology but a very old phone both about a 15 minute walk away from my cottage. The phone both was really cool, you know, like the “Superman” phone booths, only older. The calls became such a financial burden, at $40 per call, that I decided to ask my husband to do The Work with me the second week. The Work went very deep for me with my husband. At one point, we worked for 2 hours together. There were lots of ups and downs and by the end I had a long list of one-liners for me to work on.

When I got home I found my request for a round robin partner was answered. I continued to do The Work with my school partners and when I could not connect, I had my round robin partner to do The Work with.

My experience with The Work has been kind of “out of this world”. Sometimes doing The Work seemed to not go too deep and that was perfect. It felt like my brain needed a rest and I was still processing The Work of the day before. Sometimes I would do a one-liner by myself. It would wake me up in the middle of the night at 3 AM or 5 AM and I would be taken to notebook and pen to fill in the one-liner. These sheets went very deep with up to 10 extra pages and lots of tears and laughter.

My round robin partner has been very helpful and gracious in doing 1 hour and 1.5 hour calls. She is also in the certification program with me and I feel very blessed to have connected with her. The most valuable one-liner work so far has helped me to notice how I have used great amounts of energy to keep one belief alive: “I need to protect myself by competing to be the best, or no one will love me.” This opened up a beautiful list of more one-liners that I am eager to work on. One thing I learned is that I can be impatient to push myself to be the best and now I’m learning that The Work finds its own time to be Worked. When I am patient and wait to be moved to do The Work, it flows out of me with ease and grace.

photos: C. Pratte

Dear Katie,

I just saw the video "I'm afraid of war" from Israel which you included in the latest Newsletter.

I went through the inquiry for myself together with the Israeli woman, and I felt it applicable to every single stressful thought I ever had, which were all thoughts where I was at war with reality. That video is so incredibly powerful, it helped me at last fully assimilate the 300 or so inquiry worksheets I have written so far, I cried all the way though it and kept crying for some time afterwards, I guess it was all this accumulated tension leaving my body.

And what you told about doing inquiry with the veterans and your examples of the man burning to death and about having ones leg blown off, helped me at last feel deep inside my bones the deep meaning of your response to my email to the Parlor about when I was attacked and which had not fully sunk in until now. It would be helpful if some examples of explicit inquiries about physical harm could be published, and I understand why that is not always possible.

I have been doing Inquiry since January, have done about 300 inquiry worksheets so far and am doing about three new ones each day. I have now learned to go very deep inside and usually it takes me 30 to 60 minutes and 4 pages of writing to do each Inquiry. So I do not do two inquiries in a row because I need some time to let each one fully sink in. I also feel quite exhausted sometimes after a deep inquiry. I have learned to sit there waiting patiently with my pen in my hand because I have noticed that sometimes the deepest and most surprising answers to the questions take a while to come up, once the quick and easy ones are already on paper. I hope that I am not exaggerating with this, since the inquiries that have been published in your books and tapes seem to be so much shorter and quicker.

For the past few weeks I have been noticing that from time to time a little "Inquiry computer program" seems to start running inside my head when I think a stressful thought. So far it is only about the "easy" ones but I love the new experience.

I hope to attend October School in LA. I still have so much work to do on myself and I also know that I learn a lot from other people’s inquiries. And at some point in the future I hope to be able to contribute in some way to bringing The Work to more people around the world.

Thank you very much, Katie!

MARC :-)

Dear Katie,
I am so scared and confused, because I have breast cancer. I got the diagnosis in September, and started medical treatment, I didn’t want surgery, to take the whole right breast off. I also found an independent doctor who supported me in doing this. A few days ago I did an ultrasound scan and they said the tumor has grown and I should have surgery. My other independent doctor says it has not grown, but become smaller, that my body can well keep it in balance. This is very hard for me now, to know what is true, to know what to do. I really don’t want to take the breast off, but if it really should be the only way to survive, of course I’d do it. I have managed very well feeling good about everything, and have used The Work a lot with all these questions and fears coming up. I felt really strong and healthy and happy until this ultrasound scan. Now it is as if I failed, and can’t trust my own feelings. It is too much for me right now. I would be so happy and grateful for some message from you. I feel so much love and trust for you, Katie, and The Work has helped me immensely all these years. I need to find peace and clarity in this situation. I need to be able to go on and make a decision. I have a family with three kids and a wonderful husband, and they are worried too. It is not easy to get out of the fear. (I have your video “Cancer Meets Inquiry,” but it has to be transformed to European video system, so I haven’t seen it yet.)
Very much love to you from ****

Dearest ****,
I am so happy that you reached out to ask, and in my own experience, if I have been using my body, my breasts, my physical appearance as any kind of collateral or bargaining power in my life, then of course I am frightened to lose an arm, a leg, a breast, because I am equating my body as value for trade. Self-love is all that is needed to be clear, with or without body parts. I don’t need body parts to be loved or to love. I love you, dearest, with or without, and how would you hear that differently with a breast or without it? Which is easier for you to believe? That is the test. Get a round-robin partner, and call the hotline, and heal your fear. I look forward to our time together in Europe this summer.
Loving you always,
kt

Dearest Katie,
Thank you so much for your answer! Self-love is all that is needed to be clear - YES, I see that. I will carry it with me. And I will work with the question you wrote, well, perhaps I would even hear you more clearly without a breast, who knows?
Lots of love from ****

“There's no wrong, only discovery...”

Recorded at a recent public event, this audio lets us listen to a couple doing The Work as they arrive at a new understanding of their relationship and lives together.

See also: Resolving Deep Family Resentments, a new 2 DVD set in the BKI webstore >>

UPDATE:
The School for Leaders has been cancelled and we have many marvelous, fresh leadership ideas for 2008 and beyond! In the meantime, the 9 day School for The Work is producing thousands of new leaders in the world. Please join us in the New Year’s Cleanse and the April 9 Day School for The Work in Los Angeles, California.

The School for Leaders
February 24 – 29, 2008
Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Dearest Family,

On February 24th - 29th, 2008, Byron Katie International is extending its reach by inaugurating the School for Leaders. In collaboration with the 1492 Society for Growth and Renewal, BKI and its highly skilled staff will lead participants for five days of intensive discovery. Focusing on leadership and self-inquiry, this dynamic team will bring The Work of Byron Katie and leadership training together in a groundbreaking adventure that will shift the way you experience the world of business and change your whole life.

If you want to lead others, learn to lead yourself.
If you want to lead yourself, question your mind.

Most of us have experienced events in our lives, and specifically in our work environment, where our unquestioned mind leads us mechanically into reactions. We often do not notice our painful stories and are sitting in a cognitive prison, where we cannot see, hear, or feel what’s true. These unquestioned thoughts impede true, sustainable leadership, which is so essential in every kind of business environment, whether a small company or a large multi-national corporation.

We are living in the middle of a huge paradigm shift in business, where the traditional management schools are concentrating heavily on hierarchy, directing, and controlling. The School for Leaders focuses instead on exploring your limiting beliefs and on teaching you how to enhance the collective wisdom in you and your environment. By doing The Work at work, you will experience peace and clarity in your professional (and personal) life. This will manifest itself in greater confidence in your leadership ability, and increased creativity, productivity, decisiveness, and harmony in you and your colleagues.

True leadership is always based on non-violence and non-defense. Gandhi in his wisdom once said: “My people have changed direction; I am their leader, therefore I have to follow them.”

Can this be true for you?

This example offers you a glimpse into how much your present thinking aligns with this simple and powerful, non-violent leadership paradigm.

If you agree with the statement of the wise leader, join the School for Leaders. If you disagree, you are even more welcome to attend the School for Leaders and to notice your abilities to trust the process.

The School for Leaders offers you a journey into your limiting beliefs and the discovery of your natural ability to lead. You are invited to become skilled in doing The Work, so that your business and your life can open to a world of infinite opportunities.

I look forward to meeting you at the School for Leaders.
Gratefully, kt

P.S. Learn more about THE SCHOOL FOR LEADERS here >>

Dear Katie:

I used to be terrified of flying and I would do a really weird thing with my mind. I would practice being prepared for the plane to fall, trying to exercise bravery as I imagined how it would feel. As you may imagine, I spent the whole flight in terrified misery. Before I went to the School and met Katie, I switched my thinking: the plane is NOT going to fall, and I decided to believe this as much as the other. This helped as long as the plane did not begin to do the jig in the air.

Then, I was flying home from my second School in Bad Neuenahr, Germany, and the pilot announced very rough weather approaching Madrid. My body tensed. The first jolt hit about 20 minutes out and I could feel the fear pour into my stomach. Then, suddenly, I remembered something Katie had said and I asked myself: Is anything happening to me right now? I went to my body, felt it sitting tightly in the seat, and the answer from my body was immediately NO. I questioned: “The plane is going to fall”— IS THAT TRUE? CAN I ABSOLUTELY KNOW THAT IT IS TRUE? Again the answer was NO. I felt my body relax. I opened the window blind (it was night time), and the cosmos was there in all its splendor, the stars, flashes of lightning on the horizon, infinite sky black… it was so beautiful, so breathtaking, that all I could feel was love and gratitude. The plane continued shaking like a Waring blender, but suddenly to me it felt like a rocking cradle, I was filled with joy and so relaxed that I actually nodded off for a few minutes while the craft joggled me softly to sleep. We arrived safely in Madrid and I did NOT suffer 20 minutes of panic. It was wonderful. Thank you so much for The Work.

Love, Brianda

P.S. I have never shared with you the actual moment of my transformation, and as I read the Parlor letters, I suddenly thought that I would like to do that. I had been through so many years of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, alternative therapies, and what have you and still I wasn't happy, I wasn't satisfied, still I thought that I was missing something in life. Still searching. I found The Work, thanks to a friend; I did the School and immediately began using The Work with myself and with others that asked me for it. I realized it was working for me, I felt better, I lived better, I was softer, kinder to myself. Then one day, I can't remember why, I decided to work on one of my core beliefs about my childhood. MY PARENTS PUSHED ME ASIDE was more or less how it went (I did my work in Spanish and it is MARGINARON or marginalized me). Is that true? I closed my eyes and suddenly the following scene appeared in front of me: My parents getting up in the morning, looking at each other from either side of the bed and saying: "Today let's push Brianda aside so she suffers". I burst out laughing, it was delightful. What a comedy scene!!!! I continued to do The Work and when I got to the turnarounds, I found the pain: I PUSHED MYSELF ASIDE, oh yes, I certainly could find that when I locked myself in my room and refused to join my parents, and I PUSHED THEM ASIDE, even truer when I decided that I wouldn't share my life with them or tell them anything about me. Tears of loss welled up at all the missed opportunities to share with my parents my growing up, and love, love for them and all they had given me. And then the miracle happened. The STORY disappeared, my past vanished. There was no longer anything to be reclaimed, anything to be repaired, anything to be regretted. It was gone. I began living in the present, grateful for everything I have and have had always. Since then it has been a beautiful life, and I love sharing it with you and with others as they ask for it or come into my life.

Thank you Katie. And when people ask, I say that in my experience psychotherapy brings you to ACCEPT your story, and THE WORK makes it disappear!!! KABOOM!!!

Much love and gratitude, Brianda

Dear Friends,

My ten-year-old daughter Aine and I are still glowing from our experience at the Workshop for Children and Parents. It was such a beautiful experience for us together and individually. It is very profound how it has impacted her/our life experience, and I can see how different it is in subtle yet crucial ways to how many children in our culture (big ones too) are taught to process experience - 'rejection' being called names, 'failure', sadness, fear..... and how she was processing them in the past (me too - I just notice the new shift with her after the workshop and I have been at it for a while). The conversations we have had since the workshop are so beautiful and deep, and so much more full of curiosity and questions that set ideas. She told me that it seems more like she understands life now in a way that makes more sense to her heart, and that it is like she has been given a key to life - like she was carrying a load of rocks on her back and now there are fewer, and she knows how to put the others down when she is ready. What a relief. We are both very grateful for what we have found together in The Work and in ourselves.

I have been doing The Work myself for about five years and so the effects definitely live in my family. I had offered on occasion to share The Work more directly with Aine but she didn't want to, she said it didn't feel like time. When the invitation for the Ventura workshop came - it felt so right for both of us and we knew to come together. When I asked her if she wanted to learn The Work process before we went she said no - she wanted to just arrive with an open mind. She did, and Katie was there to meet it with hers.

Last night Aine and I were watching a documentary about a group of students in the U.S. who started a paper clip project as a way of learning about diversity and studying the Holocaust. It was her first real exposure to more that basic information about the Holocaust. It had much more detail than I had anticipated when we borrowed the movie from the library and it was very moving - with interviews with death-camp survivors speaking of their experience and pictures of the camps. I would have thought this would be overwhelming for her, and when I asked her, she reached for my hand and with tears in here eyes, said, ‘This is important for me to know.’ She wiped the tears from my eyes and said, ‘Remember, Mom, if the universe is friendly, there must be good in this also, even if we can't know what it is’. There was no fear in that moment or afterwards as I would have anticipated, no blaming, panic, hatred - just a very deep and clear sense of love. Wow.

A number of Aine's friends asked here about it, and when she told them that it is learning about how not to believe your stressful thoughts - they respond immediately and want to know how to do that. They get it that it is suffering they don't want. We are sharing our materials and what we learned as best we can and I can also feel how amazing it would be to have a DVD set on The Work for Children - speaking directly to children and sharing examples of Katie working with children, children working with each other and parents and children working together. There was something very powerful about hearing Katie speak, and witnessing other children doing the work and voicing their fears and stressful thoughts, that was profound for Aine, and I would love to be able to share that experience much more widely than those who can make it to the workshop. If something like that is possible I would be willing to help it happen in any way that I can - I can feel the amazing potential in my community and I am sure with others.

Thanks so much for all the amazing work you continue to do to share this gift with more and more people in the world and of all sizes.

Love,
Caitlin

photos: C. Pratte

photos: C. Pratte

From Facilitator of The Work, Kondwani, in Africa: The whole of last week I was doing the work with women in Malawi. Stella, in the green golf shirt has been inviting friends to read The Little Book and telling them what The Work is all about. I facilitated two women last week and they are free from their problem. One of them was abandoned by her husband 16 months ago. She is left with baby twins, about 8 months each. She was married some three years ago and now, the husband is nowhere to be found. She was telling me her story, though so sad, she doesn't have any support for the babies, and she depends on well wishers.She lives about 12 miles away and she traveled all the way just to hear about the wonder of The Work.

