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January/February 2007 Spirituality
A Thousand Names for Joy

by Byron Katie

Whoever is planted in the Tao will not be rooted up.

Byron Katie

We do only three things in life: we sit, we stand and we lie horizontal. That's about it. Everything else is a story. Life is not difficult; it's your thinking that makes it difficult. That's where your happiness or misery comes from. There are two ways to sit or stand or lie horizontal: you can do it comfortably, or you can do it with stress. If you don't love where you are, I invite you to question your beliefs.

It takes a lot of courage to go inside yourself and find genuine answers to the four questions of The Work. When you do, you lose all your stories about the world - you lose the whole world as you understood it to be. Once you question what you believe, you begin to see clearly, because the mind is no longer at war with itself. In fact, you become excited about reality, even about the worst that could happen. You open your arms to reality. Just show me a problem that doesn't come from believing an untrue thought.

Whatever happens, I always look for the gift in it. I don't have eyes for anything else. I know that if I lose anything or anyone, I've been spared. If my husband left me, I'd think, How do I know that I don't need him? He's gone. If I were to lose my legs, I'd think, How do I know that I don't need legs? I don't have them. Of course, freedom doesn't mean that you let unkind things happen - it doesn't mean passivity or masochism. If someone says he's going to cut off your legs, run!

How do you know that you need cancer? You've got it. But to accept cancer is not to lean back and do nothing; that's denial. You consult the best doctors you can afford, and you get the best treatment available. Do you think your body is going to heal most efficiently when you're tense and fearful and fighting cancer as an enemy? Or when you're loving what is and realizing all the ways in which your life is actually better because you have cancer, and from that calm center doing everything you can to heal? There's nothing more life-giving than inner peace.

The only time you suffer is when you believe a thought that argues with reality.

My eyes hurt this morning. With Fuch's dystrophy, there are blisters on the inside of the corneas, and sometimes the pain is intense. When I look at my granddaughter's face, all I see is a blur. I notice the thought How beautiful Marley is! and then it occurs to me that, given the progression of my disease, the time may come when I'll never see her face again. I understand that it's unnecessary; I can't find one place in me where it ultimately matters.

I may never see any of my grandchildren as they grow up, I may never see Stephen's face again, or my children's. And as I realize that, I look for sadness, and I can only find joy. An overwhelming sense of gratitude for life wells up in me, for how full life is and how nothing is ever missing, how everything is the way it's supposed to be. I continue to wait and see if I can find a need for something more, and it doesn't appear.

Excerpted from Bryon Katie's A Thousand Names for Joy: A Guide to Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are (Harmony Books, 2007). Katie experienced what she calls "waking up to reality" in 1986, and since then she has introduced her simple yet powerful method of self-inquiry, which she calls The Work, to thousands of people throughout the world. See Katie on Feb. 13 at Powell's Books in Portland and on Feb. 14 at UW University Book Store in Seattle. Visit www.TheWork.com.