The Work of Byron Katie

[Sunlight81]

Nothing outside you can ever give you what you're looking for.


Depression, pain and fear are gifts that say, "Sweetheart, take a look at your thinking in this moment. You're living in a story that isn't true for you." Living a lie is always stressful. And investigating a lie through The Work always leads you back to who you are. Who you are is not an option. You are love. It hurts to believe you're other than who you are, to live any story less than love.

Question your Thinking Change the World by Byron Katie

[Ann]

I am fast becoming a Byron Katie fan. Thanks for sharing this.

Hugs

[indigo]

Me too Ann thank you Sunlight.

[Rusty Zipper]

sunlight...

the turn around of byron, is a lot like turn it over!

[citychick]

sounds like Truth setting us free. Thanks sunlight.

[Enquire]

So true, we cannot escape our selves! Drugs effectively hide us from ourselves and from the world, in fits and starts. But it's never enduring. Eventually, granted that we're fortunate enough to see through that haze, we're reminded who we truly are, and will again be able to enjoy experiencing our own life, and be able to share that with the world.

Thank you Sunlight for posting this Byron Katie quote. It rings of such genuine truth.

[Sunlight81]

People often ask me if I'm an enlightened being. I don't know anything about that. I'm just someone who knows the difference between this hurts and this doesn't. I'm someone who only wants what is. Meeting as a friend each concept that arose turned out to be my freedom. That's where The Work begins and ends--in me. The Work says, "Love it all, exactly as it is." And it shows you how. Wisdom is simply knowing the difference between what hurts and what doesn't hurt. There's immense freedom in that. It doesn't mean you have to do the right thing. It just allows you to stop fooling yourself and to do what you do with some awareness. One way leads to suffering; the other way leads to peace.

Don't pretend yourself beyond your evolution.

Question your Thinking Change the World by Byron Katie

[Sunlight81]

A feeling is like the mate to a thought appearing. They're like a left and a right. If you have a thought, there's a simultaneous feeling. And an uncomfortable feeling is like a compassionate alarm clock that says, "You're in the dream." It's time to investigate, that's all. But if we don't honor the alarm clock, then we try to alter and manipulate the feeling by reaching into an apparent external world. We're usually aware of the feeling first. That's why I say it's an alarm clock that let's you know you're in a thought that you may want to investigate. If it's not acceptable to you, if it's painful, you might want to do The Work.

Thoughts are friends, not enemies. They're just what is. They appear. They're innocent. We're not doing them. They're not personal. They're like the breeze or the leaves on the trees or the raindrops falling. Thoughts arise like that, and we can make friends with them. Would you argue with a raindrop? Raindrops aren't personal, and neither are thoughts. It's the meaning you attach to those thoughts that you think is personal. Inquire. Meet them with understanding. Once a painful concept is met with understanding, the next time it appears you may find it interesting. The next time it appears, you may find it funny. The next time, you may not even notice it. There will be no attachment. I meet thoughts the way I would meet my children. I meet them with love, gentleness, and a quiet understanding.

Question your Thoughts Change the World by Byron Katie

[Fluttering]

Sunligth....Thank You...How inspiring!!!

[Sunlight81]

We buy a home for our children, for our bodies; we get a garage for our car; we have doghouses for our dogs; but we don’t give the mind a home. We treat it like an outcast. We shame it and blame it shame it again. But if you let the mind ask its questions, then the heart will reveal the answers. Then the mind can finally rest at home in the heart and come to see that it and the heart are one.
That’s what these four questions are about. You write down the problem and investigate, and the heart gives you the answer you’ve always known. This is humility. There’s nothing else to do. Standing in a room or sitting in a chair, just watch the story. If it’s frightening or depressing, ask the four questions, turn it around, and come home.

You can’t have it because you already are it. You already have what you want. You already are what you want. This is as good as it gets. It appears as this now. Perfect. Flawless. And to argue with that is to experience the lie. The Work can give you this wonderful awareness: the awareness of the lie and the power of truth. The beauty of what really is.

Question your Thinking Change the World by Byron Katie

Do you want a sign that you’re asleep? Here it is: You’re suffering. Suffering is a sign that you’re out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, … Suffering occurs when you clash with reality… Otherwise there is no suffering.

Awareness by Anthony de Mello, S.J.

[Fluttering]

Sunlight
How wonderful!!! Thank You!!!

[Sunlight81]

If you knew how important you are—and without the story you come to know it—you would fragment into a billion pieces and just be light. That’s what these misunderstood concepts are for: to keep you from the awareness of that. You’d have to be the embodiment if you knew it—just a fool, blind with love. It causes so much pain to live out of the light. I don’t know how people do it for so long. It was so painful that I could only do it for forty-three years. Forty-three centuries.

Who would you be in the presence of your child if you didn’t believe the thought that in the past you shouldn’t have hit her? You think that guilt and shame are going to prevent you from hitting her, but it‘s the opposite: you’re using guilt and shame as weapons on yourself, you’re causing internal violence to keep yourself from violence. It’s internal violence to shame and blame yourself. If you don’t believe the thought that you shouldn’t have hit her, you aren’t living in internal violence. We’re not talking about right and wrong here. With the thoughts you were acting out at the time, weren’t you doing the best you could? How do you know you should have hit her? You did. How did it feel? Not good. That’s how you know you violated yourself. When you hit her, you are hitting yourself. She really is God in human form, here to teach you that.

Question your Thinking Change the World by Byron Katie

[Ann]

A feeling is like the mate to a thought appearing. They're like a left and a right. If you have a thought, there's a simultaneous feeling.

I missed a couple of these so am going back a post or three here. This sentence spoke to me this morning, telling me that "I feel what I think" and as simple as that sounds, it is quite profound.