Some of the women don't even know how to write and read and we have been reading them the contents of The Little Book and explaining it sentence by sentence, and we do oral facilitation with them. Some do write and read and I am planning to print out some worksheets so that they practice how to fill it in and also practice asking the four questions and turning around their thought.

Learn more about Kondwani's efforts in Malawi here >>

Dearest Katie,
This is the story of how The Work came into my life.

I was sitting alone at a table waiting for my meal in a guesthouse in Lilongwe, Malawi. I had recently arrived and had six weeks of research alone in this hot country ahead of me. I didn’t want to be there, although I didn’t want to admit this even to myself. I felt afraid, anxious and lonely.

A woman walked in to the restaurant. I noticed her as she kneeled down to greet the black cat that nobody paid attention to. Then she came over to my table and asked if she can join me. I said yes, and we started talking. When I asked what she was doing in Malawi she said “Have you heard about Byron Katie and The Work?” I told her I had read the book Loving What Is but questioning my mind like that wasn’t really my
thing.

Well, all that changed and during these weeks in Malawi I started
to get a hang of it! When I got stuck, she helped me through e-mail. I was sitting under my bed net at night, writing down every stressful thought I could find. At one point I could clearly see my thoughts as they passed by, (“my body needs to recover” “home is better than Malawi”) but they were no longer MY thoughts, only thoughts passing through this mind, and oh so innocent, just wanting a little bit of understanding, loving care and attention…
I called my mom and said I had met an angel!

This is how The Work came into my life. It’s one year ago now. It’s difficult to describe what it has meant because it has really changed everything and nothing at the same time. It’s so liberating not to identify with thoughts. Life becomes simple, beautiful and friendly. Of course stressful thoughts still pay me a visit but they are like rain drops on the surface of water, and from the peaceful place under the water I can question them: Is it true that men make women suffer? It looks like that sometimes. Can I absolutely know that it’s true? No. Now that I think about it, maybe women are not suffering… How do I react when I think that thought? I feel so much anger and resentment that I want to scream and break things. Who would I be without that thought?
I’d love everyone and everyone would love me. Turn it around: Women make men suffer… well, when they try to change them everyone is suffering :-) I make me suffer. Yes, when I believe my thoughts about a cold, violent, unfriendly world then I suffer. Without them there’s peace in my heart.

With love and gratitude,
Alessandra

Laura Saavedra (a Certified Facilitator of The Work) reports from Puerto Rico about moving The Work in Latin America >>

Hola!

Yolanda Zumaeta offered workshops in Cali, Colombia last month, also in Lima, Peru after the quake. She is now back to Peru for more conferences/presentations at two Universities! She also went to Spain (Madrid) and Venezuela. I went to Madrid in 2006 and in 2007 to Madrid and Vitoria. Liliana Delgado had a workshop in Bogota, Colombia. In Spain Brianda Domecq is very active with workshops--she lives there. And a new member of our MSN The Work group, psychologist Lidia Gamboa already invited Mariana den Hollander for some more workshops in Spain! I am training Lidia via our MSN Internet group to facilitate in our group. We have 763 Spanish speaking members. Spain seems to be the most active now.

The book “Amar Lo Que Es” (Loving What Is) in Spanish is rarely available in Latin America, not even on Amazon! It is available in Spain.

Love,
Laura

Dear Katie and The Work,

My 29 year old son died November 19th of a heroin overdose. I had been doing the Work on my own the last time I saw him, ten days before he died. I picked him up to go for lunch at an Indian restaurant and saw that he looked liked maybe he was using again, but I just watched that thought and thoughts like it during my last hours with him, and was really present to his beautiful blue eyes, to his happiness over his job, his thoughts of being in a band soon, how he was going to buy his nieces and nephew Christmas presents... As the days go by after his death, I live with little guilt, no shame, and much love, loving what is.

People think I am in shock because, although I have pain and cry in it, it is not consuming nor constant. I credit The Work for that.

Thank you.

I once went to Toronto to see Katie for a few hours but have never gone to the School. I hope to do so one day. I happened to be quitting my job the hour my other son found his brother dead, so I probably won't be going to the school soon... Maybe it is not necessary, as I am living through this by doing the work on my own - I don't even have to do anything but notice my stressful thoughts and they vanish. Love is so lovely!

Debbie

Anil Coumar, MBBS, MA, is the Director of the Hall Health Mental Health Clinic at University of Washington. He is introducing The Work to his peers (read his success story about the "fear of eating" below):

Dear Colleagues,

Most of us who have personally experienced The Work would agree that it is a simple, effective method to end suffering. Many of us who have experienced the powerful effects of this inquiry are making an effort to introduce The Work to our professional colleagues, as well as to our clients. We realize there are some obstacles and challenges as we attempt to do this, and we ask for your help.

You are invited to fill out a brief online survey designed to help us learn more about how to best bring the power and simplicity of The Work into mental health settings. Your input will help us to understand the needs of, and obstacles faced by, clinicians as we design a training seminar for mental health professionals using The Work in clinical settings.

The survey will take about 20 minutes of your time. You can take the survey by clicking on this link>>

In addition to participating in the survey, we hope you will also join the online forum for mental health professionals at instituteforthework.com. This forum was created to help clinicians communicate with each other, share resources and success stories, and get help from each other as we move The Work in clinical settings. Your input is greatly appreciated.

In closing, I would like to share a success story with you. A few weeks ago, a physician referred to me a young patient of his, a woman with an intense fear of eating. After a few choking episodes, she became terrified to swallow food. If you treat people with psychosomatic problems, you may be aware that the symptoms are often resistant to psychological interventions. In the past, I would have resorted to long explorations of her history to find out the underlying psychological explanations for these symptoms. Instead, this time I gently introduced her to The Work and guided her in self-inquiry. She was able to see how her stressful thoughts (for example, "Something terrible is going to happen") caused psychological and physiological stress and led to her symptoms. She visibly relaxed in the session as she questioned her fear.

Last week, she came to the session and reported that not only is she able to eat now, she is also able to eat alone, something she has not done in a long time because of her fear of choking. And most important, she is now aware that whenever she becomes symptomatic, it is an opportunity for her to question her negative thinking patterns.

Sincerely yours,

Anil Coumar, MBBS, MA
Director, Hall Health Mental Health Clinic
University of Washington
Seattle, WA

Hi Katie,
I love The Work and have read your books. I was wondering: how does passive (and active) resistance fit into acceptance? Also, can we accept what is and focus and act on what we want to create in the future, or is that focus a form of resistance to what is?

Sincerely, B

Dearest B,

I do everything possible to end the war where I am internally, and the war around me ends immediately. Bigger things happen as a result of this—huge things. The troops in Iraq, just like all of us in the world (there is no them and us in this scenario), only have the power to do everything possible to end the war where they are. The way we end wars on this planet, our “defenses,” exactly mirror how we (the bad guy) start or create the war. This keeps us stuck and perpetually unevolved.

Let’s say, for example, a country has the thought to attack us and does attack us in order to put an end to “our” power, which they see as abusive, uncaring, and disrespectful. At this point we attack them for being abusive, uncaring, and disrespectful, and because both sides believe what they are thinking (and their thoughts are exactly the same on both sides), they are unwilling to negotiate. If we overpower them, we say that we have “won,” and we have used the same tactics and mindset that the other side used to start the war, the mindset that caused the attack. They were defending, that was the cause of their attack. We were defending, that was the cause of our attack. The ”enemy’s” mind is our own. If we believe that they shouldn’t have done it, then why can’t we see that we shouldn’t have done it? We are killing ourselves in our own belief system.

The death of our own and anyone’s son or daughter is a pretty obvious reality and yet we stay asleep. I say, “Stop errorism now!” It is internal war that must be ended if war is to end. Once the internal war ends, and therefore the external war ends, then armies will be armed with what they really want to be armed with, which is medicine, food, education, and good will and hearts that are allowed to do what they do best, armed with what is right and good. I invite all of you to find any justification for war that doesn’t mirror back the very same mindset of the “enemy.”

Thank you for the question, B, love.
xoxoxo, kt

If I see an enemy, I need to take another look, because that is my friend, not my enemy. Enemies enlighten me to myself. That makes themn friends. In the world of the personality, friends are people who agree with you... Download the audio file here >>

dear katie,
have you realised the self?
love, g

Dearest G,
No one can realize the self. And what self would that be? No one exists or can exist to realize the self without defining the self that it realized, or the self that has realized the “it” that it believes itself to be. The I-know mind that would say, “Yes, I have realized the self” is in that moment stuck in its limitedness yet again.

Look at these statements, angel, look closely, be with them in many ways and then be with them differently again, if it is peace that interests you. The “self” is just one more concept, one more identity the mind would cling to (and that’s okay). What I experience is that I’m free (until I’m not).

Love,
kt

The latest from Kathy Harris:

Dear Katie,
I just got off the phone with Antonio, who was recently paroled. The music on his cell phone was rap music with the words “It is what it is! Life is great!” He told me it’s his theme song—that it’s all about loving what is. He agreed to speak to the Rotary Club in Sausalito to tell them how The Work has changed his life. He is working at See’s Candy from 4 pm to 4 am & then goes to school to be a drug counselor and he intends to do The Work with his clients. He’s full of gratitude. He told me I’ll never know how much The Work Class has made a difference for him. The Court has agreed to his coming & giving testimony about the 17 year old who in a gang incident killed his (Antonio’s) son while he was in San Quentin taking The Work Class. The Work Class saved him from living in stories and rage. He wants this kid not to be put away for life. He wants him to have a life. He wants to be a part of stopping the anger & violence that comes from not questioning our thinking. Antonio is on fire, full of gratitude. His two case workers—Kenny, who you met at the Vet training & Ron—are both former inmates teachers at San Quentin now in Jacques’ program. They are helping Antonio with his drug counseling training & certification etc. It makes my heart sing to see this kind of support after someone leaves the prison. I said to Antonio maybe he wouldn’t be able to fit in The School with Katie in the spring because of his work & school & by then being a drug counselor. He said, “No way. I’m going to make the School happen, because it’s part of my training for working with drug counseling.”

I’m filled with joy & gratitude to see how The Work can make a difference in Antonio’s life. The first day I met him in The Work Class he sat there with his arms folded announcing he hated ignorance, judged his fellow inmates, said that life & others were making his life hell & that was the truth!!!!! To myself I’m thinking, “Oh boy, he’s going to be a lot of work.” And then he just took to The Work & I got to do my own piece of Work on judging him.

Sending love & gratitude,
Kathy

Dear Katie,

Lately I had a client who had a fight with her husband a few months ago. She saw him drunk in the car of his company and she wanted him to be home and take care of the children. It happened often that he was drunk and now she was furious and she tried to hit him with a hammer. She missed and she was arrested by the police and spent the night in jail.

She became my client and she wanted to get out of the misery. She said her husband was not likely to cooperate and come with her to me. So a few weeks ago I explained to her the Mediation (conflict resolution) exercise and she would try to explain it to him and do the exercise together. Today she came back. She told me she spent a few days to explain the exercise to him.

Constantly, as she read her worksheet, he started to interrupt her with justifications, attacks and so on. Then, after a few days, he seemed to get it and they could both read their worksheet without being interrupted. My client said her world has changed since then. Now she can openly communicate with her husband, something she couldn't do since she met him five years ago.

She feels more peaceful inside and she said people told her she has changed. "The book is open", as she put it. We can now get along. I could hardly believe her enormous shift from the hammer to this peaceful way of communicating, which she said she experienced since she did the exercise with her husband. And they did it together at home, didn't even need me, the social worker. She told me she didn't want other sessions with me for some time, as she needed time to enter her new world.

Thank you for being there Katie and offering us these beautiful exercises (and The Work of course),

in gratitude and love,

R

Dear Katie and Family,

I would like to share with you my journey through freedom.

After returning home from The School for The Work in October 07, I was driving on Interstate 95 at 6 a.m. going to work. The morning light was beginning to appear.To the left , a tractor-trailer, behind me a tractor-trailer--no problem, I drive the interstate daily. Suddenly , coming up along side of me was another tractor- trailer , speeding and out of control.

The driver overcorrected trying to get back in the lane in front of me, and the tractor-trailer jack-knifed and flipped over. Sliding on it's side on the asphalt, thick , black smoke emerged.

The sound from the metal scraping the asphalt was so consuming and loud, that it was silent. There was nothing but complete darkness.

Then it began- bright,white sparks appearing everywhere, shooting out in every direction-dancing and performing the most beautiful and welcoming light show.For me. It swiftly and graciously surrounded me as I kept driving, unable to see anything else.Life? Crossing over into death? It couldn't be any better than this. I'm going. Silence. Everything stopped.

The thick black smoke dissolved into the morning sky. I walked across the road (there was no reason to run), and came upon a man standing in the median.

I asked "Is the driver dead? Is he in there?" "No," replied the man, "I'm just fine, mam." I impulsively touched his arm with both hands. I felt warmth. I touched him again, and went on to work.

As I told my story, puzzled eyes connected with mine, trying to understand my excitement, gratitude, and freedom.

Death? No fear, none. No fear? Peace,freedom.

I noticed that there was no flash of my children, my family,my world. There was no white tunnel.

There was only living in that very moment, loving the reality, every second of it.

That evening as I was cleaning the barn, a very dear friend said, "I was late for work this morning. There was a big wreck on I-95. Held up traffic for two hours. They say two people died."
"Yes, I said, I know about that."

What a journey, Imagine that.

Thank You Katie--With love, Joanne

My granddog Zion does The Work on "The other dogs don't like me." If Zion can do it, you can do it.

Hi Katie,

It's 11:30 pm. I was just on the Community site, looking briefly at the assignments for the Candidate Teleclasses coming up. Gratitude. Then I got off the site and listened to 20 min or so of you in a recording on facilitation "Who is Teacher" where you were doing the Work with a woman. What I heard is as facilitators we are asking the 4 questions, so we can hear them. They are for us to hear, even when we apparently ask the "client" the question. I love (slowly) waking up to that I have nothing to give to somebody. Gratitude. I thought about my life, and waking up to my wife Beth, who is away visiting her daughter in Texas. I am (slowly) seeing how I have never met her, my wife. Gratitude.

