The Story of Byron Katie
The way Byron Katie tells her story, her life was once filled with a brand of suffering familiar to affluent Californians. She lived in a "gorgeous home" in Barstow on the edge of the Mojave Desert with her second husband Paul and the youngest of her three children. And she had a knack for making money, lots of it, buying and selling real estate. "The setting said, 'This is the perfect life, but Inside I was miserable. Every day I wanted to die. I'd wake up in the morning and notice I was still here and just curse God.”
By 1986, she was depressed, eating too much and fighting with her husband and children. She weighed 200 pounds and had entered a depression so deep that she spent most of her time in her bedroom watching television. In despair, she entered a halfway house for women with eating disorders in Southern California. There, on the floor of an attic bedroom, Byron Katie Reid—secular Barstow housewife, television-watcher and real estate investor— had the kind of spiritual awakening that Buddhist monks and Christian contemplatives pray and fast and meditate years for.
"I opened my eyes and there was a cockroach crawling over my foot," she said. "And all my problems were gone. There was no identification with the woman that went to sleep the night before. It was as though something else was born. There was just this amazing laughter."
Soon afterwards, Katie returned to her family in Barstow a changed and strange person, spending long days alone in the desert and leaving her door open to allow anyone to enter her home. In the years since, she has spent much of her time touring this country and Europe teaching what she calls "The Work"—four deceptively simple and liberating questions that her new book, Loving What Is, promises "can change your life." "Is it true?" she asks, sitting on a stage at a packed hall—most recently at Spirit Rock meditation center in Woodacre—as a man or woman in a chair opposite her reads out his or her most damning thoughts and wounds from a scrawled piece of paper: My wife betrayed me with my best friend; or my boyfriend should get out of debt; or my mother is a bitch; or my stepmother drinks too much; or my abuse ruined my life. "Is it true?" Katie asks them. "Can you absolutely know that it's true? How do you react when you think that thought? Who would you be without that thought?"
Before she went into the halfway house, she was full of rage. “I wasn't questioning my thinking. I believed everything I thought. And the thoughts that would come were: Nobody loves me. I don't have a purpose. My children think I'm a terrible mother. I'm misunderstood. Today those thoughts fill me with laughter because I've questioned them and I've come to see what's true. But lying in that bed, I had no questions to ask of those thoughts. It was very deep mental illness. Since then I've come to see that anyone who doesn't question their thoughts is suffering from mental illness. No one has to suffer that kind of pain when life can be so simple.
That's what my life is about now. When we get free, when our minds are clear, all it leaves is gratitude and how can I help?
Before her awakening experience, Katie had a hard time with her husband—he left his socks everywhere, he yelled at her. "My children should pick up their socks, my husband should pick up his socks. And look what they are doing! If they really loved me they would do just that one simple little thing!" They just kept leaving them there and leaving them there. I would rage, I would cry, I would die a thousand deaths. The next morning, the socks were still on the floor. I use that as an example—the simplest thing can just put you over the edge. Until we question our thoughts.
If someone else would just do this one simple thing, I would be happy—isn't that pretty universal? If they would just cooperate, we would all have better lives! I know the way! Well, I don't think so. Often I couldn't even take a shower or brush my teeth! And paranoia—if my children just glanced in my bedroom, it would be like, "I know what they think about me." And that would send me into a rage. Not my children, the little innocents. They just walked by and looked at their mother. Mentally, I did all the rest. I was my enemy. Until we question those stressful thoughts, we believe we're right. When you question one, it, leads to the next stressful thought. And to the next stressful thought. Until eventually, it's done. I've undone them all.
I'd think the thought, my children don't really care about me. If I don't question that thought, if I really believe it, how do I react when I think that thought? Well, I become depressed. And then I have a lot of thoughts to prove that the first thought is true. That's the mind's job, to prove that it's right. Without questioning, it just rolls on. How do I react when I think that thought? I'm stressed out, I'm angry, then I go to the refrigerator, then I go to the alcohol, then I go to credit cards and I'm shopping, buying things that I have no interest in or need for. That's how I react when I think the thought.
If we can question these old thoughts, then this is the end of our internal war. What's left is genius, infinite mind, and it knows how to deal with things effectively.