If I lead my thoughts to positive, to inspiration and to hope and faith and happiness, my body and heart can't help but follow. And if I let my thoughts wander to those dark corners of fear, resentment, anger or dishonesty, then my heart and body will follow as well.

But my heart and body can only go one way at a time, so I get to decide where I am going to lead them today. I get to choose whether I will fill my mind with positive or negative thoughts, and then let my body follow. The more I fill it with one, the less room there is for the other.

I'm babbling here, sorting this out as I type, but I have just now made a choice that today I will fill my mind and my heart with positive and then watch my body follow.

Thanks for the inspiration, Sunlight, I have a feeling you just made my day.

[Enquire]

Sunlight, Ann, again thank you for your considerations. It truly is all about awareness of self, awareness of mind, awareness of reality, isn't it. Acceptance of what IS. In that, what is there to fear?

Curious, Sunlight, what are the "four questions" referenced in teh Byron Katie passage you cited?

[Sunlight81]

I've had moderators take web addresses out of my posts before.
I don't know what they are afraid of but God bless 'em.
Go to thework.com or google the work
You are in for a treat.

[Ann]

Originally Posted by Sunlight81

I've had moderators take web addresses out of my posts before.
I don't know what they are afraid of but God bless 'em.
Go to thework.com or google the work
You are in for a treat.

Just so you know it's not personal, links to any commercial site is prohibited by the owners here, because the paying advertisers object. As moderators, we only follow the rules. It may seem petty but on the other hand it's the paying advertisers here that keep this site going.

[Sunlight81]

No one who says “I should love myself” knows what love is. Love is what we are already. So to think that you should love yourself when you don’t is pure delusion. Isn’t the turnaround truer? “I shouldn’t love myself.” How do you know that you shouldn’t love yourself? You don’t! That’s it, for now. The truth is no respecter of spiritual concepts. “I should love myself”—ugh, on what planet? Love is not a doing. There is nothing you have to do. And when you question your mind, you can see that the only thing that keeps you from being love is a stressful thought.

You can’t disappoint another human being. And another human being can’t disappoint you. You believe the story of how your partner isn’t giving you what you want, and you disappoint yourself. If you want something from your partner and he says no, that’s reality. It leaves you. And you can always give it to yourself.

Question your Thinking Change the World by Byron Katie

Soon this thread will fade away like so many threads before it.
Anybody want to talk about the big dragon--fear?

[Enquire]

Originally Posted by Sunlight81

...you can always give it to yourself.

Soon this thread will fade away like so many threads before it.
Anybody want to talk about the big dragon--fear?

I'll talk about Fear. With a capitol F. It keeps me trapped, pinned to the ground. I struggle for release but it has such a firm grip. I feel weak against its hold. As though I have no energy from which to fight with. So I submit, allow it to have its way. Escaping not physically, but mentally. Working my way around it. But it holds fast, and strong. It keeps me in its grasp. Controlling me. Allowing it to have my body, but not my mind.

And yet, that is no escape! The body is a vehicle for the mind, without it, we are only ideas, not action. There is no evidence, there is no apparent reality, when the mind goes in one direction but the body another. Without action, nothing the mind thinks can be realized, or recognized, beyond the confines of one's own mind. And even there it becomes compromised, when Fear is in control.

Enough with the hiding! Enough with the crying! Who controls me, but my own decisions. To choose to live in fear, or not. That is the question.

[Fluttering]

Was chatting with another member the other day and was given the foloowing gift about fear:

"Faith is the courage to walk through the fear".

In 22 years I had not heard it put that way.

[Sunlight81]

Fear, the big dragon...

Life on the other side of inquiry is so simple and obvious that it can’t be imagined. Everything is seen to be at its best, just the way it is. Hope and faith aren’t needed in this place. Earth turned out to be the heaven I was longing for. This is the unimaginable life that I live, that we all live.

Your fears are nothing but a lack of integrity, that’s all, there’s no mystery. Write them down, inquire, and notice how they don’t arise anymore; and if they do, they have encountered a friend, and there’s peace. Fear is lack of integrity, and the way you know this is that when you’re in a lie, you experience discomfort. Life is simple, until you lose your internal integrity, and then it hurts. The feeling of discomfort will let you know. It says, “Sweetheart, take a look, get honest.”

Question your Thinking Change the World by Byron Katie

[Ann]

Wow, amazing words today, and something to wrap my head around. I'm quire certain I believe her about fear.

Hugs

[Sunlight81]

I don't expect this thread to change anyone's life. I have fun presenting it. In my search for truth, I had to be willing to be wrong. Radical open mindedness. Radical acceptance. Born not out of virtue but desperation. There are not a lot of examples of how to live without fear. Katie is one. I might be one, one day. I have had entire days without fear but I am tempted. My work is my most challenging arena. I've been seriously doing The Work for about a year. It's not for everyone. I've had to take 100% responsibility for my inner world. I don't get to be a victim of anything but my thinking. And that has been remarkably freeing.

[Enquire]

Originally Posted by Sunlight81

I've had to take 100% responsibility for my inner world. I don't get to be a victim of anything but my thinking. And that has been remarkably freeing.

You write about lack of integrity. Disintegration. I know it well, and know it is what infects and so negatively affects me. It's learning to do better and then doing it that trips me up far too often. I allow it to happen. A victim of my own poor decisions, even in light of knowing to do better! Trying, sometimes even achieving. Looking for consistency, striving to do better with every opportunity. They come about every day.

[indigo]

Sunlight your thread brings joy and hope thank you for this.

[Fluttering]

Sunlight
Double ditto towhat Indie said

Hugs