I am now listening to Jai Uttal while I type this note to you, as tears of gratitude are flowing...who knows why...who cares!! You have won my heart. It's over!! Wow..even a little waking up is so delightful. Thank you again. I love bursting. I'd say, God Bless You...but I know you say "He already does", so I'll take it as my own blessing. Gratitude.

Love,
Grant

You'll remember the work Kondwani has been doing in Malawi. Here's an example of the difference he is making:

Dear Byron Katie,

My name is James Matemba. I am a man aged 49, married with 4 kids. I am a Malawian by origin. All my parents was a born in Malawi and raised here in Malawi. For the past years in my life I had no information about this thing called the work, till the time when i was imprisoned for forgery.

I was working with a reputable bank here at home and seven years ago I was found myself in a problem when two people came to me at home. The forced me to witness the check which they brought to me. The check was worth MK2,760,000U (S$20,000.00) due to the preasure I had I did what they were demanding. I was told that if I try to do anything to catch them they are going to kill me within two days. With the love of my family and myself. I risked and do what they told me. The following morning they came to the bank with cheque and they withdraw the money through my authorisation of the cheque without calling the owners of the cheque. These people promised me to give me about 10% of the money after the whole exercise is done perfect. But suprsingly they did not even share me anything till the time I was called to the prison to answer the questions on authorising the cheque without the conset of the cheque owners. The issue went to court where I was sentenced 14 years with hard labour.

While I was there and my time was just coming close to get out from the prison cell. I was released before finishing up my sentence because the suspects were prehinded and brought to book, so instead of doing the gail term of 14 years I was told to do half of the term for the allowing the thevies to still the money and because the maney was not found till now. Then A certain Man came to our prison he distributed the small books to the prisoners, we were about 60 of them on that day but the prison where I was has a capacity of 550 prisoners. Infact the prison wa suppose to hold 200 prisoners but due to the luck of space, we were forced to sleep in a small cell with no space to breath or turn around to other place. The man who came to the prison was young than me, but I took a keen interest with him for what he was saying about the work. He went on facilitate to us about our life in and out of the prison cell. I liked it, though I had no time to meet the man after his session but I knew that with the book he gave me I will get intouch with him so that he can came to my house after my sentence so that we can chart and facilitate my family epecially my wife. Our marriege was about to come to an end when I was behind the bars with lots of stories I was hearing about my wife's movement with other men. I wa so furious that I wanted to kill the wife when I got out from the prison. That was the numver problem which I had in my mind. But things turnd around with my thoughts with this man. His facilitation changed my mind, I knew that if I got home and kill the wife, I will be behind the bars again for the atire of my life then my 4 children will suffer for the whole of thier life. I was ringering on what to do then. The day came when I was released from the prison that was three days ago. And the first thing which I did was to come to terms with my family and cerebrate my coming to the house again. Then I wanted to meet this man. But the problem is I have forgeten his name he didn't left us with his contact details apart from the book I have at home. I Finished reaing the small book within a day and I came across with the web address of the Work, www.thework.com. I am here now at the internet cafe I browsed the page and find this email address of the work.

Please supply me with the address of the man in Malawi who is doing this tremendous job of changing the life of the prisoners in Malawi. I wan to work with him so that we can reach other places and prisons here in Malawi. He don't know me as well so give him my email address so that we can communicate. My life has changed completely when I red the book. I have given it to my wife so that she can read also. Please write back to me so that I be assured that you have received my email. Though I am poor now all the money which I had all was finished in paying the lawers and the children school fees. I don't have work to do now. I don't know what to do.

Help me how I can live my life to come to normal again.

Yours faithfully,
James Matemba

June 6 - 15, 2008
La Escuela para El Trabajo / The School for The Work
Miami, Florida

La Escuela para El Trabajo es distinta de cualquier otra escuela sobre la Tierra –en vez de concentrarse en aprender, te dedicarás a desaprender las historias atemorizantes que, inocentemente, te has creído. La libertad no se logra ignorando los pensamientos. La libertad es lo que tu ya eres, una vez que tus creencias limitantes han sido cuestionadas y contempladas con comprensión. ¿Quién serías sin tus historias estresantes? Asiste a la Escuela para El Trabajo con Byron Katie y descúbrelo.

On March 29, 2008 at 8 p.m., join millions of people around the world in making a statement about climate change by turning off your lights for Earth Hour, an event created by the World Wildlife Fund.

The hotline is for anyone who wants to do The Work right away, by phone or online, with a trained facilitator who has graduated from the School for The Work with Byron Katie.

There is no fee for this service.

Calling Byron Katie's Hotline:

- Hotline Facilitators respect your wish to remain anonymous if desired.
- You must call the Hotline directly. No collect calls will be accepted.
- You are free to call any one of the listed Facilitators during the hours they are available. Please respect their specified availability and do not call any other time unless you have the Facilitator's direct permission.
- If all Hotline Facilitators are busy and your phone call goes to voicemail, please leave a message with your phone number. Hotline Facilitators will do their best to respond to your call.
- When you call, be prepared with a completed Judge Your Neighbor Worksheet and/or a One-liner, or a question about doing The Work.
- The length of your call depends on a variety of factors. Our intent is to make ourselves available to as many people as possible, and we love supporting you in this way.
- If you are in immediate danger of harming yourself or others, please call 911 or contact a local mental health organization.

Hotline Facilitator's Responsibilities

- It is the Facilitator's responsibility to walk you through The Work, not to give advice or therapy.
- The Hotline Facilitator is present to work with you when your intention is to meet the Four Questions and Turnarounds with honest answers.
- If the Hotline Facilitator feels that The Work is not being done honestly, they will let you know and the session will end.

Learn more about Byron Katie's Hotline for The Work >>

Hi,
My name is Jennifer, and I found The Work while online searching for a way to "unstick" my life. I didn't quite understand at first, but then I read the book Loving What Is, and followed the counsel, I found a new person inside me. I have begun applying The Work to many areas of my life, but tonight I hit a most poignant false story that I wanted to share.

As I did The Work tonight, on underlying beliefs that were triggered by frustrations at my sister, I unearthed a powerful story inside me. I had been telling myself that I should not commit sins, when in fact I have and I do. I have been plagued in my life with anxiety and being overly careful about everything, censoring every area of my life. All of my thoughts went to picking over what I'd done and what I could do in the future that was wrong.

When I realized that it's not true that I shouldn't commit sins, my eyes were opened and I can now see. I can see that I keep God's commandments because I love him, and that fear is not necessary for me to be obedient. When I discovered this, I put down my pen and just cried, because I could feel the love that God has for me, and I could feel the love I have for him, free of fear.

I was afraid that the fear in my former story was what was saving me. But when I considered for a brief moment that it wasn't true, I realized that my love for the Savior and his love for me are what really save me each and every moment of every day, and it brought me to tears.

And it's funny because in the moment that I knew that I should commit sins, the very things that have always tempted me seemed to disappear, forever.

God bless you, and thank you,
Jennifer

We had a wonderful weekend of the Work in Tokyo. About 30 people attended, including some repeaters from previous workshops.

Much love from Nina and Ashik

I just returned home from the 2-5pm event by Byron Katie in Huntsville, AL.

I wanted to say thank you thank you thank you, Katie. I was the Mom with 3 kids that sat in the second row, my Mom was there too.

You did the Work with all three of my kids, which was just amazing. I am hoping to make the Work a habit for me and for my kids, and I do believe that what you brought out of them in terms of fears and negative thoughts, and how to turn them around... was just what my family needed to hear.

It was a great event, I learned a lot and I'm so thankful that you have made yourself available to so many. My youngest that took a picture with you is just thrilled with you Katie, you made a big impression. The papers that we did the Work on were in the car as we were traveling home, and when my other daughter tried to move them, my youngest (Brenna) wouldn't let her take them away from her, she really likes the Work! We had to do it on the way home, too.

I know you must get tired of doing this over and over again, I just wanted to thank you for the personal attention we received, and for going all over the world spreading this information. My family will continue to inquire, and I will be passing along the message for others to check out www.thework.com also... thank you!

W

Hello Family:

What a wonderful experience you all gave me! I truly enjoyed each of you and I want to thank you for sharing with me all of your struggling joy of troubles along with mine. I honestly appreciated the encounters with my CRAZY family and will embrace you and this new journey of understanding that "Its All Good"! Please continue to pour your loving hearts in my direction as I realize how supportive we are to each other with just a simple "hello".

Katie has touched my heart in a way that I have never felt before nor truly believed could exist among people who are strangers to each other. Simply put, loving what is, expresses the beauty of living! Thank you family and to the staff family and especially to Katie!!!!

I love you all dearly.

Y

As a graduate of the April School for the Work in LA, I am bursting with enthusiasm to share The Work. I had the opportunity last weekend to give a 40 minute introduction to 120 women gathered for the national convention (16th anniversary) of the Women's Federation for World Peace, of which I'm a district leader.

The title of the convention, held in NJ, was "Securing Peace Through a Culture of Heart". I'm grateful to that organization for building my presentation into the program. Even in those few minutes, many of the women told me they could see how "awesome" the Work can be.

My presentation on The Work went like this:

- A few words on how The Work is a revolutionary process.
- We listened to a beautiful love song.
- All filled out Judge Your Neighbor Worksheets, which each woman read to a partner.
- The "I Know Mind", the "Heart Mind", and how the questions are an invitation for the heart to answer (I love that part!)
- How to isolate a thought.
- As a group, the audience answered the 4 questions around the one-liner "people should listen to me".
- Demonstration of facilitation with an audience member asking me the 4 questions.
- Partners facilitated each other, using the little yellow cards.
- Audience commented how they found the inquiry experience to be "calming, empowering, etc."
- Gave information about the website, books, other resources.

I'm so happy to have been able to share this gift, and my hope is that many of the women will learn to enjoy the amazing benefits of The Work. I'm attaching a few pictures. Thank you, Katie!

G

The Work doesn’t help anyone; it’s your answers that help you.

Dear Katie:

As I came back form the School in April I started to have fearful thoughts about my body, not at all like me before, so I began to see "dangerous moles"and had them checked, then I went to see another the Doctor who said he felt my heart energy low and I should go to see a cardiologist, in the meantime I watched my mind and I new something deeper was moving on without having any clue what it was about.

Then one morning I found myself lecturing my husband about how hard his silence was for me, as I thought I had finished and went to get ready start my day and got into the shower a thought came to me: "Oh, my husbands silence is killing me!" - then a quick turnaround hit me, "my silence is killing me?" with a big question mark attached to it because I talk a lot, then like if I had been hit by thunderbolt I saw that I have never ever been able to express to anyone my fears, needs or desires or to ask for anything at all.

How true it was that my silence was killing me! and I saw how I had used my body as a shield to protect that deep silence, going to the extreme of willing to sacrifice it before opening up, so I have had threatening health issues in the past. All of this happened at the speed of light without even doing the JYNWS.

Needless to say that I spent the rest of the day overtaken by the clarity of my mind and the true power of The Work. All my secretly hidden capacity to love is out to the world now.

God bless you Katie you are truly a gift to the World! All my love to you,

E.

As Friday now begins, this will be my fifth day living here in the county of Humboldt. I feel so many lessons waiting for me here, so many stones unturned, so many teachers fast approaching. I love to notice how full of myself, how self-righteous, and how quick to judgment I am. It is so exciting to see how much work I still have to do. It fills me up with bursts of enthusiasm, as I reflect on anything in the day that felt like velcro in my body, any stressful thoughts that did not pass with ease, but instead stuck inside me and became hard. I had such a beautiful facilitation by my new friend D today. My stressful thought was "I don't fit in". I quickly came to realize it was my thinking that did not fit in here. It was my thinking that was creating all of the separation I was seeing. There is no separation until I believe it. Believing the thought I don't fit in makes me focus on where you and I are different. It only makes me want to see more ways that I can justify this belief that I indeed, do not fit in. That you are not like me, and that I am better. It's become such a game, between me, myself, and I. When I hear the thought swell up inside me "I'm better than you, or, I know more, or I'm on such a higher level" I meet it with giggles of joy. I now actually enjoy kicking myself off my own pedestal, it's become so impersonal. Somewhere along the path of committing to self-realization, it became self-enjoyment, and now there is no part of my mind I do not enjoy.

I am so appreciative for this continued commitment of inquiry with ongoing partners. I was quite resistant at first because I believed I didn't need it. I have had to sit with myself literally for an hour or more at a time to try and find one thought that was causing me stress before calling my partner. Sometimes I can't locate one at all. And I find that those are the days that inquiry is just simply fun and when the call ends I feel happy to have connected with someone from the school. And then there are days, like today, when I needed that call. I was feeling alone, isolated, and out of place here in my new place of residence. I got to talk it out with someone who uses the same language, someone who knew the work, someone who could just hold the space for me, ask the simple questions, and listen. It is priceless.

I've come to realize that I don't need The Work every day. I go days on end without a single stressful thought. And then something pops up and I discover a new stone, or an ancient stone, that hasn't full turned over and cleaned itself off yet. Those are the days that I go straight to inquiry and fall in love again, and again, and again. I can no longer locate a time I am not falling in love, whether it is with living without stressful thoughts, or living with a stressful thought and then asking it four simple questions and turning it around.

Dear Katie

This is what happened to me after the certification workshop.

In the process of taken care of myself, I went to a mammography just for prevention purpose. On this particular day there was a very senior doctor instead of the usual staff. He immediately discovered very, tiny small changed and send me to the major hospital in Denmark for continual treatment. In these days there were strikes of the nurses in Denmark, so the hospital was on very low drive and my scheduled time was cancelled. A senior doctor took event and called me and said I had to come anyway. I was called in and had taken a biopsy by a very, very skilled doctor. I got the results a week later and it was cancer and they wanted to operate me as soon as possible – strike or not.

13 days later I came to the hospital and L, my friend from the work was waiting for me at the entrance, and All the busses were stopping and people would get out an in. She were her usual cap so it was just like meeting her in front of the crown plaza hotel in Los Angeles before school starts – amazing.
The operation next day was absolutely amazing – so full of love that I was overwhelmed. They had to put some needles in before the operation to be sure to pick out the right spot (to remove) and I almost fainted of pain and it was pure love. So many people offered there help and care and support- so I had this picture of an anthill. When you put a stick in there all the ants work together to repair the damage. How deeply we are connected (this is from someone who did not as far as she knows have that experience as a child).

Everything looked normal at the operation also the lymph nodes. And I am waiting for the final results from microscopy next week.

