Byron Kathleen Mitchell (née Reid), better known as Byron Katie (born 1942)[1] is an American speaker and author who teaches a method of self-inquiry known as "The Work".
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Biography
Byron Kathleen Reid (more often known as Byron Katie) became severely depressed in her early thirties. She was a businesswoman and mother living in a little town in the high desert of southern California. For almost a decade she spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and constant thoughts of suicide; for the last two years she was often unable to leave her bedroom. Then, one morning in February 1986, while in a mental health treatment facility, [2] she experienced a life-changing realization. Katie's experience was similar to spiritual awakenings described in Buddhist and Hindu traditions under various names; she calls it “waking up to reality.” In that moment of enlightenment, she says,
I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always.
Katie is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition. She is married to the poet and translator Stephen Mitchell, who co-wrote her first book, Loving What Is and her third book, A Thousand Names for Joy.
Beginnings of The Work
Soon afterward people started seeking Katie out, asking how they could find the freedom that they saw in her.[3] People from her town and eventually from elsewhere came to meet her, and some to even live with her. Katie’s method of self-inquiry, which she calls The Work, is an embodiment, in words, of the wordless questioning that had woken up in her on that February morning. As reports spread about the transformations people felt they were experiencing through The Work, Katie was invited to present it publicly elsewhere in California, then throughout the United States, and eventually in Europe and across the world.[3] She has brought The Work to people at free public events, in prisons, hospitals, churches, corporations, shelters for survivors of domestic violence, universities and schools, at weekend intensives, and at her nine-day School for The Work.
The Work
The Work is based on four questions and a process called a "turnaround". The four questions are:
- Is it true?
- Can you absolutely know that it's true?
- How do you react when you believe that thought?
- Who would you be without the thought?
The Work can be done either by oneself or with another person. First one identifies a belief or thought related to a topic that causes anxiety or unhappiness. Initially one is encouraged to choose something which feels important, which annoys or troubles you, that someone else does or did: for example "My mother never loved me," or "Tom shouldn't expect me to solve his problems." One by one, the person doing the Work asks themselves or is asked each of the four questions listed above. If they are doing the Work by themselves, people are asked to write down their response, and if they are doing it with another person they speak their answers aloud. After the four questions, the thought is literally turned around to its opposite. For example: "My mother never loved me" turns around to "My mother always loved me," Then the person doing The Work sees if they can find ways that this new thought is equally true, or more true, than the original thought. The turnaround also takes the form of turning the statement around to oneself: "I never loved my mother," or "I never loved me." Katie sumarizes The Work as: "Judge your neighbor, write it down. Ask four questions, turn it around." Katie has applied this technique to exploring painful beliefs across many topics including relationships, parenting, illness, death and trauma. She has facilitated the work with audiences in widely varying situations, from ordinary people dealing with financial worries to prison inmates and survivors of armed conflict.
Bibliography
- Loving What Is: Four Questions that Can Change Your Life, Three Rivers Press, 2002, ISBN 1-4000-4537-1 (PB)
- I Need Your Love - Is That True? How to Stop Seeking Love, Appreciation, and Approval and Start Finding Them Instead, 2005, ISBN 1-4000-5107-X (HC)
- A Thousand Names for Joy: A Guide to Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are. Harmony Press, 2007. ISBN 0-307-33923-8 (HC)
- Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie. Hay House Inc, 2007. ISBN 1401917305 (PB)
- Losing The Moon, Dialogues on Non-Duality. Manhattan Beach, 1998, ISBN 90-804880-1-1 (PB)
Notes
- ^ Matousek, Mark. Quit Your Pain in AARP The Magazine, May & June 2006
- ^ Massad, Sunny (2001). An Interview with Byron Katie
- ^ a b Adato, Allison. How a Self-Help Guru Is Born in The Los Angeles Times, Nov. 24, 2002
References
- Time Magazine 12/04/2000 : Innovators - Byron Katie. Four Questions to Inner Peace "TIME predicts the most innovative people of the 21st Century."
- The Noumenon Journal, Summer 2000/2001: An Interview with Byron Katie