Going back to the halfway house, I got a moment of clarity. There are a lot of theories around it. Whatever it was, I'm grateful. I had a moment of grace, and I understood. I just knew one day to go home. Well, they wouldn't release me. They said I wasn't ready. So I just left. And then I began a very strange life at that point, a very strange life.
My doors were open, for one thing. I knew enough not to shut the door. Someone would walk into the house, and I would just sit with them. And then the phone would ring and I would go to the phone. Then I'd have the thought, do the dishes. And I'd do the dishes. Then one of my children would need me, and I would just do that. For me, everything is God. Everything and everyone. So it was just, God needs me now, now, now. And everything got done. And it still does to this day. There is never too much. I am totally enjoying this.
I would go out into the desert. The desert was my teacher. I didn't know about gurus and wise people—I wasn't a reader. That wasn't my world. The desert never moved. It was so clear. That's where I learned that there are no new stressful thoughts, that they are all recycled. The version I tell is that I went out into the desert to get away from all the noise in the world, and I took the whole world with me in my head. Every thought that's ever been thought. And I just sat there, and I undid them, and I undid them.
I'd have the thought, "It's too hot, I'm going to die." And I would just live that one through. I would walk so far, without water. Not on purpose, it just happened. I had the thought, I’m lost. Because of the questions, I would see that I was found, that I am always where I am. And then someone would always find me. I wasn't out there like some weird person. I just needed to do these things.
I would sit and know I had a terror of snakes, rattlesnakes. I would close my eyes and wait, and I knew that they were there. That's how powerful imagination is. How do I react when I think that thought? And just let the terror take me over. Who would I be without the thought? And I discovered that if a thousand snakes bit me it would be less painful than those thoughts. All I was doing was noticing mind.
The desert was close to a base, and they do desert maneuvers there. These bombs would go off. And I'd notice that the desert doesn't mind. There would be a bird taking something to build a nest, and over there the desert is being bombed, but she just gives and gives and gives. She [the desert] never says Stop, she never says Don't. She just lives the reality. And that's me... When I'm not giving to that last breath, it goes against what I learned. It becomes a privilege to give, because we are not resisting our own nature.
Reality and our story never match. Reality is always kinder. I love reality. I know it's for good. Either that or God's a sadist.
Katy ButlerByron
By 1986, she was depressed, eating too much and fighting with her husband and children. She weighed 200 pounds and had entered a depression so deep that she spent most of her time in her bedroom watching television. In despair, she entered a halfway house for women with eating disorders in Southern California. There, on the floor of an attic bedroom, Byron Katie Reid—secular Barstow housewife, television-watcher and real estate investor— had the kind of spiritual awakening that Buddhist monks and Christian contemplatives pray and fast and meditate years for.
"I opened my eyes and there was a cockroach crawling over my foot," she said. "And all my problems were gone. There was no identification with the woman that went to sleep the night before. It was as though something else was born. There was just this amazing laughter."
Soon afterwards, Katie returned to her family in Barstow a changed and strange person, spending long days alone in the desert and leaving her door open to allow anyone to enter her home. In the years since, she has spent much of her time touring this country and Europe teaching what she calls "The Work"—four deceptively simple and liberating questions that her new book, Loving What Is, promises "can change your life." "Is it true?" she asks, sitting on a stage at a packed hall—most recently at Spirit Rock meditation center in Woodacre—as a man or woman in a chair opposite her reads out his or her most damning thoughts and wounds from a scrawled piece of paper: My wife betrayed me with my best friend; or my boyfriend should get out of debt; or my mother is a bitch; or my stepmother drinks too much; or my abuse ruined my life. "Is it true?" Katie asks them. "Can you absolutely know that it's true? How do you react when you think that thought? Who would you be without that thought?"
Before she went into the halfway house, she was full of rage. “I wasn't questioning my thinking. I believed everything I thought. And the thoughts that would come were: Nobody loves me. I don't have a purpose. My children think I'm a terrible mother. I'm misunderstood. Today those thoughts fill me with laughter because I've questioned them and I've come to see what's true. But lying in that bed, I had no questions to ask of those thoughts. It was very deep mental illness. Since then I've come to see that anyone who doesn't question their thoughts is suffering from mental illness. No one has to suffer that kind of pain when life can be so simple.