Amazing how this cancer- or what ever it is – I don’t know – has already given me the experience of love – that there is nothing else than that and how deeply we are connected in this –what ever it is.

In deeply gratitude Katie for what I have received from you.

Yours always,

P

I visited my dermatologist last Friday for a skin check-up. After checking my back he noticed a little blue lump on my chest. It has been there for quite some time but it had never bothered me so I've never had it checked out. He suggested it might be a basal cell carcinoma, which I know are not dangerous and do not metastasize but he suggested we biopsy it. I agreed. He told me not to worry. This meant- "don't worry." Nevertheless, I went home feeling a very slight anxiety which continued into Sunday when it blossomed into a really uncomfortable feeling of depression.

I began three separate "One belief at a time" worksheets with different titles. One that I was particularly fond of I titled- I am not a lover of what is. In each one I included a pretty fulsome of what I everything I was experiencing. It was all embarrassingly like all the things I'd previously written about others when I judge my neighbors. Curiously, when I got to the turnaround portion, I didn't couldn't come up with anything I believed.

My daughter was becoming annoyed with me and my wife was becoming slightly alarmed. I rather dramatically informed her that I thought something was amiss with my brain chemistry and perhaps I needed medication. She wisely rejected this suggestion as well, idiotic. She asked me if this had anything to do with my doctor's appointment and I denied that it did.

Full of unnamed dread, I called for my biopsy results but, luckily, they weren't ready. After a couple of anxious hours the unexamined and unacknowledged belief popped into my head- "a biopsy means something really bad is going on." Then, the turnaround was obvious. I was imagining a carefree life pre-cancerous diagnosis as opposed to the dread filled after my diagnosis. I had been play acting a little pre-dread dread. It was actually pretty dreadful. Nonetheless, I look forward to another experience of fearing for my health. It was instructive.

M

Kondwani keeps The Work moving in Malawi. More about The Work in Malawi here and here >>

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We are thrilled to announce that a new book will be appearing on October 15.

It's called Who Would You Be Without Your Story?: Dialogues with Byron Katie, and you can pre-order it now.

A while back a friend sent me the following quote, from the Indian Buddhist teacher Aryadeva. He wrote this almost 1900 years ago:

"To question that things might not be as they seem can shake the very foundation of habitual clinging. This questioning spirit is the starting point for self-reflection. Could it be that this tightly-knit sense of self is not what it seems? Do we really need to hold everything together, and can we? Is there life beyond self-importance? These kinds of questions open the door to investigating the cause of our suffering.

"Self-reflection is the common thread that runs through all traditions and lineages of Buddhist practice. It also takes us beyond the boundaries of formal practice. We can bring the questioning spirit of self-reflection to any situation, at any time. Self-reflection is an attitude, an approach, and a practice. In nutshell, it is a way to make practice come alive for us personally."

Interesting. The old is new, and the new old.

Back to the present. The phone rings.

I say yes or no.

There are not many ways to directly answer people's questions.

And as these answers flow out of what's true for me in this moment, out of this pure power within me, the world is shaped on the other side of the phone, mind is influenced, interpretations form, life moves this way or that as effect, it seems. How else could the world be created?

They say, "It's your fault," and I think, "Isn't it odd that after the fact they would hear a yes or a no in such a way?"

Or they say, "Thank you, thank you thank you," and I think, "Isn't it odd that such power is given to such simple answers, yes or no?"

The world is created as I sit here, it springs into being and is mirrored back to me as life. It's wonderful not to be the doer.

Everything is a story. The mind spins stories out and you believe what the mind tells you. Every time you are stressed out or fearful, you are believing what the mind is telling you. The Work is about discovering what is true and what is not true for you, the difference between reality and imagination.

I'm thrilled to be in Europe again this summer. This may be my last visit for a while. The body says "slow down" and mind says "keep going until everyone in the world has The Work."

Since I don't know when I will return to Europe, this trip is especially dear to me, and I would love to see as many of you as possible in two of my favorite cities, at two day-long public events:

Also: the nine-day School for The Work in Bad Neuenahr, Germany, July 25-August 3, will have real-time German translation. We have a new translating system, which allows the translation to happen simultaneously as I speak, with no delay (German speakers wear headsets). So they can do The Work with me in real time! We tested it in Spanish at the Miami School, and it was seamless.

Registration is open, and I would love to see many many of you come to School for the shift of a lifetime!

Dear Byron Katie,

This might be old news for you, but I found that two groundbreaking Stanford University pain syndrome experts consider Byron Katie's approach the best form of Cognitive Therapy.

In the new Revised 5th Edition of A Headache in the Pelvis (pp.326-330), that came out in May 2008, Stanford psychologist David Wise Ph.D. and neurourologist Rodney Anderson, M.D. refer to Albert Ellis' Rational-Emotive Therapy and Aaron Beck's Cognitive Therapy and then write (in their italics):

"The best form of Cognitive Therapy is, in our opinion, is offered in the work of Byron Katie who provides an approach to disarming catastrophic thinking by means of a process that one can do oneself. This is the approach that we recommend."

They then describe the procedure adding: "Our description of this process is rarely sufficient to become proficient at it. We discuss this method in our monthly 6-day clinics. Information specifically about this cognitive therapy work can be found at www.thework.org and the books of Byron Katie."

Wise and Anderson are practical "in the trenches" therapists who work daily with severe pelvic pain and other chronic syndromes . They recommended Byron Katie's method already in the 4th edition of the book (pp. 298-301).

I am happy to tell that my friend Ms. Essi Tolonen will be able to make true her long-held dream -- Essi will attend the 2008 School in Germany in two weeks. Many people here in Finland are already eagerly waiting for what she will tell us about the School.

All the best to you and your wonderful work

J. V.
Helsinki, Finland

Dear Katie,

I feel that I have created a shift in our dynamic that opens the door to healing for myself and for our family. I am grateful to myself for my persistence in seeking healing. I am grateful to you Katie for presenting TW in such an accessible way (I did in eight months what I had not been able to do in 30 years of various therapies and medications). I am eternally grateful to Charlotte for shepherding us through the work in the specific arena of Divorce and I am grateful to all of my classmates. I believe that our collective effort of doing TW contributes to the foundation that supports our growth and that the work will keep working in seen and unseen ways. Thank you.

5/02/08
Dear T,

When we were married I wasn’t able to find or acknowledge very much appreciation within me for anything, including you. In our 25+ years together I don’t believe I ever fully present with you and I don’t believe that I ever really truly saw you. There times when I came a little bit close
like when I watched you ski. Those were rare moments when I did not judge you. I felt love, I saw beauty and I really admired you.

I would like to express what I appreciate about you.

I appreciate that you made our children your first priority. I appreciate that you spent a lot of your time serving them like driving J to her horses, and cooking meals for all of us, doing research on a multitude of things and just being around for us and for me.

I appreciate your ability to see what is good in others, especially our children. You shared with me your wisdom in letting our children take risks, find their own answers and your wisdom in knowing they didn’t need punishment when they did things that hurt themselves or others.

I appreciate that you manage money well so that you could offer us not only security and stability but also many enriching opportunities like travel, private schools, horses, summers at the ranch. You willingly and freely gave me time away to pursue my interests and I thank you for that.

I appreciate your gentle nature, your desire to be helpful and your generosity in sharing your time and attention with me, our children, and others. I appreciate your loyalty during our marriage.

I appreciate that you did the best you knew how to make me happy and your willingness to go to counseling with me and try to make our marriage succeed.

I appreciate your patience and tolerance and your impressive ability to not hold onto grudges.

T, you have given me many gifts.

First and most important are our 3 perfect, wonderful and beautiful children X, Y, and Z.

You also gave me Freedom to explore and develop my interests and you have given me financial security before, during and after our marriage.

For these things I am forever grateful.

Recently I participated in an exercise that centered on someone we admired.

I admire you and I did that exercise with you in mind.

What I see and admire in you is:
Generosity, Willingness, Gentleness, Loyalty, Caring and Patience

T, during our marriage I did many things that hurt you.

I expected you to be competent in many ways and I held it against you and I was cold and critical of you when you didn’t meet my expectations.

I insinuated many times that you and what you were doing was not good enough and that you should change and I withheld love and affection when you didn’t understand and agree with me.

There were times when I didn’t act like a partner in our marriage like when I made decisions about things that affected both of us without consulting you.

There were times when I wanted you to do for me what I had a hard time doing myself like reaching out to others and being involved in the larger community.

I often ignored your attempts to reach out physically to me and I judged your efforts to be not enough. I had an affair and didn’t care how you felt and I left and didn’t care how you felt.

During our marriage I put a lot of pressure on you to change.

I didn't listen to you when you told me that you were content and didn't want to change. In equal measure, I put pressure on myself to change and pressure on our children to change. I was very hard on all of us and I didn't listen when you told me that.

When I carried the belief that I and or you needed to change, I put a great deal of attention on how I or you hadn't changed and I constantly pushed myself and you. I focused on what was missing in my life and in you. I compared me and you to others.

What I imagine that it cost you is many years of not receiving affection, collaboration, and support and not being given the opportunity to feel the joy of your partner receiving your affection and support.

It cost our children the opportunity to experience the unconditional love and support of their mother and many years of living in a stressful demanding environment.

It cost me the ability to see, experience and support your strengths and to know you. It cost me the opportunities to receive your love and caring. It cost me the experience of my own self-acceptance and the experience of giving unconditional love. It cost me my confidence and joy as a mother.

I had a motive for not listening and for continually pushing for change. My motive was fear. I had fears that I needed to do things right or others would judge me, reject me, leave me and not take me seriously. I was afraid of forever feeling fearful, alone and isolated. And I was fearful that our children would feel the isolation and pain that I felt in my life.

By extension, I believed you needed to do things right or I would be judged and left by others. And I see that when I believed you weren't doing it right, I judged, rejected, and left you in my mind and did not take you seriously. I equated your worth with what you did and how you did it.

I put you out of my heart. I equated my worth with what I did and how I did it. I put me out of my heart.

Again, in my experience, this cost you my love, affection, support, harmony, companionship and connection. It also cost me my love, affection, harmony, support, companionship and connection both to myself and to you.

I experienced it as causing separation, heaviness and stress in our family.

I am sorry that I didn't listen to you and that I put unachievable expectations on you and blamed you when you did not meet my expectations.

For the many times and the many years that I treated you unkindly I am sincerely sorry. If there are things that I did that hurt you and that you would like me to know about or acknowledge I am ready to listen and I would like to hear them.

I am profoundly sorry for the stress I have caused you and our children and am willing to do what ever I can to make it right.

I welcome your ideas. In the mean time I am committed to living my life differently than I did in the past. The ways that I have identified include:

1. To notice when I have the thought that someone else, particularly you or our children, should do or be in any particular way and then look at how I can be or do it myself. My goal is to never tell another person what they should be or do or how they should think or act and if I do to notice and make amends as quickly as possible.

2. Another way is to stop blaming anyone or anything for how I feel or experience life.

3. Also, when I notice that someone has contributed toward my wellbeing that I will acknowledge them verbally or in writing as soon as possible.

If you ever feel that I am blaming you, accusing you or criticizing you I ask that you point it out to me because I am sincerely working on not seeing you or anyone as my opponent or enemy.

T, I am grateful to you. I am grateful that you are the father of my children, You are a gem and I love you.

Love, C

Our goal is to get The Work out to everyone in a way which is simple, easy to use, and helpful.

Now anyone can Do The Work anytime, anywhere.

A special thanks to Doron and Shiri of Coaching Interactive for making this happen.

Hello,

I want to express my deep gratitude for the work of The Work, as I experienced it this morning, Sunday, August 10, 2008, through the Hotline.

Sonya (I apologize if I've misspelled her name) worked with me for over an hour. She was clear, patient, relaxed, and quite unexpectedly at the end, shared a bit of the impact that the work she made possible for me to do for myself, had on her. This is a gift, and I am grateful.

The experience is remarkable. I feel mentally and emotionally clearer, calm, cheerful, and lighter--to the point of being able to laugh, relaxed and at ease. She facilitated work, clarity, release about a specific problem; the clarity and relief seem to have generalized, quickly. Though we did not address this directly, I am also experiencing a decrease in the intensity of physical pain I'm in, and emotional relaxation about it and whatever my be the problem.

Sonya was direct, clear, patient, encouraging, thorough, caring. She shared her own laughter and tears.

What a amazing and healing experience.

Heartfelt thanks for Sonya and Katie's Work from

J.A.

Listen in to Oprah and Friends Radio>>

August 2008
08/11/08 Suffering and Solitude
Why is it that a prisoner, locked away for his crime and left alone in his cell may weep, when a Buddhist Monk alone in the same cell would celebrate? Oprah talks with spiritual teacher Byron Katie, about the pain and suffering one can face when left alone with their thoughts. Plus, they talk about how you can be at peace with your thoughts and end your own suffering.

08/04/08 Learning 'The Work'
Are you ready to learn how to make the most of your life right now? Spiritual leader and author Byron Katie returns to talk with Oprah about the steps of Byron's revolutionary and transformative process called "The Work" and about her book Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life.

July 2008
07/28/08 Ending Your Suffering
Are you ready to end your suffering? According to spiritual teacher and best-selling author Byron Katie, happiness is within your reach. Oprah talks with Byron about her inquiry process called "The Work," which she says alleviates depression, decreases stress and improves relationships—all by answering four powerful questions that will turn your life around.

You can watch KT and Oprah on video here >>

From the Times of India, Rashmi Uday Singh gives us an account of her gastronomic experience with The School for The Work:

Despite heavy rain, a lovely group got to Cerro Punta, the highest peak in Puerto Rico, for The Work of Byron Katie's workshop in August 2008. It was offered by certified facilitator Laura Saavedra and three participants of the recent School in Miami - Daiana Serralles and Leslie and Jose Flores.

Learn more about The Work in Spanish>>

Dear Katie,
Do you participate in the political elections? Do you vote? I don’t want to know who you vote for, or what party you might be affiliated with, I’m just wondering if you vote.
Jane

Dearest Jane,
Absolutely. I love to vote! I take in as much television, radio, and magazine, newspapers as I possibly can, and all that information goes into me, synthesizes, and I vote with what comes out of all of that. I read and listen with this wonderful, open, don’t-know mind and then notice the choice. What could be more exciting than watching that choice, on time, in the voting booth!
Love,
kt

Dear Katie,

I've been in Mexico for the past 13 days and we've given 3 workshops of The Work ever since. One in the city of Puebla and two in the city of Cuernavaca. This weekend we are giving another two day workshop here in Puebla.

