Byron Katie
Byron Katie
Byron Kathleen Mitchell, better known as Byron Katie, is an American speaker and author who teaches a method of self-inquiry known as "The Work of Byron Katie" or simply as "The Work". She is married to the writer and translator Stephen Mitchell. She is the founder of Byron Katie International, an organization that includes The School for the Work and Turnaround House in Ojai, California...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSelf-Help Author
Date of Birth6 December 1942
CountryUnited States of America
Rather than understand the original cause-a thought-we try to change the stressful feelings by looking outside ourselves.
Whatever it takes for you to find your freedom, that's what you've lived.
Seeking love keeps you from the awareness that you already have it—that you are it.
After you've been doing inquiry for a while, if you have the thought "She doesn't love me," you just get the immediate turnaround with a smile: "Oh, I'm not loving myself in this moment."
If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.
You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer".
The only way I can be angry at you is when I have thought, said, or done something that is unkind in my own opinion.
The miracle of love comes to you in the presence of the uninterpreted moment. If you are mentally somewhere else, you miss real life.
In my experience, we don't make thoughts appear, they just appear. One day, I noticed that their appearance just wasn't personal. Noticing that really makes it simpler to inquire.
That's what I love about integrity. Each time we go inside, that's where it is.
The teacher you need is the person you're living with.
Nothing terrible has ever happened except in our thinking. Reality is always good, even in situations that seem like nightmares. The story we tell is the only nightmare that we have lived.
A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.
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.