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September/October 2002 Living Now
Love (and Enlightenment) American Style

by Carol L. Skolnick

Byron Katie, founder of a remarkable self-inquiry process called The Work and author of "Loving What Is," had an extraordinary "spiritual awakening" in the midst of an ordinary small-town American life. But what makes The Work of Byron Katie so radical is that it's so simple, so un-mystical, so straightforward, so...American.

The quest for inner peace has driven seekers through the ages - as well as folks who just want to be happy - but is so much easier said than done. Why this dichotomy between the "spiritual life" and a mind that continues to judge, blame, fear, and react after years of sincere study and practice?

According to Byron Katie, it's because everything's upside down. What we believe to be true, isn't. What we've been told works, doesn't. What we thought we wanted was our prison, and what we found unacceptable was perfect...all because we've not gone within to find out what's true for us. And we haven't done that because we haven't known how.

For the last 15 years, Katie has helped an estimated 300,000 people worldwide to change that through a self-inquiry process she calls "The Work." Neither spiritual path nor psychological modality, The Work contains elements of both, showing us how to be our own guru, psychiatrist, loved one, and teacher of the truth. In the pages of Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, Katie's program - once available only at workshops and gatherings - is spelled out. Co-written with her husband, the distinguished author-translator Stephen Mitchell, Loving What Is provides the means to "undo" beliefs that cause suffering, along with dozens of examples of The Work in action.

What Katie knows to be true can be summed up in one of her favorite sayings: "I am the perpetrator of my suffering; but only all of it." She learned this one morning in 1986, at the age of 43, after a ten-year descent into depression and hopelessness. Despite "having it all" - money, glamour, marriage and family - Katie had become increasingly paranoid and agoraphobic, and had long considered suicide. She awoke one morning on the floor of a halfway house to discover that nothing was as it had previously seemed. In this rapturous state the past disappeared and the future didn't exist; only love remained.

People, attracted to her energy, would sometimes ask, "Are you enlightened?" "I don't know anything about that," Katie would answer. "I'm just someone who knows the difference between what hurts and what doesn't." What hurts, according to Katie, is believing what isn't true for you, living a lie, arguing with reality.

Eventually, Katie was able to convey her experience of unfoldment as a simple written process that could be taught by answering four questions:

Is it true?

Can you absolutely know that it's true?

How do you react when you think that thought?

Who or what would you be without it?

These questions are, Katie says, "the ones the heart has been asking for eons," and the route to our freedom. Beginners in The Work are exhorted to "Judge your neighbor, write it down, ask four questions, and turn it around." We judge others at first, rather than ourselves, precisely because we've always tried hard not to. ("I had to begin with something I was good at," Katie jokes.) Writing down the judgments is an essential step. Without censorship, we list on paper every petty thought we've ever had about whomever. As we become more comfortable with The Work, we eventually tackle abstract concepts such as God, the body, war, money, or death.

How does this relate to your life? Chances are you haven't woken up on the floor in a permanent state of supreme bliss; perhaps you're someone whose boss has just yelled at you, and suddenly you're not feeling so spiritual. You want to live in the Now? Uninvestigated, pain is your Now. The boss yells, and it hurts. She raised her voice, and the mind creates stories about what that means: My boss doesn't appreciate me. Nobody respects me. I shouldn't feel pain.

First statement: "My boss doesn't appreciate me." You ask, "Is it true?" First impulse might be to answer yes. Upon deeper inquiry - question two, "Can you really know that it's true?" - you may find you don't know what your boss really thinks of you; you can only know your response to what she says and does. On to question three: "How do you react when you think that thought?" What do you say to your boss, what do you do? How do you treat yourself when you think she doesn't appreciate you? How does this single story color your entire life, and give birth to other beliefs about yourself and others? Are these beliefs peaceful or stressful?

The final question, "Who or what would you be without that thought?" is a revelation: if it never occurred to you that the boss did not appreciate you, how would you feel? What could you do that you can't do now? What would your life look like? (It might look like the freedom you've always wanted.)

Last comes the "turnaround" portion of The Work: "My boss doesn't appreciate me" gets reversed to its extreme opposite, "My boss does appreciate me." Could this be just as true sometimes? Other turnarounds: "I don't appreciate me" (my hurt feelings could stem form believing what my boss says about me) and "I don't appreciate my boss" (especially when I believe she does not appreciate me). Again, you'd investigate each of these statements until you find peace within yourself.

The Work is a surgery that cuts to the core of reality; but that's the kindest cut, letting us know for ourselves we are always okay now...even in annoyance, anger, terror, or on our deathbed. As Katie says, "Confusion is the only suffering." Wanting circumstances - or people, or who you are - to be different is a bad dream. To inquire deeply into the very same dark and nasty thoughts we'd all rather dismiss...to be willing to know nothing...to ask yourself what's really going on in any given moment...and to stay in your own business: that's how peace can be found. Deconstruct the story, and suffering ends; we "love what is."

Isn't it counterproductive to focus on the negative? Thought is not the enemy, Katie assures us. Detachment from thought happens, not by command (though that can work in the short run), but when we inquire gently. Katie never asks that we drop our stories, but that we meet each one as a friend, or as a child...a child whom we love.

When I first encountered The Work early in 2001, I was shocked at both its power and simplicity. I had invested many years (and dollars) in spiritual study, and therapy, and still I didn't have a clue. Suddenly there was this woman out of Small-town U.S.A. who'd never read the Bible or the Gita, never studied with Masters, never worked on herself...who didn't know me but treated me with complete love and respect, and asked me four questions about stuff I'd avoided all my life: "My boyfriend should not have abused me, is it true? What is the reality of it; did he? Should a red rose be pink? A red rose is red, and that man was abusive; that's what is. I needn't condone abuse, but I suffer because I want him to be different." Yikes! Everything I thought I knew, out the window! And, once the shock wore off, relief.

But even as I use The Work in my life, I continue to do many of the practices I enjoyed before. I find that The Work complements rather than contradicts them. Not surprisingly, I hear more and more spiritual teachers of my acquaintance recommending The Work and invoking Byron Katie in their own teachings. Since there's nothing to believe or disbelieve in The Work, it is entirely compatible with any religion, philosophy, or therapy.

One needn't even do The Work with an agenda to feel better; but that seems to come by itself once a story is undone. What's more, if your stories are working, you can keep them. Katie always reminds us to be gentle with ourselves and go at our own pace. "The Work is just four questions," she says. "They don't even say 'answer me.'"

But if a story hurts, you may want to ask why. All it takes is a pen and paper, and a willingness to get real.

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (Harmony Books; hardcover; 304 pages; $24.00); Byron Katie's website is www.thework.com.

Carol L. Skolnick is a spirituality writer and creativity consultant who facilitates The Work of Byron Katie in New York City and by phone. Her e-mail is sput6@aol.com; website: EclecticSpirituality.com. For information about local Work groups call Margaret Deane at 503-697-1804.