Insight Mentoring Archives
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Insight Mentoring Archives
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Byron Katie and "The Work" October 13, 1999 The following description of Bryon Katie's work was forwarded to me by one of AIA's Mentoring Center members. This series of posts appeared as a supplement to the Nonduality Salon Email Forum Highlights, and is originally from Satsang with Everyone by PETROS. You may subscribe to the Nonduality Salon Email Forum and the Email Forum Highlights through ONElist: For a comprehensive list of links to other awakening-related websites, see the Nonduality Salon's List of Nondual People PETROS reports: Katie's teaching is more psychological in nature than metaphysical. It's referred to simply as "The Work" (tm), and she has "intensives" and two-week "certification" courses rather than satsangs. The intensives are free or for donation only, but the longer courses may be expensive. This weekend's intensive was held in a hotel ballroom in El Segundo, adjacent to LAX for convenience I suppose. It was set up like a satsang, with about a hundred chairs facing a wide dais with a comfy couch upon which Katie sat. She has a very professional organization, with video monitors arranged about the room and several wireless microphones that volunteer assistants could pass around to people who had questions and comments. Katie herself wore a headset mike, which meant you didn't have to strain to hear what was being said. Essentially she asked who was taking "The Work" for the first time, and picked someone from the group of raised hands to come up and sit beside her on the couch. Prior to the start of the meeting everyone who registered was handed a piece of paper on which to write down the basic self-inquiry questions in the Work which could then be discussed on the platform. Katie has a soft but very confident and intelligent manner. Her whole work consists of encouraging people to "turn around" their judgments of others, bring them back to themselves, so that they can see clearly how their judgments of others merely reflect self-judgment. She says it's best to begin by judging others, because we're so good at it! After working with one man's particular problem for about ten or fifteen minutes, Katie turned to the audience and encouraged people to provide feedback; then used this feedback itself as a means of showing each person how they are really addressing themselves. The exciting part is that eventually people "get it," and actually listen to themselves before saying anything that they wouldn't be able to "turn around" and put back on themselves. More on "the Work" in my next post. When you register at the desk you are handed the "Little Blue Book" which contains the written portion of "The Work." In a nutshell, this is: "Judge your neighbor, write it down, ask four questions, turn it around!" Also, one is handed a clipboard and a printed form which contains the same questions, and one is "invited" to fill this out prior to the beginning of the intensive. [Please note: Both this Little Blue Book (for free upon request) and this series of questions (posted in a worksheet format) are available on BK's website.] The inquiry is as follows: 1. Who or what don't you like? Who or what irritates you? Who or what saddens or disappoints you? (I don't like or am angry at ___________, because _____________.) (When one of Katie's volunteers greeted me at the registration desk and helped me find a seat I was already a little annoyed, as I tend to get very hostile and hyper-cynical before anything of this sort. When she asked me without any preface, "Who are you angry at?" I thought she was reading the expression on my face and was a little taken aback until I realized she was just showing me how to do the inquiry. I considered saying something like, "People who ask stupid questions," but my brain wasn't working fast enough....) 2. How do you want them to change? What do you want them to do?
(I want __________ (name) to ____________.)
3. What is it they should or shouldn't do, be, think or feel?
What advice could you offer?
4. Do you need anything from them? What do they need to give
you or do for you to be happy?
(Katie says, "Personalities don't love, they want something.")
5. What do you think of them? Make a list.
6. What is it that you don't want to experience with that person,
thing or situation again?
The "Four Questions" part is:
a. Is it true?
b. Can I really know that it's true?
c. How do I react when I think this thought?
d. Who would I be without this thought?
