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Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (Audio CD)
by Byron Katie , Stephen Mitchell
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Personal Transformation, Spirituality |
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Author: Byron Katie , Stephen Mitchell
Publisher: Audio Literature
Pub. in: August, 2002
ISBN: 1574535250
Pages:
Measurements: 6.9 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BB00113
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-1574535259
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Who or what would you be without your thoughts?, Katie asks. A seemingly oversimplified question that does nothing to help solve your problems. Katie shows us that there are no problems except your thoughts about them. Behind every single negative or stressful emotion lies some direct or indirect thought. That is the premise of this book. It is the premise of the Buddha's teaching, but Katie's method is far simpler. That is her genius. The simplicity is what makes this book immense.
Here's what this book has taught me. You can't pay the mortgage is simply a fact of life, until your THOUGHTS about what that means depresses you. Your wife leaving you is simply a fact, until the THOUGHT of that depresses you. Everything is simply what it is, reality, until your THOUGHTS about that reality depresses you. Otherwise, reality is just reality. You and me supply 100% of what reality means, of what life means, through the instrument of thought. Every single reference point in life is just a thought. We THINK we need love, appreciation, money, God, good career and so on, so in their absence, we become depressed because our thoughts are arguing with the reality of the situation. Where did this depression originate? From our THOUGHTS about needing this and that. We think ourselves happy, we think ourselves miserable. In reality, there is no love and hate, no happiness or unhappiness, good or bad, just what is. When we see this, it will hit you like a bolt of lightening. Everything you have ever thought, felt and experienced will fly out of the window. When we see this, as Katie would wish, we come to LOVE WHAT IS. In our full acceptance of reality, we become at peace with existence. Your problems as you knew them come to an end.
For those that cannot find the answers in this book, it's because there are no answers to life. We have THOUGHTS that there are answers to life's problems. What problems? If there are no problems, there is no need for solutions. Your thoughts that problems exist will keep you perpetually searching for an answer to a non-existent problem.
(From quoting Lisa Biskup, USA)
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Byron Katie experienced what she calls “waking up to reality” in 1986, and since then she has introduced The Work to hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world. In addition to her public events, she has introduced The Work into business settings, universities, schools, churches, prisons, and hospitals.
Stephen Mitchell’s many books include the best-selling Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, The Gospel According to Jesus, Meetings with the Archangel, and The Frog Prince.
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From Publisher
Out of nowhere, like a fresh breeze in a marketplace crowded with advice on what to believe, comes Byron Katie and what she calls “The Work.” In the midst of a normal life, Katie became increasingly depressed, and over a ten-year period sank further into rage, despair, and thoughts of suicide. Then one morning, she woke up in a state of absolute joy, filled with the realization of how her own suffering had ended. The freedom of that realization has never left her, and now in Loving What Is you can discover the same freedom through The Work.
The Work is simply four questions that, when applied to a specific problem, enable you to see what is troubling you in an entirely different light. As Katie says, “It’s not the problem that causes our suffering; it’s our thinking about the problem.” Contrary to popular belief, trying to let go of a painful thought never works; instead, once we have done The Work, the thought lets go of us. At that point, we can truly love what is, just as it is.
Loving What Is will show you step-by-step, through clear and vivid examples, exactly how to use this revolutionary process for yourself. You’ll see people do The Work with Katie on a broad range of human problems, from a wife ready to leave her husband because he wants more sex, to a Manhattan worker paralyzed by fear of terrorism, to a woman suffering over a death in her family. Many people have discovered The Work’s power to solve problems; in addition, they say that through The Work they experience a sense of lasting peace and find the clarity and energy to act, even in situations that had previously seemed impossible.
If you continue to do The Work, you may discover, as many people have, that the questioning flows into every aspect of your life, effortlessly undoing the stressful thoughts that keep you from experiencing peace. Loving What Is offers everything you need to learn and live this remarkable process, and to find happiness as what Katie calls “a lover of reality.”
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The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is. - Baruch Spinoza
The first time I watched The Work, I realized that I was witnessing something truly remarkable. What I saw was a succession of people, young and old, educated and uneducated, who were learning to question their own thoughts, the thoughts that were most painful to them. With the lovingly incisive help of Byron Katie (everyone calls her Katie), these people were finding their way not only toward the resolution of their immediate problems, but also toward a state of mind in which the deepest questions are resolved. I have spent a good part of my life studying and translating the classic texts of the great spiritual traditions, and I recognized something very similar in process here. At the core of these traditions - in works such as the Book of Job, the Tao Te Ching, and the Bhagavad Gita - there is an intense questioning about life and death, and a profound, joyful wisdom that emerges as an answer. That wisdom, it seemed to me, was the place Katie was standing in, and the direction where these people were headed.
As I watched from my seat in a crowded community center, five men and women, one after another, were learning freedom through the very thoughts that had caused their suffering, thoughts such as "My husband betrayed me" or "My mother doesn't love me enough." Simply by asking four questions and listening to the answers they found inside themselves, these people were opening their minds to profound, spacious, and life-transforming insights. I saw a man who had been suffering for decades from anger and resentment toward his alcoholic father light up before my eyes within forty-five minutes. I saw a woman who had been almost too frightened to speak, because she had just found out that her cancer was spreading, end the session in a glow of understanding and acceptance. Three out of the five people had never done The Work before, yet the process didn't seem to be more difficult for them than it was for the other two, nor were their realizations any less profound. They all began by realizing a truth so basic that it is usually invisible: the fact that (in the words of the Greek philosopher Epictetus) "we are disturbed not by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens." As soon as they grasped that truth, their whole understanding changed.
Before people have experienced The Work of Byron Katie for themselves, they often think that it is too simple to be effective. But its simplicity is precisely what makes it so effective. Over the past two years, since first encountering it and meeting Katie, I have done The Work many times, on thoughts I hadn't even been aware of. And I've watched more than a thousand people do it in public events across the United States and Europe, on the whole gamut of human problems: from major illnesses, the deaths of parents and children, sexual and psychological abuse, addictions, financial insecurity, professional problems, and social issues to the usual frustrations of daily life. (Having a reserved seat at all Katie's events is one of the privileges of being married to her.) Again and again, I have seen The Work quickly and radically transform the way people think about their problems. And as the thinking changes, the problems disappear.
"Suffering is optional," Katie says. Whenever we experience a stressful feeling - anything from mild discomfort to intense sorrow, rage, or despair - we can be certain that there is a specific thought causing our reaction, whether or not we are conscious of it. The way to end our stress is to investigate the thinking that lies behind it, and anyone can do this by himself with a piece of paper and a pen. The Work's four questions, which you will see in context later in this introduction, reveal where our thinking isn't true for us. Through this process - Katie also calls it "inquiry" - we discover that all the concepts and judgments that we believe or take for granted are distortions of things as they really are. When we believe our thoughts instead of what is really true for us, we experience the kinds of emotional distress that we call suffering. Suffering is a natural alarm, warning us that we're attaching to a thought; when we don't listen, we come to accept this suffering as an inevitable part of life. It's not.
The Work has striking similarities with the Zen koan and the Socratic dialogue. But it doesn't stem from any tradition, Eastern or Western. It is American, homegrown, and mainstream, having originated in the mind of an ordinary woman who had no intention of originating anything.
To realize your true nature, you must wait for the right moment and the right conditions. When the time comes, you are awakened as if from a dream. You understand that what you have found is your own and doesn't come from anywhere outside.
Buddhist Sutra
The Work was born on a February morning in 1986 when Byron Kathleen Reid, a forty-three-year-old woman from a small town in the high desert of southern California, woke up on the floor of a halfway house.
In the midst of an ordinary life - two marriages, three children, a successful career -- Katie had entered a ten-year-long downward spiral into rage, paranoia, and despair. For two years she was so depressed that she could seldom manage to leave her house; she stayed in bed for weeks at a time, doing business by telephone from her bedroom, unable even to bathe or brush her teeth. Her children would tiptoe past her door to avoid her outbursts of rage. Finally, she checked in to a halfway house for women with eating disorders, the only facility that her insurance company would pay for. The other residents were so frightened of her that she was placed alone in an attic room.
One morning, a week or so later, as she lay on the floor (she had been feeling too unworthy to sleep in a bed), Katie woke up without any concepts of who or what she was. "There was no me," she says.
All my rage, all the thoughts that had been troubling me, my whole world, the whole world, was gone. At the same time, laughter welled up from the depths and just poured out. Everything was unrecognizable. It was as if something else had woken up. It opened its eyes. It was looking through Katie's eyes. And it was so delighted! It was intoxicated with joy. There was nothing separate, nothing unacceptable to it; everything was its very own self.
When Katie returned home, her family and friends felt that she was a different person. Her daughter, Roxann, who was sixteen at the time, says,
We knew that the constant storm was over. She had always yelled at me and my brothers and criticized us; I used to be scared to be in the same room with her. Now she seemed completely peaceful. She would sit still for hours on the window seat or out in the desert. She was joyful and innocent, like a child, and she seemed to be filled with love. People in trouble started knocking on our door, asking her for help. She'd sit with them and ask them questions - mainly, "Is that true?" When I'd come home miserable, with a problem like "My boyfriend doesn't love me anymore," Mom would look at me as if she knew that wasn't possible, and she'd ask me, "Honey, how could that be true?" as if I had just told her that we were living in China.
Once people understood that the old Katie wasn't coming back, they began to speculate about what had happened to her. Had some miracle occurred? She wasn't much help to them: It was a long time before she could describe her experience intelligibly. She would talk about a freedom that had woken up inside her. She also said that, through an inner questioning, she had realized that all her old thoughts were untrue.
Shortly after Katie got back from the halfway house, her home began to fill with people who had heard about her and had come to learn. She was able to communicate her inner inquiry in the form of specific questions that anyone who wanted freedom could apply on his own, without her. Soon she began to be invited to meet with small gatherings in people's living rooms. Her hosts often asked her if she was "enlightened." She would answer, "I'm just someone who knows the difference between what hurts and what doesn't."
In 1992 she was invited to northern California, and The Work spread very fast from there. Katie accepted every invitation. She has been on the road almost constantly since 1993, demonstrating The Work in church basements, community centers, and hotel meeting rooms, in front of small and large audiences (admission is always free). And The Work has found its way into all kinds of organizations, from corporations, law firms, and therapists' offices to hospitals, prisons, churches, and schools. It is now popular in other parts of the world where Katie has traveled. All across America and Europe, there are groups of people who meet regularly to do The Work.
Katie often says that the only way to understand The Work is to experience it. But it's worth noting that inquiry fits precisely with current research into the biology of mind. Contemporary neuroscience identifies a particular part of the brain, sometimes called "the interpreter," as the source of the familiar internal narrative that gives us our sense of self. Two prominent neuroscientists have recently characterized the quirky, undependable quality of the tale told by the interpreter. Antonio Damasio describes it this way: "Perhaps the most important revelation is precisely this: that the left cerebral hemisphere of humans is prone to fabricating verbal narratives that do not necessarily accord with the truth." And Michael Gazzaniga writes: "The left brain weaves its story in order to convince itself and you that it is in full control. . . . What is so adaptive about having what amounts to a spin doctor in the left brain? The interpreter is r... |
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Amazon.com, USA
<2008-01-29 00:00>
Remember the phrase "question authority"? Loving What Is is a workbook on questioning authority--but in this case, what is in question is the authority of our own fundamental beliefs about our relationships.
Known simply as "The Work," Byron Katie's methods are clean and straightforward. The basis is a series of four questions addressed to your own lists of written assumptions. Whether you're angry with your boss, frustrated with your teen's behavior, or appalled at the state of the world's environment, Katie suggests you write down your most honest thoughts on the matter, and then begin the examination. Starting with, "Is it true?" and continuing with explorations of "Who would you be without that thought?" this method allows you to get through unhelpful preconceptions and find peace. An integral part of the process is "turning the thought around," and at first this can seem like you're simply blaming yourself for everything. Push a little harder, and you'll find a very responsible acceptance of reality, beyond questions of fault and blame.
The book is filled with examples of folks applying The Work to a variety of life situations, and reading other's examples gets the idea across pretty clearly; chances are you'll find your own frustrations echoed on the pages a few times. Many chapters are divided into specific topics, such as couples, money, addictions, and self-judgments, with one chapter devoted to exploring the method with children.
Questioning your own authority is never an easy process, but it seems well worth the potential rewards - stress-free choices, peace, and affection for those closest to you. -Jill Lightner |
Library Journal, USA
<2008-01-29 00:00>
A thrice-married housewife and mother of three who once suffered from depression, Katie presents what she calls "the Work," a series of questions to help alter bad thinking patterns and reveal painful truths. So that readers might see the method in action, she has reproduced edited dialogs among herself and participants at her workshop. Direct and easy to follow, her book could indeed produce results for readers battling run-of-the-mill work and relationship problems. However, Katie and coauthor/husband Mitchell, a translator of the Bhagavad Gita, would like their audience to believe that this is heads above a standard self-help book: in Mitchell's compelling introduction, he compares Katie's process to the Socratic method and the Zen Koan and posits that it will enhance any other program or religion. These are heady claims, and it's up to the reader to decide whether the authors deliver on their promises. With the publicity campaign and author tour, there will likely be demand in public libraries. Susan Burdick, MLS, Reading, PA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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AudioFile, USA
<2008-01-29 00:00>
In a well-organized combination of lecture material and live audience interactions with the principal author, we're taught that we can control disappointments and resentments we feel toward others. Instead of getting stuck with these feeling, we can ask ourselves four questions that convert the pain into "the work" we need to do on ourselves. With warm and nicely chosen interventions with audience members, the authors demonstrate the essentials of accepting realities in others we can't change. It's a hard-charging message, at times relentless, that will shake up any listeners whose lives are held up because of nagging blame or anger toward others. T.W. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine
Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine -This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
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Booklist (MSL quote), USA
<2008-01-29 00:00>
This new self-help title explains the hows and whys of Katie's philosophy and work. Katie suffered from severe depression for more than 10 years, but in 1986, after moving into a halfway house for women with eating disorders, she discovered a new way of thinking and working through tough emotions like sadness, anger, jealousy, and despair. Katie's philosophy, which she calls "The Work," consists of four questions that seek to untangle complex emotions by changing the reactions and thought processes of the person seeking help. Instead of focusing on feeling anger, Katie suggests what she calls "inquiry," or assessing why we feel anger toward someone or something and how we can react another way. Responding to and thinking differently about a situation are the keys to following Katie's work successfully. She gives many examples of her interviews with people tackling "The Work." Michelle Kaske
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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