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A Few Basic PrinciplesWhat I love about The Work is that it enables you to go inside and find your own happiness, to experience what already exists within you, unchanging, immovable, ever-present, ever-waiting. No teacher is necessary. You are the teacher you’ve been waiting for. You are the one who can end your own suffering.
I often say, “Don’t believe anything I say.” I want you to discover what’s true for you, not for me. Still, many people have found the following principles to be helpful for getting started in The Work.
Noticing When Your Thoughts Argue with RealityThe only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.
If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, “Meow.” Wanting reality to be different than it is, right now, is hopeless. You can spend the rest of your life trying to teach a cat to bark.
Yet if you pay attention, you’ll notice that you believe thoughts like this dozens of times a day: “People should be kinder,” “Children should be well behaved,” “My neighbors should take better care of their lawn,” “The line at the grocery store should move faster,” “My husband (or wife) should agree with me,” “I should be thinner (or prettier or more successful).” These thoughts are ways of wanting reality to be different than it is, right now. If you think this sounds depressing, you’re right. All the stress that we feel is caused by arguing with what is.
After I woke up to reality in 1986, people often referred to me as the woman who made friends with the wind. Barstow is a desert town where the wind blows a lot of the time, and everyone hates it; people even move away from there because they can’t stand the wind. The reason I made friends with the wind—with reality—is that I discovered that I didn’t have a choice. I realized that it’s insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100 percent of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It’s blowing!
People new to The Work often say to me, “But it would be disempowering to stop my argument with reality. If I simply accept reality, I’ll become passive. I may even lose the desire to act.” I answer them with a question: “Can you really know that that’s true?” Which is more empowering, “I wish I hadn’t lost my job” or “I lost my job; what intelligent solutions can I find right now?”
The Work reveals that what you think shouldn’t have happened should have happened. It should have happened because it did happen, and no thinking in the world can change it. This doesn’t mean that you condone it or approve of it. It just means that you can see things without resistance and without the confusion of your inner struggle. No one wants their children to get sick, no one wants to be in a car accident; but when these things happen, how can it be helpful to mentally argue with them? We know better than to do that, yet we do it because we don’t know how to stop.
I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.
Staying in Your Own BusinessI can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s. (Anything that’s out of my control, your control, and everyone else’s control, I call God’s business.)
Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business. When I think, “You need to get a job,” “I want you to be happy,” “You should be on time,” “You need to take better care of yourself,” I am in your business. When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God’s business. If I am mentally in your business or in God’s business, the effect is separation. I noticed this early in 1986. When I mentally went into my mother’s business, for example, with a thought like “My mother should understand me,” I immediately experienced a feeling of loneliness. And I realized that every time in my life I had felt hurt or lonely, I had been in someone else’s business.
If you are living your life and I am mentally living your life, who is here living mine? We’re both over there. Being mentally in your business keeps me from being present in my own. I am separate from myself, wondering why my life doesn’t work.
To think that I know what’s best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what’s right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve your problems for you.
If you understand the three kinds of business enough to stay in your own business, it can free your life in a way you can’t even imagine. The next time you’re feeling stress or discomfort, ask yourself whose business you’re in mentally, and you may burst out laughing! That question can bring you back to yourself. And you may come to see that you’ve never really been present, that you’ve been mentally living in other people’s business all your life. Just to notice that you’re in someone else’s business can bring you back to your own wonderful self.
And if you practice it for a while, you may come to see that you don’t have any business, either, and that your life runs perfectly well on its own.
Meeting Your Thoughts with UnderstandingA thought is harmless unless we believe it. It is not our thoughts but the 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.
Most people think they are what their thoughts tell them they are. One day I noticed that I wasn’t breathing—I was being breathed. Then I also noticed, to my amazement, that I wasn’t thinking—that I was actually being thought and that thinking isn’t personal. Do you wake up in the morning and say to yourself, “I think I won’t think today”? It’s too late: you’re already thinking! Thoughts just appear. They come out of nothing and go back to nothing, like clouds moving across the empty sky. They come to pass, not to stay. There is no harm in them until we attach to them as if they were true.
No one has ever been able to control his or her thinking, although people may tell the story of how they have. I don’t let go of my thoughts; I meet them with understanding. Then they let go of me.
Thoughts are like the breeze or the leaves on the trees or the raindrops falling. They appear like that, and through inquiry we can make friends with them. Would you argue with a raindrop? Raindrops aren’t personal, and neither are thoughts. Once a painful concept is met with understanding, the next time it appears, you may find it interesting. What used to be the nightmare is now just interesting. The next time it appears, you may find it funny. The time after that, you may not even notice it. This is the power of loving what is.
Copyright © 2021 by Byron Katie. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
