“A thought is harmless unless we believe it” – Byron Katie
I hope you take some time to watch this video. It is well worth the 45 minutes. If you don’t have the time, watch the first few minutes, then skip to minute 17:30. This outcome happens a few more times throughout the video.
I cried 5 times watching it. I love that man’s courage. I love Byron Katie. You just witnessed how a belief that had been tormenting this man for 40+ years was released within 45 minutes. That is the power of the work. That man’s life is changed forever. The best part- there is nothing that man has that you don’t have as well. I have found the most effective tools to make lasting positive changes in our lives, we already have.
I found The Work a few years ago. I was highly delusional, very grandiose, and full of resentment. I was a professional victim disguised as a do-gooder. I couldn’t see the truth if it smacked me in the face. I watched a few of these videos on YouTube and was amazed at the results. In particular, the turn arounds. I began to question every thought I had- is this true? It was a tough pill to swallow knowing I created the world I lived in. But there is also great strength knowing I create the world I live in. I began to see how my thoughts/ belief structures did not support what I consciously wanted in life- then I began to question it.
“People try so hard to let go of their negative behaviors and thoughts, and it doesn’t work, or it works only for a short time. I didn’t let go of my negative thoughts; I questioned them, and then they let go of me, and so did my addictions and depression.”- Byron Katie
I love Byron Katie. But she wasn’t always this way. This is her story:
In the midst of an ordinary American life—two marriages, three children, a successful career—Katie entered a ten-year-long downward spiral into depression, agoraphobia, self-loathing, and suicidal despair. She drank to excess, her husband brought her pints of ice cream and codeine pills that she ate like candy, and she ended up weighing over two hundred pounds. She slept with a .357 Magnum revolver under her bed. Every day she prayed not to wake up the next morning, and it was only because of her concern for her children that she didn’t kill herself. For the last two years of this ordeal she could seldom manage to leave her house; she stayed in her bedroom for days at a time, unable even to shower or brush her teeth. (“What’s the use?” she thought. “It all adds up to nothing anyway.”) Finally, in February 1986, at the age of forty-three, she checked herself into a halfway house for women with eating disorders—the only facility that her insurance company would pay for. The residents were so frightened of her that they put her in an attic bedroom and booby-trapped the staircase at night; they thought she might come down and do something terrible to them.
One morning, after about a week at the halfway house, Katie had a life-changing experience. As she lay on the floor (she didn’t feel worthy enough to sleep in a bed), a cockroach crawled across her ankle and down her foot. She opened her eyes, and all her depression and fear, all the thoughts that had been tormenting her, were gone. “While I was lying on the floor,” she says, “I understood that when I was asleep, prior to cockroach or foot, prior to any thoughts, prior to any world, there was—there is—nothing. In that instant, the four questions of The Work were born.” She felt intoxicated with joy. The joy persisted for hours, then days, then months and years
What I love about The Work is how it cuts straight to the core of any issue. What I’ve learned is that it is never the situation that is bothering me, but rather my thoughts about the situation that bother me. My unwillingness to accept what is. My stories that tell me how everything should be different.
Sometimes I get really fired up about politics, world events, etc. When I use inquiry, I realize it boils down to one thing- This person has a different belief structure than I do. That’s it. This person believes something differently than I do. Is that something to get so pissed off about it? Who even knows if my belief system is the best one!
My favorite part in this video is when the gentlemen realizes his part in the resentment. His mom was drunk on alcohol, he was drunk on self-pity. So powerful. Sometimes I get drunk on wanting to be right, that I get blinded to other points of view. It is funny to watch my mind sometimes. Topics I know nothing about, I immediately pick a side and start to come up with scenarios that prove my point of view.
Being introduced to this work brings up the question “Who would I be without my story”? I know there is one thing that all of us have in common- a voice in our heads that tell us things should be different than they are. And regardless of how life looks on the outside, that inner voice can make life unbearable at times. What if the story changed? It has been my own experience that nothing changes until the story changes.
“Peace doesn’t require two people; it requires only one. It has to be you. The problem begins and ends there.”- Byron Katie
If you would like to learn more about inquiry via The Work of Byron Katie, take a look at the judge your neighbor worksheet and one belief at a time worksheet here: