Have you ever heard about “The Work” by Byron Katie?
I’m learning about it now, reading her remarkable book “Loving What Is.” How freeing it’d be to love all your what-is just as it is, don’t you think?
She teaches this through her simple self-inquiry method, The Work.
A Different Way of Letting Go
Ultimately, The Work is about letting go, much like The Sedona Method, but it’s stamped with Katie’s unique, enlightening experience.
It’s fascinating to discover letting go can come in infinitely creative ways!
Want to watch a short video (7 min) on Byron Katie’s incredible journey from a deep depression to discovering her method? Here’s a lovely animation that sums it all up.
The Work’s 4 Questions
The Work uses four questions to zap and detect the lies out of thoughts that keep you stuck in suffering, thus freeing you to many possibilities:
- 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 that thought?
Is there anything making you less than happy at the moment?
Apply these questions to each thought behind it and confront the hidden negativity and outright “lies” that these thoughts are hiding.
After you go through your suffering-causing thoughts and determine none of them are true—inverse the thought.
For example the opposite of Paul does not love me would be Paul loves me, or I don’t love myself. Be creative when coming up with alternatives. This will help you realize there are many constructive possibilities for creating beliefs your mind will deem true and latch onto instead of a painful one.
That’s why Byron Katie says suffering is optional—the same as Lester Levenson, creator of The Sedona Method, and so many other masters who’ve been saying the same for eons.
Sedonafying “The Work”
I couldn’t help but add a little Sedona twist to the Qs. Here’s what I came up with in the corresponding order:
- Could you pause and be? Could you just be who or what you are?
- Could you open yourself to awareness, and recognize that it is just a thought? It is not YOU.
- Could you allow yourself to see it’s responsible for the emotion you’re feeling, and could you let it go?
- Could you allow yourself to see that without the thought you are pure “Beingness”?
Making Your Mind the Hero for Faster Breakthroughs
Katie’s work seems particularly powerful in disarming stubborn thoughts that keep returning because it involves the mind in self-inquiry.
And the mind loves to be the hero. Have you been noticing that? Yeah.
Trying Out The Work?
I’m totally giving The Work a try. I’m sure Katie’s method can only bring more ah-ha moments. And you never know until you try it, right?
I still think it’s easier just to drop the emotion, pin pointing the ego’s underlying wants to let them go as well and instantly be infinite Beingness.
What do you think?
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