It has been beautiful!

One story in particular I wanted to tell you about is the story of M, a psychologist who was very interested in The Work. She came to our first workshop because she had been suffering from pain in her face and head for 16 years. She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and much later was told it was the wrong diagnosis. She took anti-depressants for 15 years, and came to the workshop "desperate."

In the first day of the workshop, participants went home with a homework of doing a 'self facilitation worksheet' on a thought. On the second day they return to talk about their experience of doing The Work by themselves. M shared that the night before as she did her Work on herself, she found that she has been frustrated for 20 years because she didn't marry the man she loved and married another man instead. Amazed at what she discovered, she told us that, for the first time in 16 years, she didn't wake up with pain and was filled with joy. Even her face was completely transformed. She never thought she could find a tool that could free her from her pain and she was relieved to learn that didn't need a specialist to "fix" her.

I talked with M today and her pain has been gone ever since.

Big hug to you,
Mari

Mariana den Hollander is a certified facilitator of The Work

I’m currently a facilitator for a Coping Skills program for the Segregation inmates here at WCI a maximum-security prison. We currently do an 8-week group of 5 Segregation inmates. At WCI we focus on education and treatment to try and help inmates succeed in CP and stay out of Seg. I was introduced to a tape of The Work and thought it would greatly enhance the current training we offer. Once we viewed the video and tried it out in our current group we were hooked. The inmates were very excited about the group discussion brought about by The Work video and work sheet homework assignment.

I believe that getting properly trained in The Work will enable me to better serve the people I work with. I think that with all of the background knowledge and training that I’d be better able to present this material to the people that need it most. I was so excited once I saw the video I went directly to my supervisor and told him of all the potential I saw in this program.

- KB
A scholarship applicant for the 9-day School for The Work

Dear Katie,

Robert

Dearest Robert,

Politicians say many things to get elected. I would ask you to question their statements. One way to find out is to visit a site like factcheck.org. Both campaigns have referenced the site at various times, and it is interesting to learn what the truth is, according to factcheck. I have been told that the site is nonpartisan. If it feels right, take a look. And have you noticed the negative McCain and Obama within you?

And if you think that one of the candidates is causing you stress, I invite you to do a Worksheet on him or her. In reality no politician—no one outside you—can cause your stress. The only thing that can do that is an unquestioned thought. So write all those thoughts on paper and don’t hold back. “I don’t trust Obama because he’s too young.” “I don’t trust McCain because he’s too old.” Question them, see how you react when you believe them, see who you are without them, turn them around, find examples, and notice, are you more informed about what really matters? That is the way to a clear, peaceful mind that can make sensible choices that affect us all.

Love always,
kt

Dearest Katie,

My 25 year old daughter is in prison in California at CIW-California Institution for Women - just south of Ontario. This is my story and my request.

I am so grateful for The Work. The Work came to me in April of 2007. I came to The School that June in Trumbull and then again that October 07 in LA. I flew back to the Bay Area (I have moved to Nevada) to see my daughter in September 2007. She has been involved in meth addiction for the past 10 years and doesn't make contact very often. I was able to get in touch with her and we had the most amazing time. She wanted to know what I was doing because I was so different and she wanted to spend more time with me. She loved what I told her about you and The Work. I shared this with you that first night at the school in LA. You said she sounded like someone who really wanted to know the truth. She does!!

So then she went off on her way and got in more trouble and was arrested Feb 08. When she wrote to me she asked if I would help her understand why she kept living this destructive lifestyle, so I sent her your books- Loving What Is and I Need Your Love. Her response was pure amazement and joy.

I will share a few things with you here that she wrote to me while reading the books:

"Mom, this is so awesome-without all the f-ed up thoughts I can be without anxiety."

"Since reading Katie she's taught me not to let it mess up my train of thought
or f- me up in the head & get me angry."

"Mom, I've had to do a lot of The Work from Katie's book on our last phone call but it worked. I feel so much more connected to you and to myself. The miracle of Katie I found is my thinking pattern changes even before a bunch of The Work is done on paper. I finished Loving What Is and started I Need Your Love yesterday. In Loving What Is on page 203 I did the 6 page exercise and oh my goodness was it intense. I still have The Work to reflect on. 'Doing time' is a whole different experience than the first time. The other women in here are miserable and I choose to feel my feelings and rid myself of nasty thoughts. The first book really showed me how you can overcome anything bad that's happened to you. The pages toward the end were super deep with 9/11, Mom didn't stop the incest, and the one on the daughter's addiction. Mom, I love my mind, body and spirit. I must learn to forgive myself."

"So it's like this-I'm really loving the Katie books. This is so amazing--so worries aren't real they are like leaves in the wind and like raindrops. 'Why argue with a raindrop?' What has me in shock is that I can live in complete happiness and be okay just as I am. Mom, the past two days of reading I already feel like a weight lifted, the stress lifted. So I am really understanding the not being attached to our thoughts. It's cool Mom. I love it."

Then she related another story and said: "What I did was without even noticing at first, I felt the thought and then I turned it around and laughed realizing that I don't have to feel that thought and how happy I could be without it. Mom, this Rocks!"

I love that she is loving The Work!!

My daughter was incarcerated Feb 11 in San Mateo County Jail and remained there several weeks. She was then sent to Valley State in Chowchilla- where everyone goes and most stay. It's a maximum security prison and none of women's prisons are segregated by crime level or race or gangs like the men's are. A got to experience several things here for 10 weeks. Then she was transferred to CIW women's prison and has just entered the SAP drug treatment program there this week.

I got to visit her for the first time in prison at CIW at the end of August. We had a glorious visit-Fri-Sat-Sun for several hours each day in a crowed noisy room. We were so connected. We did The Work together. It was wonderful. I will get to visit her again Oct 31-Nov 3 only this time we get to stay together 24/7 in the family housing unit-a prison slumber party!! We have a 2 bedroom apartment for the weekend and they have a CD player. She wants me to bring all of your CDs and lots of blank worksheets!!

She is also loving Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and A New Earth. She has done all the workbook assignments and sent them to me. She is just so ready and eager to begin again. She choose to go into the drug program as opposed to Fire Camp, where she was also accepted, because she realized even though it was a really "cool" thing to do and she got out of prison to train, be at camp, and then would be released 4 months early from her sentence--that after all of that it would have left her in the same space-dealing with her addiction and being out again-without having addressed her issues. So she opted for drug treatment, full sentence, and requested an additional 5 month residential treatment program after her release date of July 2 09, -so she will be complete Dec 2, 09. She stays at CIW until March 09 and then goes to one of the Drug Treatment Facilities until July 2. Then to another location for the residential program. She wants to come to your School and the Turnaround House, too!

My daughter just keeps teaching me. She is my greatest teacher. I really feel moved to enter your Facilitator Training program. I am completing an intensive horticulture training right now, ending in November, I am hoping to work with other Master Gardeners here in Nevada with the prison landscape training programs and establish gardens for the inmates. Then, hopefully after being accepted and completing my Facilitator Training with BKI, I would love to be able to take The Work to the jails and prisons here as well.

I am doing The Work and doing my best to look at all my stuff around this whole situation. I feel I am pretty clear that whatever she does when she gets out is her business. (0K----I do have a wish list!! I want her to come home and have another chance at the life she says she wants). I am just so grateful to have my daughter back for whatever period of time that may be. Since she asked for my help and support and since she is so loving The Work, I of course want her to have all the support possible in understanding how to do The Work and discovering what she was believing that kept her going back to the meth use and this lifestyle. She has told me that she wants to start a new beautiful life free of this addiction.

Much Love and Gratitude,

M
P.S. My daughter is now reading A 1000 Names for Joy and I am sending her Stephen's Tao Te Ching and the book A Million Little Pieces.

(an excerpt from Loving What Is)

I’ve never seen a work or money problem that didn’t turn out to be a thinking problem. I used to believe that I needed money to be happy. Even when I had a lot, I was often sick with the fear that something terrible would happen and I would lose it. I realize now that no amount of money is worth that kind of stress.

If you live with the uninvestigated thought “I need my money to be safe and secure,” you’re living in a hopeless state of mind. Banks fail. Stock markets crash. Currencies deflate. People lie, bend contracts, and break their promises. In this confused state of mind, you can make millions of dollars and still be insecure and unhappy.

Some people believe that fear and stress are what motivate them to make money. But can you really know that that’s true? Can you be absolutely certain that without fear or stress as a motivator, you wouldn’t have made the same money, or even more? “I need fear and stress to motivate me” — who would you be if you never believed that story again?

After I found The Work inside myself — after it found me — I began to notice that I always had the perfect amount of money for me right now, even when I had little or none. Happiness is a clear mind. A clear and sane mind knows how to live, how to work, what e-mails to send, what phone calls to make, and what to do to create what it wants without fear.

Who would you be without the thought “I need my money to be safe”?

You might be a lot easier to be with. You might even begin to notice the laws of generosity, the laws of letting money go out fearlessly and come back fearlessly. You don’t ever need more money than you have. When you understand this, you begin to realize that you already have all the security you wanted money to give you in the first place. It’s a lot easier to make money from this position.

More resources:

- Video: Inquiry - "You Need More Money—Is that True?"
- Video: Inquiry - "I Panic About Losing Money..."
- Video: "I need to give my son money" [Israel 2007]
- Book: Byron Katie on Work and Money

Hi Katie,

Just wanted to thank you for The Work! It is truly amazing at shifting one's beliefs and allowing healing to happen!

I stumbled onto your website some time ago, and bookmarked it, thinking: "I might try this at some point."

Well, my Dad passed away a few weeks ago, and I've been having a very rough go of it since. My Mom passed away many years ago, so it stirred up stuff around her too.

Anyhow...before my Dad passed away, I had been struggling with this novel concept of looking after ME. I did some things to help me, and in the course of it, have gotten others very angry with me. So tonight, I found your website again, and printed off the worksheet with instructions. Then I happened to see your videos...and clicked on the one about 'Father'. Wow! As you were talking to the gentleman on the video, I was Working thru my stuff...and I cannot believe how much better I feel already! By the way, my issue was the same!

My Work is far from done, but I feel the shift already and am very excited about this 'new' knowledge I have of myself!

I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart!

J.

Dear Katie,

Jeremy

Dear Jeremy,

Keep questioning your mind, sweetheart. Know the difference between your business and our business, and stay in your business. And who knows? You may end up on November 4th in the voting booth, happy and free, knowing that you are doing what you can do.

Loving you,

kt

MP3 download here >>

Dear Dear Katie,

How are you? I want to share some things with you:

In the last month there are so many challenges on my path: I “lost” a lot of money because of the credit crisis. It is about ¾ of the money I had, so there is almost no money left. When I replace the concept money with the concept love, and when I do the turnarounds on all the concepts I have about “loosing money," I feel very creative, alive, strong and free.

Also with my health: Again the doctors probably found some cancer cells in my breast. And when I heard it first I started to cry, but then, that same evening, did The Work, and I experienced a complete other person: loving, strong, caring. Without the cancer story I feel so grateful. Life goes on. Also, at the hospital when they did an examination that same afternoon, I could bear it as I did The Work on “this is my body." Turning that around I came to “this is not my body," and wow is that true!? It is none of my business, certainly not when the doctor is doing the examination-- I could concentrate and relax with no more stories about terrible treatments.

Thanks to this Work, I can deal with all of these challenges. I can trust that what I need now is what I have. This is what the credit crisis is teaching me and giving me.

Every evening I go to bed with the MP3 player with the Mental Cleanse on it (what a brilliant idea!). I listen to the clarity of The Work and of you, and I fall asleep in peace-- peace is what I want in this lifetime, and there is a lot of work to do. I am very happy and starting to get balanced. I am so grateful that I could be a staff member this summer in Bad Neuenahr. I did not speak to you personally then, but I breathed in and out the wonderful, peaceful, clear atmosphere of the School. Everything so well organized, always someone to talk to and to ask a question, always availability. And from me, it just came out of me, without having to do so much. Just gratitude. Being able to experience it.

On my knees, thanking you and me for this gift of life.

Dear Katie, embracing you with love,

M

Dear Katie,
I am so pleased to know you . i am lily from China. and i just read some translation in Chinese of your articles on some blogs.

I love to read those words and the dialogues. and i even read them everyday. when i read any paragraph anytime, i will feel happy, peaceful, and joyful. and one day, i have some suggestions for my mom. but my mom gets angry after she hear my thoughts and suggestions. I feel angry and little lost , because i think my suggestions are the best for her. my mom still think she is what she react. she would never change. then we stopped talking. at that moment, i get a pen , write down my thoughts,---those stressful thoughts, make my mom and me both unhappy. they are:
she shouldn't care other's business?
she shouldn't behave so smart?
she should not like to please people.
she should not expect other people saying that she is a kind and nice person.
because she must be unhappy and sad or angry if somebody she cared says she is bad or not good.
she is afraid of people not approval.
she works hard on approval, so when she works too much , and there's still somebody do not like her, or just saying she is bad. she will be unhappy and sad.

...........
wow, i just use the questions, and turnarounds. i found that oh my god, who am i talking about? it is me.
yes, that was me indeed. i actually act like her. no wonder there's a saying , every person will be a teacher, and a mirror. we can see the real ourselves in the reality.

when i don't believe those thoughts, i will be happy when with my mom.

thank you so much, katie. love you so much.!
God bless you and us both!
sincerely yours
Lily from China

Here's a letter from someone in Texas:

Dear Katie,

love, J

Dear J,

Let’s start with you offering your friends the one-liner “Obama is going to take away our guns—is that true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true?” Etc. But only if they are open to it.

And for your sake, I invite you to personally work with “Obama is going to take away our guns” and see what it might be like to walk in your friends’ minds, world, and internal life and fears. I invite you to look at taking away the gun that you are aiming at your friends, the judgments that you are shooting at them inside you. Also, try working with “There is something wrong with these people,” “They need to wake up,” “I need to do something to change them,” and “They are not decent people when it comes to politics.” For now, let’s look at “These friends of mine are narrow-minded and racist.”

Is this true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true that your friends are narrow-minded and racist? Notice that your mind wants to defend your position, to justify, to show proof of why it is true. Notice this and return to a simple yes or a no. Commit to one answer or the other. The Work stops working the moment your mind moves away from the questions and into its old pattern of justification and defense, winning and losing. Just notice these tendencies and continue to answer the questions. Give them a respectful amount of time; you are worth it. There is wisdom beneath the the surface answers, there are answers that are pure gold to you, and they offer freedom that you cannot imagine. When you have given the first two questions plenty of time and answered them, please gently move to the third question.

