July/August 2005 Featured Stories
I Need Your Love - Is That True?
An Interview with Byron Katie

by Marta Freundlich

Byron Katie

Katie’s first book, Loving What Is, became a bestseller and she has been hailed by Time Magazine as "...a spiritual innovator for the new millennium." People all around the world have found The Work, a process of inquiry for questioning beliefs and attitudes, helpful. Here Katie speaks to New ConneXion about her recent book, I Need Your Love—Is That True?

Why did you write I Need Your Love—Is That True? How does it differ from Loving What Is?

Loving What Is presents the general method of inquiry that I call "The Work". I Need Your Love – Is That True? applies The Work to love and relationships. It focuses on the issues that cause the most suffering in human beings if they aren’t desperate for food or water. When we question our stressful thoughts about love, we can begin to find true fulfillment. It doesn’t take two people to have a happy marriage—it takes only one. This book takes people very slowly and gently through the process of inquiry, so that anyone can use it. Throughout the book, I help people inquire into some painful and universally held thoughts about relationships—thoughts like "I have to win the love and approval of other people" and "If you really love me, you’ll do what I want." Readers will also discover what love looks like when it’s not about seeking, wanting and needing; when it is so firmly established in them that there is nothing outside it. If you believe your stressful thoughts, your life is filled with stress. But if you question your thoughts, you come to love your life and everyone in it.

This book seems to be telling us to stop seeking love, appreciation and approval. What is the problem with seeking them?

Actually, my book doesn’t tell you to stop doing anything. It provides you with a simple method of seeing for yourself what is true and what isn’t. When you question your stressful thoughts, you naturally begin to stop seeking from others what only you can give yourself. You don’t have to do anything to stop; it stops by itself.

Are you saying that we don’t need to look for love to be happy?

Love itself is synonymous with true happiness. When we have that, other people’s love is the icing on the cake. But when we think we need other people’s love, we become needy, we try to please them, and it’s never enough. One example in my book is the story of a young woman who was dating a man she was very attracted to. She talked more than she usually did, she did everything she could to appear smart and interesting. Finally he said he didn’t want to see her any more. When she asked why, he said he was looking for someone less intense, maybe even not so clever. She realized that the real her would have been a perfect match.

Can we ever truly question what we believe?

Absolutely. Hundreds of thousands of people across the world are doing it through The Work. The Work allows you to question your judgment about anyone or anything by using a simple process of four questions and what I call a ‘turnaround’, which is a way of experiencing the opposite of what you believe. The Work is a simple but amazingly powerful process. I sometimes call it ‘open-mind surgery’. When the mind is stuck, that’s the end of creativity. When the mind is open, the heart is open.

For example, there’s a story in the book about a woman whose husband left her to be with a woman who had just moved next door. She did The Work on the thought "He should come back to me." When she asked herself, "Is that true?" she was amazed to find the answer "No. Why should he come back to a person who tries to make him feel bad?" Then she asked the third question—"How do I react when I believe that he should come back to me, and he doesn’t?" Her reaction was rage, misery, nastiness, and manipulation. She finally understood that it was her own thinking that was making her miserable, not her ex-husband. She asked the fourth question—"Who would I be if I didn’t believe that he should come back to me?"—and her answer was, "I’d be much more peaceful. I’d love my husband and just want what’s best for him." And she found an amazing turnaround to the thought "He should come back to me." The turnaround was "I should come back to me." That hit her like lightning. She had a whole life to come back to, and her kids as well. Once she really got this, she began to heal from the pain of the breakup.

You tell us The Work can activate the authentic love, truth and wisdom that are within us. Where do these come from?

We are born in a state of balance with everything. Our original nature is joyous, benevolent, and kind. But when we believe what we think, we lose that balance. By questioning our stressful thoughts, we can wake ourselves up to the happiness that is our birthright.

Can you offer some suggestions as to how to maintain a positive outlook in a world full of fear, conflict, suffering and injustices?

The world is a mirror image of the mind. When our mind is happy, we perceive the world as benevolent. When our mind is confused, we perceive the world as full of fear and conflict. Nothing that happens can make us afraid, angry, or sad. It’s only our thoughts about what happens that make us afraid, angry, or sad. It’s like walking in a desert and you see a rattlesnake. You jump back, your heart pumps, your brow sweats, you’re paralyzed with fear. But when you take another look, you see that the snake is actually a rope. You can never make yourself afraid of that rope again because you have realized the power of what is true. Anyone who questions their mind can never be afraid of the ropes in the world.

Can The Work help us make a change in the world?

If people have a problem with other people or with the state of the world, I invite them to put their stressful thoughts on paper and question them, and to go in for the love of truth, not in order to save the world. Go in for the love of truth. Save your own world. Turn it around. In that turnaround you remain active, but there’s no fear in it. There’s no internal war in it. 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. It 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 problems, and in that, they begin to end the problems of the world.

I Need Your Love-Is That True? : How to Stop Seeking Love, Approval, and Appreciation and Start Finding Them Instead by Byron Katie, Harmony Books, 2005, $24. If you want to find out more about Katie, The Work and her workshops, visit www.thework.com.