In my last post, I shared my experience with Byron Katie’s The Work on painful thoughts about my deceased mother. After receiving feedback from others new to The Work, and encountering questions myself, this post addresses frequently asked questions when doing The Work yourself.
For many people, it’s easier to understand The Work when we see it live. At the end of this post, I’ve included a clip of Byron Katie doing the work with a woman (who’s a therapist) who cannot let go of her worry and anger towards her alcoholic friend.
What The Work Is Not
The Work is not about condoning or accepting abusive or hurtful behavior. If someone is in an abusive situation (mental or physical), the first thing to do is to remove themselves from it as soon as possible. The Work is about understanding our thoughts, not the abuser’s thoughts. That’s their work, not ours.
It’s also not about enabling or being passive when action is needed and possible.
What to do When you Think The Work isn’t Working
The Work is a meditative practice and a journey. It’s important to remember that when we’re trying to change ingrained thought patterns that have been with us for most of our lives, we need to be gentle, kind, and patient with ourselves.
The Work is an ongoing and deepening process of self-realization, not a quick fix. “It’s more than a technique,” Katie says. “It brings to life, from deep within us, an innate aspect of our being.”
Loving What Is — Byron Katie & Stephen Mitchell
The following questions and answers are taken from thework.com and the book, Loving What Is. Some are verbatim and some I have paraphrased.
It does in its own way, but you may not recognize it. When you question your troubling thoughts, you’re really accessing your Core Self, which is the beginning of Self realization or awakening. For example, you may have written about your mom and notice that your neighbor (who’s driven you crazy for years) no longer bothers you.
Start with the thought that’s troubling you right now. The one causing you the most grief.
Could it be that if the answer you think you’re looking for doesn’t appear, you’re blocking the true answer? Could it be that you may not really want to know the truth? You may not be ready to let go of your attachment to your thoughts. Give it some time and continue coming back to it if it feels right to you.
No. Experience is just perception. The moment we attach to a thought, it becomes our religion. And we keep attempting to prove that it’s valid. The harder we try to prove what we can’t know is true, the more we experience pain, depression and disappointment.
Yes, your family may see you that way. As you come to see what isn’t true for you, you may lose the most essential agreements with your family. For example, Charley should brush his teeth. Is it true? No, not until he does. You’ve got ten years of proof that Charley doesn’t brush his teeth regularly. For ten years, you’ve gotten angry, yelled at him, and put a guilt trip on him.
Now the whole family is telling Charley to brush his teeth — just as you taught them to. When they look to you for consent, and you don’t give it, they may begin to shame you — just as you taught them to.
If your truth now is kind, it will run fast and deep within your family. Eventually, your family will come to see as you now do. There’s no other choice. Your family is a projected image of your thinking.
Quite the opposite. I notice that if I believe it shouldn’t exist when it does exist, I suffer. Can I just end the war in me? Can I stop raping myself and others with my abusive thoughts? Otherwise I’m continuing through me the very thing I want to end in the world. I start with ending my own suffering, my own war. This is a life’s work.
To simply turn thoughts around keeps the process intellectual and is of little value. The invitation is to go beyond the intellect. The questions are like probes that dive into the mind, bringing deeper knowledge to the surface. Ask the questions first, and then wait. Once the answers have arisen, then do the turnarounds. The surface mind and the deeper mind (I call it the heart) meet, and the turnarounds feel like true discoveries.
Your family is a projected image of your thinking.
Byron Katie
Living The Work
The key takeaways to The Work are:
- Peace requires only one person — ourselves. The problem begins and ends with us.
- There’s no mistake in the Universe. If we lose a loved one and believe we shouldn’t have, our suffering begins there.
- Self-realization helps us be fully responsible for ourselves. That’s where true freedom is.
- It’s not others’ job to change, forgive, or be honest. It’s ours. We must be the example. We are our only hope.
- Instead of looking to others for fulfillment, we must find it in ourselves.
- The whole world is about us. Everything and everyone that angers, disgusts, or frightens us is about our awakening.
- Be patient and understanding with yourself. If The Work doesn’t resonate within you, then leave it. You may come back to it later or find another teaching that feels right to you. This isn’t about finding an immediate fix to a problem — although that often happens. The point of The Work is accessing our core Self (who we really are) and allowing Self to guide us in our daily life.
- How do we know if The Work is right for us now? The degree of peace we feel within.