How do you react when you believe the thought “My friends are narrow-minded and racist”? Do you feel sick to your stomach, disgusted, sad, even frightened for them? For you? Do you see images of them using the guns? Notice how you react when you believe that thought. Do you see yourself as superior to them? How do you treat yourself when you believe this thought, how do you treat them? Give this question some time, be still with it for a while.

Who would you be without the thought “My friends are narrow-minded and racist”? Would you be less frightened, less separated from them, lighter, easier of mind, less judgmental? Would you be happier thinking of and being with your friends, a closer listener, really hearing their minds, hearts, and fears without separating yourself from them?

Now turn it around. Are you being narrow-minded, sweetheart? Have you ever experienced yourself as racist, even a tiny bit? Have you been prejudiced against prejudiced people? Are you seeing these friends of yours as less enlightened than you, less rational, less wise, less open?

Another turnaround: My friends are open-minded and (what is the opposite of”racist”?) open-hearted. Let’s try that one. Where have these friends been more open to you than you were to them? To yourself? How narrow-minded are you when it comes to self-judgments? Where are these friends more open in other areas in life than you are? Find at least three examples of each turnaround, and continue with the next turnaround, and/or begin to work with another judgment that you are holding on to. Because until you do, you are the cause of the separation that is happening in the human race and that separation in the world is what you are putting out there, it is what you teach those in contact with you.

Help yourself. Understand your stressful thoughts. I cannot teach others until I have taken on my own narrow mind and my own racism. And if you need to make new friends, look to yourself. You may consider yourself a much better friend to wake up with after you have taken yourself where you really want to go. For me, I want to deal with anything within me that would separate me from anyone or anything. This is intimacy, oneness, love.

Loving what is, and that would be you,
kt

Between April and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed within a 100 days. It was a genocide of Tutsis perpetrated by the Hutus.

We have received several letters and emails from you, our dear readers, asking us to explain more about Rwanda, and how The Work can be used to help Rwandans.

The five Rwandans came to School saying they were Tutsis, but just before the end of School one of them admitted to all of us that he was a Hutu and expressed his shame about the genocide. It was an amazing moment. He made amends and spoke of dedicating his life to taking The Work to the Hutus to help end genocide and the ideas that are the cause of genocide, in the name of peace and in the hope that it will never happen again. He, like the others, wanted to heal the wounds of all Rwandans.

Here is an audio clip (MP3 download) of the Rwandans speaking at The School.

The genocide in Rwanda has been documented in detail by the UN and Human Rights Watch, so that "the horrors recorded here must remain alive in our heads and hearts; only in that way can we hope to resist the next wave of evil."

Meanwhile, the madness continues in the Congo.

How do you overcame these beliefs?

The truth is your beliefs are your religion (MP3 download), one belief by one by one.

It’s impossible to change as long as you believe the negative thoughts that you yourself are thinking.

In this case, the beliefs of the Hutus led them to genocide: “Tutsis are evil,” “Tutsis are tyrants,” “Tutsis are cockroaches,” “Tutsis are our enemies.” What other ideas do you see as contributing to the cause of such violence and fear?

Remember, peace on Earth begins with you. And the four questions and the turnarounds and your examples of these turnarounds are there, within you, to enlighten you and bring you peace.

Before we judge others, let’s remind ourselves that in our thoughts, we all experience what the Hutus were thinking anytime we hate or fear another human being, even ourselves.

We are happy to announce the opening of the Center for The Work of Byron Katie in Ojai, California. We invite you to watch our events calendar and stay tuned for the events offered in Ojai with Byron Katie, as well as with other fine mentors and teachers from the Institute for The Work.

photo: Paul Snider

Ojai, CA - On the way to becoming a certified facilitator.

For those of you keeping up with our Rwandan family, here is another letter (unedited) from our dear Costa:

My Dears love,
I am always thinking about you. I was very fortunate to know you from the School for The Work. You are part of my entire family and my entire Rwandan community.

Let this coming year be the year,
Full of Love: love which provides opportunity of knowing ourselves,
Love which wipes up all beliefs which were guiding our lives,
Love of reconciliation,
Love which dominates our bad thoughts,
Love which provides to us peace and relax,
Love which multiply the number of friends and reduces the number of enemies.
Who are my enemies? They were there dwelling in my minds, teaching me hatred, teaching me that what I have is mine and no one have access on it, teaching me that, that one is black or that one is white, teaching that, that one is Christian and the other is not so we are different, teaching me that, I am thin and I cannot negotiate with the obese, I am Obese, I am scared to join other, teaching me that, I am HIV and AIDS positive, I cannot negotiate with the Sero-negatives,
BUT I CAN QUESTION MY THINKING AND STOP TEACHING ME THAT. I HAVE DISCOVERED THAT YOU ARE NOT MY ENEMIES, YOU ARE NOT THE ONES TORTURING MY LIFE. IT WAS ONLY MY UNQUESTONED MIND.

OOOOOH, WHAT THIS YEAR CAN BE A YEAR OF LOVE, WHICH PRODUCES SMILES AND SMILES. I LOVE YOU ALL. DO YOU REMEMBER WHY KATIE GAVE US A MIRROR TO WHATCH?
SUCCESS AND LOVE.
FROM YOUR DEAR AND LOVELY RELATIVE
Costa NDAYISABYE NZARAMBA
RWANDA

Unity and Peace for Development Cooperative-Friendship programme

Chapter 3 from Who Would You Be Without Your Story >>

Are you trying to spare someone’s feelings by denying yourself? Free yourself from that prison. How can you know that they’ll disapprove? And if they do, whose business is that?

Rebecca: I’m very new at this; a friend just invited me to come to your event today, and voilà! Here I am. My question refers to the parent-child relationship. Actually, it sort of stems from a problem that I have with my mother. And I lied when I filled in the Worksheet. The problem was not with [choking back tears] relationships that I have now. It’s . . . probably something that I didn’t work out with her . . . probably am unable to.

Katie: So what is it with your mother that you haven’t worked out yet?

Rebecca: Well, I come from a conservative Jamaican family, and I’ve been living in America now for twelve years, so I don’t have my family with me. And I have to depend on myself, to pat myself on the back and say, “You’re doing okay!” I find myself, though . . .

Katie: Sweetheart, what’s the problem with your mother?

Rebecca: I’m not certain I can get her approval to do what I really, really want to do.

Katie: And what is that?

Rebecca: Well, it’s music . . . yes. They’ve told me in the past that I shouldn’t. In a conservative family, you do something practical.

Katie: So if your life became all about music as an occupation . . .

Rebecca: Well, I can’t even imagine that. I think of it all the time, and it’s . . . [She chokes back tears.]

Katie: . . . and it’s overflowing.

Rebecca: I teach business English, and my business is going very well, and this is something my mother approves of, especially when I’m so far away.

Katie: So what is it she would not approve of?

Rebecca: Doing something impractical, something that’s so risky.

Katie: Like what?

Rebecca: Singing . . . yes.

Katie: Singing where, how? As an occupation?

Rebecca: Possibly, yes.

Katie: So “if you dropped your profession . . .

Rebecca: I dare not.

Katie: . . . and you became a singer, your mother wouldn’t approve”—is that true?

Rebecca: She would kill herself with worry.

Katie:

Peace and Love,
JJ

Dearest JJ,

You do "yet" know how, The Work works when your dear mind is open to "what is next". You're not prepared for his death yet, is it true?

It sounds like your not prepared for his LIFE yet, he isn't dead, he is still living!!!!!! The dead or dying son in your heads image is not your son, it is an image. You are trading your sons life now, for images of death, not your sons life and it is "killing" your time with him and your life with him in joy. He has a right to believe that he is "not worth it", listen to him, he has a right to his opinion and it doesn't mean that he isn't worth everything to you, you can still honor his opinion. You don't have to agree, your opinion is your business unless you think that his life is not worth $1500. per mo and maybe you don't sense you don't believe that he is going to live anyway, and in an odd way it is understandable that the mind would take you there.

I love you JJ, don't let your unquestioned mind cost you one minute with that darling, dear, dearest son of yours. Is it sadness that you are feeling or love? Isn't it love, feel it as deeply as you can, let it live in you, allow it, let it cry you, take you over even, its okay, love is all powerful. Don't confuse feelings that you believe to be sadness with what love feels like, my dearest. I am with you, ask him to hold you for me.

with all of my heart,
kt

I ran away from a 29 year marriage with 2 suitcases and not much else. I was in such a state of fear/anxiety that I was shaking uncontrollably as I drove away from the house...fearing I might meet my husband on the road somewhere in the very rural small town setting where we lived.

I was forced to give up my medications for depression/anxiety because he chose not to work and to use all of our savings until we had none left and he applied for welfare. My attempt at suicide to escape the darkness, loneliness and utter fear/desperation failed--he left me lie unconscious for 3 days in our bed without ever calling 911. Somehow, when I awoke, he just yelled as usual that I "should go live in a f--in hole somewhere and not be so selfish to do something like that again!" This from a man who was a former CEO of a company and now due to his life choices, our family was on welfare and without any insurance or income.

My thoughts were in such a state of confusion, I couldn't think. I was just in survival mode there for months now. I left the state and ran to family for safety and relief. I spent the better part of the next year sobbing, unable to eat/sleep and barely functioning day-to-day. During the year, I tried talking to him, he was unwilling. I finally filed for divorce and after having to go back to the state again and see him (and him yelling abusively at me as though I had never left a year before, and this time in front of one of our children), I knew it was the only thing I could have done. After the divorce hearing and seeing him again was so devastating, returning back to my family again, I was inconsolable. I felt complete devastation and was consumed by suicidal thoughts. Unable again to eat/sleep/think I spent one night hugging the toilet bowl on the bathroom floor for 10 hours dry-heaving and sobbing. I didn't know what to do. I saw Byron Katie on YouTube and had had two of her books. It looked like relief. I picked up her book and couldn't even process the sentences in my head I was in such an awful place. I just continued to watch videos. Then, I found her website and wrote a letter about myself and my situation. I received a response almost immediately which helped me hang on. Katie invited me to Turnaround House and I gratefully accepted that invitation.

It was difficult for me to imagine attending the program, but I felt it was my only hope for a way out. On the way to California on the plane I finally read Katie's book Loving What Is and I felt so much better afterwards seeing how much her program had helped people who were confused and in fear to become at peace with themselves. I felt Katie could resonate with me personally as I was coming from a very similarly dark place that she had lived in herself before finding her way out through The Work. Although I had never met her, I trusted her completely.

I attended the Turnaround House program and am now home. To say this was life-changing is a serious understatement. Words cannot begin to describe that I am not the same person coming out that went into it. I am happy and have a peacefulness within my life which I have never known before. I know I will never need depression/anxiety medications again. I know now that LOVE heals. This program is LOVE. Katie and her staff were completely committed to loving me and helping me heal myself. Its all about self-realization and self-empowerment. I have the confidence to face whatever comes in life now.

I am so grateful to Katie for taking me into her heart and program and giving me the tools to have the life I now know I deserve and love. I love them all and I love me now too.

KB

What are the beliefs that are getting in the way of your job or your business?

In the same way as we do inquiry on our stressful thoughts about people in our lives, we can do business inquiry, questioning the assumptions we take to work and about our work or not having work. These assumptions may seem neutral to some of you, but they may in fact be causing a lot of stress in your life.

Why do we do things the same way over and over again and expect different results? Because we are believing our unquestioned thoughts over and over again in the same way, that's why. Simple.

What if we were to challenge our underlying beliefs, the beliefs about our work, the markets, our products and services, our customers, our partners, suppliers, our financial thinking, in fact everything we believe to be true about our jobs, the people we work with, our businesses?

Here's how.

(Notice how familiar this process is.)

Next:

Jerry's Business Inquiry >> "Having More Customers Means Having More Profits"

This is Jerry's Business Inquiry example: "Having more customers means having more profits"

Jerry: "I am a business development manager for a mid-size consumer goods company, and my team has a real hard time with this. We believe that 'having more customers means having more profit.' "

Next, Jerry questions the common business assumption held by his team. As you follow his inquiry, I invite you to notice your own experience in life when you believe this thought. (Maybe yours is, "Having more money means having a happier life." Or "having more friends means having more income." Or, "…….?")

Ask yourself: is it true? Is it true that "having more customers means having more profits"?
"Yes."

Can you absolutely know that it's true?
"No, we can't be 100% sure."

So how do you react when you believe the assumption that more customers equals more profit?
"Well, we go crazy trying to win new customers. We lower our prices, we go out of our way to sell. Sometimes our sales people push too hard. Sometimes they over-promise. Sometimes we fight with marketing or the product development team. . We stop trusting them, we begin to see it as "us," the good guys, versus "them," the bad guys, the ones not doing their jobs. We try to meet our quotas at all costs. Discounts, financing games. These hurt our business and our reputation."

Who would you be without that thought?
"We might have more time and energy to focus on the customers we do have, or on improving our product. We could work on getting closer to our best customers, helping them thrive. We could become more valuable to them. We could tailor some of our products for their customers, helping them stand out from their competitors. And if they're successful, we share in that success. They'll buy more, we'll sell more. We know their demographic quite well, and we could work together on making something of value for their customers. There's a side benefit there. We'll reduce our marketing costs if we can make the same revenue with fewer customers."

Turn the belief around.
"Having fewer customers means having more profit.'

Might that be as true as or truer than the original belief?
"I can see that it might be at least as true. It depends on what we are doing to get more customers, and on what we could do without trying so hard to get more. We could focus on our most profitable customers. We could get closer to our most valuable customers. We could definitely be integrated more tightly. We could focus on helping our customers' businesses do better."

Can you find three examples to make that a true statement?
"One, we could focus on the customers that have the strongest cash positions, the ones who are most likely to weather the recession.

"And three, we could stop serving customers that don't pay in a timely manner, the ones with poor payment history."

In this example, we see how challenging a simple but powerful belief in the sales team– that "having more customers mean having more profit" leads us to a new strategy to survive and profit in a recessionary economy. What's more, the customers we get closer too during these trying times are the ones who will appreciate and trust us when times get better. So by shrinking our customer base, we actually improve our long-term profitability.

