Loving What Is: How Four Questions Can Change Your Life [Paperback]

‘...a revolutionary way to live your life. The question is: are we brave enough to accept it?’

‘...a pragmatic and simple way of getting people to take responsibility for their own problems.’

A major work by spiritual teacher Byron Katie: a simple, straightforward system for achieving inner peace

The Work began on a February morning in 1986, when Byron Katie woke up on the floor of a halfway house, at a complete dead end in her life, and began to laugh. She had woken up without any concept of who, where, or what she was. She awoke to the fundamental, luminous state of being that is without any separation, that experiences itself as pure love. Like great spiritual masters from many traditions, she knew she had reached the end of confusion and suffering. That was the moment she burst into laughter. Determined to give people a way to discover for themselves what she had realized, Katie developed a simple method of self-enquiry that she called The Work, a life-transforming system for discarding the stories we tell ourselves, which are the source of suffering, and replacing them with the truth ("what is") and a life of total joy. She began teaching The Work wherever she was invited - at first in small, informal gatherings and eventually to packed workshops around the world. The Work consists of only four simple questions that you can apply to any problem. It is so easy and practical - but also profound in its application.

Byron Katie lives in Los Angeles. Stephen Mitchell's widely acclaimed translations of the Tao Te Ching and the Bhagavad Gita (Rider 2000) are respected the world over. He lives in California. (20020218)

1.
A Few Basic
Principles
What I love about The Work is that it allows you to go inside and find your own happiness, to experience what already exists within you, unchanging, immovable, ever-present, ever-waiting. No teacher is necessary. You are the teacher you’ve been waiting for. You are the one who can end your own suffering.
I often say, ‘Don’t believe anything I say.’ I want you to discover what’s true for you, not for me. Still, many people have found the following principles to be helpful for getting started in The Work.
Noticing When Your Thoughts
Argue with Reality
The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.
If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, ‘Meow.’ Wanting reality to be different than it is is hopeless. You can spend the rest of your life trying to teach a cat to bark.
And yet, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that you think thoughts like this dozens of times a day. ‘People should be kinder.’ ‘Children should be well-behaved.’ ‘My neighbors should take better care of their lawn.’ ‘The line at the grocery store should move faster.’ ‘My husband (or wife) should agree with me.’ ÒI should be thinner (or prettier or more successful).’ These thoughts are ways of wanting reality to be different than it is. If you think that this sounds depressing, you’re right. All the stress that we feel is caused by arguing with what is.
After I woke up to reality in 1986, people often referred to me as the woman who made friends with the wind. Barstow is a desert town where the wind blows a lot of the time, and everyone hated it; people even moved from there because they couldn’t stand the wind. The reason I made friends with the wind, with reality, is that I discovered I didn’t have a choice. I realized that it’s quite insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose, but only 100 percent of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It’s blowing!
People new to The Work often say to me, ‘But it would be disempowering to stop my argument with reality. If I simply accept reality, I’ll become passive. I may even lose the desire to act.’ I answer them with a question: ‘Can you really know that that’s true?’ Which is more empowering?, ‘I wish I hadn’t lost my job’ or ‘I lost my job; what can I do now?’
The Work reveals that what you think shouldn’t have happened should have happened. It should have happened because it did, and no thinking in the world can change it. This doesn’t mean that you condone it or approve of it. It just means that you can see things without resistance and without the confusion of your inner struggle. No one wants their children to get sick, no one wants to be in a car accident; but when these things happen, how can it be helpful to mentally argue with them? We know

better than to do that, yet we do it, because we don’t know how to stop.
I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.