That's what my life is about now. When we get free, when our minds are clear, all it leaves is gratitude and how can I help?
Before her awakening experience, Katie had a hard time with her husband—he left his socks everywhere, he yelled at her. "My children should pick up their socks, my husband should pick up his socks. And look what they are doing! If they really loved me they would do just that one simple little thing!" They just kept leaving them there and leaving them there. I would rage, I would cry, I would die a thousand deaths. The next morning, the socks were still on the floor. I use that as an example—the simplest thing can just put you over the edge. Until we question our thoughts.
If someone else would just do this one simple thing, I would be happy—isn't that pretty universal? If they would just cooperate, we would all have better lives! I know the way! Well, I don't think so. Often I couldn't even take a shower or brush my teeth! And paranoia—if my children just glanced in my bedroom, it would be like, "I know what they think about me." And that would send me into a rage. Not my children, the little innocents. They just walked by and looked at their mother. Mentally, I did all the rest. I was my enemy. Until we question those stressful thoughts, we believe we're right. When you question one, it, leads to the next stressful thought. And to the next stressful thought. Until eventually, it's done. I've undone them all.
I'd think the thought, my children don't really care about me. If I don't question that thought, if I really believe it, how do I react when I think that thought? Well, I become depressed. And then I have a lot of thoughts to prove that the first thought is true. That's the mind's job, to prove that it's right. Without questioning, it just rolls on. How do I react when I think that thought? I'm stressed out, I'm angry, then I go to the refrigerator, then I go to the alcohol, then I go to credit cards and I'm shopping, buying things that I have no interest in or need for. That's how I react when I think the thought.
If we can question these old thoughts, then this is the end of our internal war. What's left is genius, infinite mind, and it knows how to deal with things effectively.
Going back to the halfway house, I got a moment of clarity. There are a lot of theories around it. Whatever it was, I'm grateful. I had a moment of grace, and I understood. I just knew one day to go home. Well, they wouldn't release me. They said I wasn't ready. So I just left. And then I began a very strange life at that point, a very strange life.
My doors were open, for one thing. I knew enough not to shut the door. Someone would walk into the house, and I would just sit with them. And then the phone would ring and I would go to the phone. Then I'd have the thought, do the dishes. And I'd do the dishes. Then one of my children would need me, and I would just do that. For me, everything is God. Everything and everyone. So it was just, God needs me now, now, now. And everything got done. And it still does to this day. There is never too much. I am totally enjoying this.
I would go out into the desert. The desert was my teacher. I didn't know about gurus and wise people—I wasn't a reader. That wasn't my world. The desert never moved. It was so clear. That's where I learned that there are no new stressful thoughts, that they are all recycled. The version I tell is that I went out into the desert to get away from all the noise in the world, and I took the whole world with me in my head. Every thought that's ever been thought. And I just sat there, and I undid them, and I undid them.
I'd have the thought, "It's too hot, I'm going to die." And I would just live that one through. I would walk so far, without water. Not on purpose, it just happened. I had the thought, I’m lost. Because of the questions, I would see that I was found, that I am always where I am. And then someone would always find me. I wasn't out there like some weird person. I just needed to do these things.
I would sit and know I had a terror of snakes, rattlesnakes. I would close my eyes and wait, and I knew that they were there. That's how powerful imagination is. How do I react when I think that thought? And just let the terror take me over. Who would I be without the thought? And I discovered that if a thousand snakes bit me it would be less painful than those thoughts. All I was doing was noticing mind.
The desert was close to a base, and they do desert maneuvers there. These bombs would go off. And I'd notice that the desert doesn't mind. There would be a bird taking something to build a nest, and over there the desert is being bombed, but she just gives and gives and gives. She [the desert] never says Stop, she never says Don't. She just lives the reality. And that's me... When I'm not giving to that last breath, it goes against what I learned. It becomes a privilege to give, because we are not resisting our own nature.
Reality and our story never match. Reality is always kinder. I love reality. I know it's for good. Either that or God's a sadist.
Katy ButlerByron
posted by Dr. Joe at 3:37 AM
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