Dear Katie,

B

Dear B,

Let's start with "the stress is unbearable." Is that true? Can you absolutely know that it's true?

How do you react, what happens, when you believe the thought "the stress is unbearable'? What are the images that flood your mind? Do you see yourself as never working again, as destitute, as a homeless person pushing a shopping cart on the street? How do you treat your wife when you believe this thought? How do you treat yourself? Does this thought bring peace or stress into your life? Anything else? Be still. Watch, notice, what else do you see. Notice and identify the emotions that are the response to the images that you experience as though they were real. What else do you see in the silence and stillness of observation?

Now ask yourself: Who would you be without the thought "the stress is unbearable"? Who would you be if you were incapable of thinking that thought in the midst of your emotions as they were happening? Just notice, go back into that space and look again. What did you miss?

Now turn the thought around. "The stress is not unbearable." Can you find three examples when the stress, at its worst, was not unbearable, and it felt to you like it was? Can you get out of bed? Is the stress too heavy for you to brush your teeth in the morning? Perhaps you went to the park for a walk with your wife. Maybe you were watching your favorite TV show, or simply sharing a joke. Find at least three specific, genuine examples. Who knows?—you may find dozens of them that are true for you every day. I have noticed that in the face of what we are believing, reality waits to be noticed; eventually we wake up to it or not. (Some choose not to and some can't yet, and it is until it's not.) The Work is about collapsing that time, that dream, that trance. The unquestioned I-know mind will lead you to believe that your stressful thought in the moment is not only true but it is true forever. A belief in the moment is more powerful than any "thing." It is powerful enough to create the entire world as you understand it to be.

The original thought, "the stress is unbearable," is itself the cause of stress. When you realize this, you may also realize that every untrue thought that you're believing creates not only life but a life with stress. And then you may realize that stress can only come from believing your thoughts about the world. It does not, it cannot, come from the world. Realizing this is a very major road to inner peace.

I invite you to write down your stressful thoughts as they occur, and investigate them. Use the four questions and the turnarounds, with examples of each turnaround. "We're going to lose our home." "I'll never get a job." "I'm a failure." "I'll be out on the streets." "My family will fall into ruin." "I can't survive on the streets." "I can't survive." "My family will leave me." " They will lose respect for me." And on and on.

What is is, but only because it is. Until you wake up to reality in the moment, it is very difficult, even impossible, to love what is. Have you noticed? The only thing that can cause you stress is the story of a past or a future. What I love about the past is that it's over! What I love about the future is that it doesn't exist. What I love about this moment now is that I can "be" this that I am awake to. No problem! I already am.

In this moment now, all the pain that was ever suffered in the world is past, and that is the grace that we cannot appreciate when we are believing our past/future stories. Because the mind is believing its thoughts, often we feel tortured now as we live in reality, a true state of grace in the moment. It's not right or wrong, it's just that reality is always kind. But the story we superimpose onto reality can be hell. So I invite all people directly to the wisdom inside them, and The Work can take you there anytime you are open to your own self, your own true wisdom. Find the way out of the nightmares that you experience by going in.

And if there's something to fear, wait until it happens and be fearful then. Why be frightened about a thought of a possible future when it is only a thought that is producing the movie?

Once you can think clearly, without the stress of your painful thoughts, the whole world, in all of its unlimited abundance and glory, will open up for you. A fearful mind is limited; it can see only a very few options. A clear mind can see many more options—unlimited options. It can act efficiently, effortlessly, intelligently, in the present moment, and not be stuck in its deadly stories of past and future.

My job is to extend the invitation to do The Work and to let you know that The Work works for everyone whose mind is open to it, and that the only thing that stands between you and a peaceful life is your unquestioned thinking. That's all. I invite you to question "We are barely scraping by." And to move to other turnarounds on the above concept, "the stress is unbearable." What is the opposite of "unbearable"? Have fun with that. Or what is the opposite of stress? "Joy"? The joy is unbearable?

I am loving what is in this moment now, "it" works,

bk

Dearest Katie,

P.S. Thank you for sharing the Rwanda letter on the community site. A real blow away.

Dearest Grant,

Thank you for your letter. One of my grandsons says that he is attending the School for The Work this summer in Los Angeles. I would love that he gets what your son received at the School, and that is his own truest mind back, awake and responsible for his own life and best interest. We all adore your son! Let him know that he is cleared to staff a School if he wants to. I love watching even six- and seven-year-olds work with people who are sixty, seventy, twenty and every age in between at the events I get to facilitate as well.

For those of you asking about your children coming to the School during the upcoming summer break, the answer is, of course, "yes." Both my grandsons are fourteen, and I think of the fourteen-year-old daughter of one of the women at the last School (just a few days ago). This young lady wouldn't let anyone—not even her mother—get away, skate away, shift away, shrink away from the authentic self she could see in us. This darling and ruthless fourteen-year-old facilitator used her skills (the most ruthless skills always are our kindness, gentleness, caring, and the most unmoving integrity in the face of the one in denial, the facilitated) to tear open a lot of stuck minds and lives. As I am not traveling out of the country this summer (thank you all for supporting my visit to London and Copenhagen in January) and many of you are wanting your children to come to the School during summer break, and of course I am very happy about that, I will be there as usual, from early morning to late at night, all day, every day, watching awareness shift from the fear-based self into another paradigm, the new one, the kinder one, yours. I hope to see not only my grandson but who knows?—maybe both my grandsons as well as your children and grandchildren at the summer School for The Work in Los Angeles.

loving you,
BK

Stephen and I met Patrick McDonnell, the wonderful artist of the comic strip "Mutts" (www.muttscomics.com), at the Omega event in New York.

He later sent us a few of his books, including The Best of Mutts, with a dedication that included the following cartoons.

I thought you would enjoy them:

Dear Ms. Katie,

Thank you for saving my 17 years of marriage with I Need Your Love—Is That True?

I read your book in a mountain inn as I was ready to leave my husband. I cried and realized it was all me. Just to let you know that we are happily married because I have changed.

Thanks and God bless you.

S.

If you've never been to The School for The Work, here's a first-hand account from the dear, inimitable, Richard Lawrence Cohen.

He describes his personal experience in this, a travel-log of his journey through The Work:

We recently received the following comment on this blog:

Dear Katie,

Sheila

Dearest Sheila,

How to stop worrying? I invite you to all four questions and to consider any genuine examples discovered after each turnaround.

Question your stressful thought, “My brothers have been shot.”

Ask yourself:

1. Is it true? Yes or no?

2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? Answer with either a yes or a no after you consider the question. Take your time. Notice that your mind tends to justify or defend what it is believing, and gently return to “Is it true? Can I really know that it’s true that they have been shot?”

3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe the thought “My brothers have been shot”? Do you see images in your mind’s eye of them being shot? Do you see them bleeding on a sidewalk, maybe? Maybe you them dead in your mind’s eye? Are they really your brothers or are they images in your head? I am inviting you to notice. Are your emotions being produced as a result of your brothers being shot in reality, or are your emotions the result of what is appearing, now, only in your mind’s dream? I invite you to realize for yourself the difference between mind and reality, the differences between the images in your mind and the state of grace of reality, this moment now and its gifts.

4. Who would you be without that thought, “My brothers have been shot”? Free to notice the grace of this moment, right here, right now. Able to watch television or YouTube or Twitter without fear. Perhaps appreciating the courage and bravery of the students without feeling panic, learning from them as you watch their courage, a courage that is also within you any time you become aware that everything you fear about the future are things you cannot know. Perhaps speaking out clearly in the protests in your part of the world (for me “protest” means to offer up intelligent solutions and examples of why what you believe to be true is a wiser, kinder way of governing). Perhaps reaching out without fear to a friend or relative who is also worried.

Now consider turnarounds to the thought “My brothers have been shot.”

What are some alternatives? One turnaround would be “My brothers have not been shot.” Give yourself examples of why this turnaround might be true.

Another turnaround: “I am shooting my brothers.” In your mind, aren’t you shooting them? And are you using their enemies to shoot them? What is the point of creating your brothers’ death and using their “enemies” to do it with, in your mind, over and over, when you don’t really know what is happening or even what they are doing right here from where you are, right now? The reality is that they are alive, as far as you can know, until you learn otherwise. When you accept reality just as it is, right here, right now, there is nothing between you and reality that would cost you the ability to serve what you can serve and to change what you can from where you are, right here, right now. This is just one of the advantages of the fearless, loving mind wherever you are. (Does fear feel kind to you when you’re in it? Is that what you use to motivate you into action? Fear is limiting; test it yourself.) As it is, you are superimposing your thought onto reality. To project your fears and experience them as real is often self-defeating and terrifying. Your blood pressure, your health, your energy, your right to the gift of real life is imagined away and replaced by unchecked imagination. Your physical health and the health of those around you are affected when you are lost in imagination as though it were real, swept away in the dream of what isn’t, right here, right now. Unquestioned thoughts are the root cause of all suffering and can be debilitating. It is a wonderful thing to question one’s mind, to do The Work and wake up to, be transformed into, what has been referred to as “the peace of God,” “the peace that passeth all understanding,” and be left with “What can I do to help from here, right now?” The Work offers each of us the opportunity to wake up from the nightmare, to wake up into what is real. Thank you, dearest, and let me know what you hear of your brothers.

Also, please do The Work on this: “My brothers are hurting.”

And there is another turnaround that I challenge you to consider through examples: ”My brothers have shot someone else” or “My brothers are shooting someone else.” Be gentle with this one. Though it may sound like a horrific concept to consider, to Work this thought can bring great insight and much peace. Those of you who have brothers sisters or friends in your life that you worry about in this kind of situation, I invite you to Work the turnaround, “My brothers are hurting,” and to get back to Sheila with what you find to be true. Please feel free to use the One-Belief-at-a-Time Worksheets; they are also a free download on thework.com. I invite all of you interested in Working this concept the opportunity to type in your response on this blog in the "comments" section below.

In love as you are, waiting for you to wake up to you as I see you to be,

Love,
kt

Dearest Family,

We have received many phone calls asking the same question: "Is there still room for me at the School?"

There is always room for you at the School.

I would love to see everyone at the School of You this Friday, early evening. If you want to attend, click here to register, or call 1-888-98-KATIE (52843). (And for those of you unable to attend, all life is “the School,” and I love that no one has to miss it.)

And for those of you who would like a sneak preview of the School, here is Richard Lawrence Cohen's first-hand account of his journey.

Here is a letter from a young woman who was falling into despair.

Your generous donations to the Work Foundation allow me to offer her (and so many people like her) scholarships to the School for The Work and Turnaround House, and I am so very grateful for that.

Hello,

Thanks, S.

Again, thank you, family, for supporting this Work as it enters the lives of so many families.
Love, kt

Studies show that people who forgive are happier and healthier than those who hold resentments. The first study to look at how forgiveness improves physical health discovered that when people think about forgiving an offender it leads to improved functioning in their cardiovascular and nervous systems. Another study at the University of Wisconsin found the more forgiving people were, the less they suffered from a wide range of illnesses. The less forgiving people reported a greater number of health problems.

Whether you are having difficulty forgiving your partner, feeling frustrated with yourself, your children, are angry with your parents, or are simply tired of feeling stuck and anxious about relationships in your life, this extraordinary forgiveness workshop is for you.

Schedule
Friday, September 18, 6:00pm - 9:00 pm
Saturday, September 19, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm
Sunday, September 20, 9:30 am - 12:30 pm

Location
The Center for The Work
213 N. Montgomery Street
Ojai, California

Cost
$495 (Workshop only)
View our listing of local accommodations and services

Registration
Register for the Forgiveness Workshop
or call 1-805-444-5799 or
1-800-98-KATIE (52843)
International: (001) 805-444-5799

Questions? Email: eventquestions@thework.com

Thank you for passing on peace by being who you are without your old unquestioned beliefs. I love to pass on to you the invitation to do The Work with any and all unkind thoughts that arise within your mind and to continue, for the love of peace, to undream your unkind world, by questioning what you are believing. The Work leaves your world always kinder, kinder, kinder as the world arises in your experience. Do you gossip? Do you criticize others before you test it within yourself and take care of your own chaos? You can finally change us by changing yourself, and the Work is the key to the changes for us that you have always wanted.

The next School of You is coming up in just a few days. Click here to register, or call 1-888-98-KATIE (52843). There are several payment options available for this October School—just ask.

On 09-10-09, I attended Byron Katie’s workshop. The participants were asked, “What is the thing you are most ashamed of in your life?”

Like many of my incarcerated peers, I found myself answering Ms. Katie’s question by stating my crime, enduring the labels associated with my crime (i.e. murderer), and the domino effects that my crime has had on so many other people. This would include my victim, my victim’s family, my community, my own family members, and my own unmet potentials in life.

A week later I read A Thousand Names for Joy. Through Ms. Katie’s work with my incarcerated peers, many of whom are lifers like me, and after reading this book, I am better able to “turn it around.” I rewrote my initial statement, as if it was written about me by someone else. I redescribed my problem of believing outdated labels (i.e. prisoner, lifer, murderer, etc.). This all resulted in my embracing myself in a more positive manner. I even looked at myself in the mirror, inside my prison cell, and for the first time in my 31 years of incarceration, I came to a more meaningful sense of serenity (peace of mind) and self-realization of who I am as a man. I no longer fear tomorrow, nor carry the weight of yesterday. Instead, I swim in the pool of today’s reality, swimming with the current of today, and even wearing a smile throughout my worthwhile day.

Thank you, Ms. Katie for the workshop. Please come back soon and help us help ourselves.

C.

Learn more >>

Order here >>

Start the New Year with greater clarity and freedom. The New Year’s Mental Cleanse is a rare opportunity to spend four enjoyable and transformative days immersed in the power of inquiry with Byron Katie and friends from all over the world.

Katie’s untiring commitment, her total accessibility, and the casual atmosphere of the Mental Cleanse are some of the reasons why it has become an eagerly anticipated annual tradition.

Sign up now >>

Listen to this audio clip:

It's a familiar story for many of us. Notice how suffering is always caused when we are believing our own stressful thoughts. And if you are feeling any stress, even the most minute amount of stress, I invite you to identify what you are believing and then to question those thoughts that are always the cause of that stress.

Hello Katie and Staff from the school of the work October 2009,

My name is A and I was at the last School for the Work. I was the one who brought a companion and had bipolar. During the school I would often go to sleep early so I missed some School. I wanted to just let you know that the School was very beneficial and that I have kept up with my homework and done a lot of good work.