And the big "shift" comes at the "turn around" portion of "The Work," which follows in my next post. After dialoging with someone form the audience, going through the person's six questions and four inquiries, Katie works to get the person to turn the judgment around, back onto oneself. This is the most important part of the whole process, and is where the real shift of awareness comes in. This is also why Katie wants us to start work with others rather than ourselves, since we have so much more practice judging others (this is also a good example of her subtle humor.) It also creates more of a shift when the turn-around takes place. For instance: the first person up on the couch with Katie was an Australian man who decided to write about a Rajneesh therapist he knew by the name of Tirtha. He read from his notes that he felt this man was continually bullying him, disrespecting him, and had prejudice against him. Katie said "turn it around." Thus: "I am continually bullying myself, disrespecting myself, and have prejudice against myself." The point is not to try to get rid of these negative attitudes, but to go deeply within and experience them. Quotes from Katie: "It's not other people's job to acknowledge you or like you; that's your job." "Thoughts appear. It's not personal. You're not doing it." Though the intensive was scheduled from 9:30-4:30 today and Sunday, I left after just an hour because I felt I had "gotten" what she was saying. I was feeling a lot better about everyone there, no more hostility or irritation, so I figured that was a good time to leave. Maybe I'll come back tomorrow morning. You know, I felt after I left the meeting this morning that something really important was going on there. There is this sense one receives from Byron that there is almost no "person" left inside her. Just a precise responsiveness to others. Yet I was too asleep or dull to appreciate it until hours later. I will come back Sunday morning and sit in on another session. Quotes from Losing the Moon: Byron Katie Dialogues on "As God, I'm watching my image. It's called you. It's called the books over there. It's called the wall. Fireplace. Everything. Okay? So I'm watching it, and I thought I was that. I thought I was God. Here's how I came in as a reversal: I wasn't born this woman for 43 years and then awakened -- I was BORN. I was born at what you would call age 43. I came from nowhere and nothing. It was wiped out. I looked at my hand for the first time. I came in through a back door." "I'm too beautiful to be nothing and no-one. Give me a mirror. Why would I deny my very self?" "To wake up forever implies time. To wake up is just a past history apparently arising. It's old. It's to keep you from the experience now.... The stories go on, but without attachment to the story. And that's what the inquiry leaves us with. The freedom of non-attachment. Internal. Detachment from the movie." "When you look at, 'What do I get for holding the belief, I want to be enlightened,' you see you get to stay stuck in what you quote Ramana as saying is the problem ["The only obstacle to your enlightenment is the belief that you are not enlightened." Ramana Maharshi]. And the inquiry shows that beyond a doubt. . . . And who would you be without it? That's when you go into that space. And you can continue to hold the same concept after investigation, but without attachment, which is mostly what I experience you do anyway. You can't long for what you don't know. The concept is what you say it is." "And I could honestly say, 'Nothing is God.' It doesn't even exist, it's just one more concept. But when a person has 'God is good, everything is God,' then everything has to fall into that pocket. It's a one-mindedness....And it's infinite. So, it's that symbol that I suggest to people. Everything will fall into it, beautifully. And on the other side of it, when all falls into it, you come to see that it is nothing." "For some of us, to go back to the Self is to ignore what's out there -- it's a direction that would exclude. And I say, love where you are, because that's my experience." "I'm pretending not to be non-duality. Ramana holds the place where people can understand that truth. And I pretend I don't. And there's no 'I' doing it. It's just an appearance." I returned to the Byron Katie intensive this afternoon for a couple of hours. I was feeling a lot better. I definitely confirmed the sense I got yesterday about the quality of BK's method of approach and understanding. She invited a 12-year old boy up to her couch to dialogue about some abuse he had experienced from a stepfather, and time he spent in a shelter for single women and their children. Katie listened as he read from his "Work sheet" the six questions (see my earlier post) and helped him through the process of "turning it around." (This process of writing it down, going through each inquiry, and "turning it around" is called "doing The Work.") Judgments of other people in our lives are thus clarified and turned around, so that we can easily see how we are really only ever judging ourselves. Negative judgments are inquired into. Crucial Katie-isms: "Can you see a reason for keeping this thought? Don't try to get rid of it! But can you see a reason for keeping it? Who would you be without this thought?" "Is this judgment true? Can you know that _____________ is true?" "Judge your neighbor, write it down, ask four questions, turn it around." "If you're over in someone else's mind dealing with their business, and they're in there dealing with it anyway, that's two of you over there, and there's nobody where YOU are. No wonder you feel lonely!" "Except for the story, there's no reality to it. Ever." This process took about half an hour, after which Katie opened the dialogue up to the audience for comments, questions and general feedback. Most people in the audience offered their support and encouragement to the boy. He really did fantastically well. Afterward everyone was invited up to the couch to give him a big hug. (His mom, too.) aleks questions PETROS: PETROS: aleks: PETROS: In my experience, some sort of setup is necessary. The "couch" has become practically a religious icon in psychotherapy. In satsang, it's the Chair. (Though Katie uses a couch on a dais, so that she can have a person sit next to her during dialogue and everyone can see.) Katie also has some flowers and music, and photos of her can be purchased along with audio and video cassettes of prior intensives. However, there is no prostration or folding of hands (namaste), it's very "western" except for the dais arrangement. I mean, anyone (like me) who's been to many satangs would immediately see the Indian influence and either feel comforted (like me) or put off (if someone had bad experiences with "gurus" in the past.) aleks: PETROS: aleks: PETROS: If you lose too much "persona" in this part of the world, you are not likely to be respected as a Teacher, but just end up homeless instead. There's a place for such extremism in India, but it is not part of our culture. That's okay, because I like it this way. [ An excerpt from: Satsang with Everyone and the Nonduality Salon Email Forum Highlights ] |