There are many things I could share but the main thing is that since the School I have severely reduced panic problems. Before the School I had what is called a Panic Disorder that developed after a severe seizure a couple years ago. My life had become small. I was very tired of suffering with it and I believed there was a better way - I wanted my life back!

It was a enormous thing just to get to the school and that in and of itself would have been enough of an accomplishment for me but there was more... something came loose during the graduation ceremony; like the hand that griped my heart just let go; like pulling off a silk scarf, it just slipped away. It happened the moment Sinead O'Connor sang: 'thank you for not hurting me".

It was a terrifying sensation, perhaps the worst thing I could imagine happening and so far from my home too. I went up stairs to my room and cried a beautiful cry and my panic disorder was dissipated from then on. For weeks after getting home I waited for it to wear off and for my panic to return; I waited for the other shoe to drop and 2.5 months later...still no problems, I've come to trust it! Can you believe it, its a miracle to me. I can go in the left hand turn lanes, in the drive through lanes, in an elevator, I can leave my house, be in group setting, go to the grocery store and more. I started volunteering at the Humane Society walking the dogs there every week! It is a great source of joy for me. I'm thinking about getting a job too. I just wanted you to know that I got what I came for and thank you for extending a scholarship to me.

I'm starting to get what you're teaching and I love you for it. I'm living it.
Many 'thank you's :)

A

Dear Katie,

Dearest David,

You can’t create a no-mind, a don’t-know mind; it already exists, and it doesn’t need to be created. In my experience, as we question our stressful thoughts, we begin to experience the no-mind, without effort. It ceases to be something we’re trying to do and begins to be experienced as a natural state of being.

Question any thoughts about the future that come to your mind. If the mind believes a stressful thought that is even thirty seconds in the future, it will naturally leave you out of the now, frightened, depressed and lonely. Here are some things you may sometimes feel in your situation. You can question any of them that seem relevant:

I’ll never get through this.

I don’t know what I’m doing here.

This is never going to end.

I can’t handle it.

I want to go home.

I’m going to die here.

It’s very important when you’re using the four questions to understand that the moment you stop answering the questions, The Work stops working; for example, as you’re answering, when you notice your mind wanting to defend or justify the concept that you’re questioning, with something like, "Yes, because" or "No, but." Just allow the answers to the first two questions to be your own honest yes or no only, and even though you may be sure that your truth is "yes," for example, allow the "no" equal rights, test it as well, against the first two questions and allow your answer to drop in, to fall into the depths of yourself. Give your answer time to live in you before you continue on to the next question. Allow your feelings fully in the third question, give them time to express themselves completely. Watch, witness, experience how you react when you believe that thought. Be still with the fourth question as well. Notice who you would be without that thought. Who would you be in life if you didn’t believe the thought that you are questioning? Also, when you’re doing the turnarounds, with each turnaround it’s important to find examples of how each turnaround is true in your life. The turnarounds are not meant to be "positive affirmations"; they have to be genuine and real, not manufactured as feel-good (even though some of them really shift your life to an authentic state of "feel-goodness").

There is no internal or external war that cannot be worked through, if peace is your goal. The Work works for those whose minds are open to it, whatever the circumstances. I love that you do The Work for the love of truth, for the love of peace and no other motive.

Also, if you fill in Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheets, there are people within the Institute for The Work whose hearts’ desire it would be to facilitate you, at no charge, as a service to you as a soldier. (You can do this through Skype.) Freedom from fear is possible in a war zone, even on a battlefield. I love that you understand that the world, including war zones, is not the problem; what we’re believing about the world is the problem. Our beliefs create our internal war zone, and the end of suffering is possible, one belief at a time, for everyone whose mind is open to this inquiry, The Work.

I send you my love and gratitude for your life in this world, and anything that I can do to serve you, please return this email with your request.

In deepest gratitude,

Loving what is, and that would be you,

Byron Katie

Dear Katie,
I am forever grateful for your email. I really appreciate the fact that you took the time out of your busy schedule for me, it really means a lot! The questions that you mentioned all applied to me, especially the one that states "I'm going to die here." The danger that I have been exposed to has brought up feelings of stress and anxiety. But I have never felt more compelled to be present and at peace, to share love and compassion with fellow service members, locals, and even the enemy. As we all know, war is a terrible unconscious act of humanity as a whole. My acceptance and surrender to this is becoming more apparent every day. Your teachings have really helped me find the tranquility that I have longed for. Thanks again.

Sincerely,
David

Question:
Katie, Every year I make New Years Resolutions only to break them a month later and feel bad. How can the Work help me when I break my resolutions? Is there any point to making them in the first place?

Katie:
Let’s say I wanted to be a kinder human being toward my children and I find myself frustrated, losing my temper, and giving them “the look.”

I would identify what I was believing during that behavior. And after identifying my thoughts I would write them down on paper. I would do The Work on those thoughts and I would also do The Work on “I raised my voice to my children.”

Then I would make a list, from the prompt “I raised my voice to my children and that means that...”

...that means that I’m a terrible person.
...that means that I’m a loser.
...that means that I will never get it right.
...that means that they will never forgive me.
...that means that I hurt them.

Then I would ask the four questions and do the turnarounds on each thought.

And that is what I did do for a few years after 1986. I became a kinder human being with no necessity to make New Year’s resolutions.

What am I resolved to do? Just answer the questions that you’re asking and enjoy this conversation with you right now and love that it would serve others the way that this process has served me.

What are some of the underlying beliefs in your experience that cause you to break your resolutions?

Below are responses from candidates in the Institute for The Work, who have been answering this question this month, and then doing The Work on the underlying beliefs they’ve uncovered:

There’s something wrong with me.
Things need to happen for me this year.
I need to get my life back together this year.
I am incapable of real love.
I am overwhelmed.
I can’t make the right decision.
I have no control.
I should know better and done better.

The following text was written to Zahid from Bahawalpur, Pakistan, by a 27-year-old woman with two young children. (She uses her mobile phone to get on the Internet.) Here is the translation:

Dear Zahid,
I just went though Katie’s little book. It’s amazing. Now it’s time for the Worksheets, but before filing in those I’m going to read them out peacefully. The insight about staying in my own business is superb, I have generally sorted out that most of my transactions are really not my business at all...it’s really funny. Tell me one thing: What can I do with little kids, I mean they are totally dependant on me and isn’t a mother’s duty to defend them or solve their problems?

I really understand what you want to say and the joy that one has in the heart. I didn’t really know about presentation of this method in Pakistan, but one thing is true: Pakistan and the Pakistanis are suffering a lot and most of them really need counseling because their depressions are getting wild with each passing day. I love the statement "being born again," in fact I want to be born again and that miracle is happening.

It’s true, it’s true! Within two days of knowing The Work, it is...really out of this world! I never realized how near happiness was. I’m going mad about jumping into Worksheets, but I have to sit calmly to sort out what is most stressful. It seems that Allah has blessed me with an angel in your form whom I can trust due to knowing my parents and family and letting me know what I was searching for until now. You know what my reaction would be to see Katie. Just jumping at her and kissing her on her forehead like buddha: amazing! Lots of love, lots of love, lots of love, I’ve never ever gone though such deep replies because whenever I asked anyone they replied but most of that was related to philosophy. And I rather didn’t understand Sakeel, Urdu, or Persian or difficult things. Blessings to you and her.

You know what? Whenever I want to do a Worksheet a wish from inside comes to pick up that small book you sent and read it. It’s the fourth time I’m reading it and I want to share something very great...When I think of myself and close my eyes...or when I tell somebody about The Work, I feel like a light coming out right from the middle of my heart and spreading like sunlight.

Here is a letter from a woman in Europe kind enough to write to Katie even though her first language isn’t English.

For twenty years i've been married with my husband and you know, I had for twenty years resentment in this and I couldn’t get through it. I did The Work on it last August, I sent a letter, and still my resentment didn't resolve till now. I couldn’t find what i wasfighting.....was it my illusion to fight.......I don't love him or was it my heart telling me it wasn't the right man. I did the work on it and I couldn't come to a point and then............

So now I have to get used to a life with nice points of views in my marriage and this feels rather funny.

Thank you for writing, dearest, and I don’t call it The Work for nothing! Daily maintenance can give a life of joy and understanding to all situations, in my experience and freedom to love is your birthright. I invite you to check into possibilities of enrolling in the Institute for The Work. I developed this ongoing life school for those people who have been to the School for The Work and choose to do The Work as a daily practice. I like to say, “Do the work for breakfast and have a great life.” I am so very happy that you know how to find the way to your heart, husband, family, world, and peace. Thank you, angel. In love and gratitude for your humor, love, and light.

xoxo
kt

Who Would You Be Without Your Story?
July 16 - 17, 2010
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Loving What Is: The End of Suffering
July 20, 2010
Paris, France

Who Would You Be Without Your Story?
July 24, 2010
London, England

Loving What Is: Lieben Was Ist
July 27, 2010
Cologne, Germany

School for The Work
July 30 - August 8, 2010
Bad Neuenahr, Germany

Details here >>

Learn more about The School for The Work >>

Buy it from Amazon or the The Work Store >>

Across the world, many of you have written me recently about money and finances and told me how worried you are about your jobs, your income, and the state of the economy in your country.

Here are two articles that may help:

- "I Lost My Job" (ByronKatie.com)
- 5 Way To Overcome The Job-Search Blues (US News & World Report)

How do you react, what happens, when you believe the thought "the stress is unbearable"?(All anger and frustration best belongs on paper!)

Find a situation, a moment in time, when you were thinking, “The stress is unbearable” about your finances, a lost job, or anything else in your life. Download a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet from thework.com and, without moving from that situation in your mind’s eye, fill in the Worksheet. Then, as you begin to question the thoughts identified on your Worksheet, notice the emotions you are experiencing, and the images that flood your mind. Do you see yourself as never working again, as unable to support yourself, as destitute, as a homeless person pushing a shopping cart on the street? How do you treat your loved ones when you believe that thought? How do you treat yourself? Does the thought bring peace or stress to your life. When you believe the thought, can you feel any addictions starting to form? Do you act on them?

Notice and identify the emotions that you feel when you believe the thought you are investigating. Anything else? Be still. Watch, notice. (If you can’t identify the emotions, look at the emotions list on thework.com)

Now spend time in the fourth question and experience who you would be, in that same situation, without the thought. Who would you be if you didn’t even have the ability to think the thought?

Then turn around the concept you are investigating, finding at least three specific, genuine examples for each turnaround.

What other stressful thoughts and situations come to your mind, if any, around jobs and finances? Do any of the following situations seem familiar? Do any of them need to be investigated on a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet?

“I’m angry at my boss because he fired me.”

“I’m devastated because we’re going to lose our home.”

“I’m depressed because I’ll never find a well-paying job again.”

“I’m disappointed because I’m a failure.”

“I’m (emotion) because without a home, I can’t survive on the streets.”

“I’m (emotion) because without a job I can’t survive.”

“I’m (emotion) because without a job, my family will leave me.”

“I’m (emotion) because without money, everyone will lose respect for me.”

Do you see other situations to write about?

I invite you to write down your stressful thoughts on a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet, as they occur, on each line within the Judge Your Neighbor Worksheet and investigate them one by one. Use the four questions and the turnarounds, with examples for each turnaround and how they are true.

I invite you to Work through your own real-life situations, thought by thought, as written on each line of your Worksheets, in the name of peace. I also invite you to locate a moment in time when you believed that you were not okay. Then, with your eyes closed, do The Work on that thought, in that situation. Going back into that situation, ask yourself, “‘I’m not okay’—is it true?” and continue inquiry until you find turnarounds and examples for each turnaround. Also, please thank yourself when you have completed this meditation, in the name of peace.

I love that you come to see that on the other side of these stressful thoughts freedom is, was, and will always be waiting to be discovered from within you. That freedom is, after all, your birthright.

He hasn't paid child-support in six and a half years. Is it true? Watch as a wife and mother finds that she has the perfect husband and father of her children, if only her mind wouldn't tell her otherwise.

Learn more about The Work >>

Does stress follow you around the Workplace? And do you bring it home?

A man is afraid that no one will come to his event because he has given it the wrong name. He's made the "wrong decision."

Is it true?

Watch as he imagines the worst thing that could happen at his event and discovers the possibility of freedom, right here and right now.

Who is The Work for? It’s for everyone who wants to end their own suffering and whose mind is open to questioning what they believe to be true. If you’d rather be free than right, I invite you to The Work of Byron Katie.

~ ~ ~

Not wanting to change what is comes a state of mind that is literally unimaginable. There’s no sacrifice in it, no deprivation— quite the opposite, in fact. It means to gain everything, the everything that is already yours, and the effect is peace. People who use The Work at home as a practice tell me that they find their own freedom. There is such joy in that, such peace, and it’s a story that can’t be told.

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The enlightened mind is the mind that you can find no valid reason to shut down.The mind is a seeker. It just wants to know what is real and what isn’t. It’s fascinated by itself. So if you love everything you think, you love everything everyone thinks, and you love everything people say. It’s all mind.

So if someone says, “You’re unkind,” I might say, “Oh my goodness, really? Tell me specifically where I was unkind” (if I haven’t already noticed it, I want to hear what I have missed). I apologize and make it right with that person and to myself where I’m able to. And here we both are, working on my problem, both working on me and not separate. The enlightened mind is never separate from another mind, as there really is only one mind (if any). Not ever. The open mind always understands its own nature and is always open to more understanding, in the ever-shifting expansion of its own creation.

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To understand our own thinking is to understand all thinking.The mind falls in love with itself, and this amazing love affair is not just the end of war, it’s the beginning of a whole new paradigm. It creates out of a space that is so unlimited in its self-love that it doesn’t ever have to be told or proven or seen. It is its own experience. And it’s happy—in that all.

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Let’s say someone you love dies. If you’re doing The Work and feel any sadness about it, you may want to ask yourself, “Why is that death a good thing for him or her? Why is it a good thing for me? Why is it a good thing for the world?” But if you don’t question your thinking, someone dies and it’s all about you. You may think it has to do with them and with how much you love them, but if you look more closely, it’s really pure ego. I love to say, “No one can leave me. They don’t have that power.” .” If you are fearful, you’re living in the future, if you are depressed, you’re living in the past When your mind is clear, no one lives beyond identity and that is the end of what has never lived. It is the end of “death.”