AHP Perspective

AHP Perspective is a magazine published bi-monthly for members of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. It includes interviews, articles, essays, updates on member activities, conference announcements, and book reviews. Members receive the complete AHP Perspective as part of their membership.
AHP PERSPECTIVE April/May 2002 Table of Contents

LOVING WHAT IS: Four Questions
That Can Change Your Life
BY BYRON KATIE WITH STEPHEN MITCHELL
Harmony Books, 2002, 304 pp.,
ISBN: 0-609-60874-6. thework.com
Reviewed by Carol L. Skolnick
Many people spend 10, 20, 30 years in sincere spiritual study and practice, only to realize they still hate their jobs, their mothers, and the noise coming from the neighbor’s blasting stereo. Sound familiar? If so, according to Byron Katie , it’s because we’re seeing everything upside down. What we believe to be true, isn’t, and what we’ve been told works, doesn’t. We blame and fear and react because we have not gone within to find out what’s true for us . . . but only because we haven’t known how.

For 15 years, Katie’s been working to change that, using a remarkable self-inquiry process she calls The Work. Neither spiritual path nor psychological modality, The Work, which consists of four simple questions and a “turnaround,” contains elements of both, showing us how to heal our lives by understanding our thoughts. Does it work? At Katie’s free public programs, approximately 300,000 people thus far have come to The Work with a broad spectrum of issues—from minor annoyances to seemingly insurmountable difficulties—and experienced the power of those simple questions in their own straightforward answers to them. Now, in the pages of her book, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, Katie’s program is spelled out step-by-step for all to use on their own or with a partner.

One of Katie’s favorite sayings is, “I am the perpetrator of my suffering; but only all of it.” She learned this one morning in 1986, after a ten-year descent into depression and hopelessness. Weighing over 200 pounds, hooked on painkillers, unable to bathe or leave her bed for weeks at a time, she landed in a halfway house for women with eating disorders. It was on the floor of her attic room there that she woke up one morning to discover nothing was as it had previously seemed: only love remained. As Katie’s awakening expanded, agonizing old concepts would return. Self-inquiry then took birth inside, allowing her to meet each painful thought as teacher and friend.

What hurts, according to Katie, is believing what isn’t true for you; arguing with reality. Her own “undoing,” wordless at first, was about examining thoughts such as “My husband doesn’t love me,” and “My children should understand me.” Katie realized she could only know her own mind. Eventually she was able to convey her experience of unfoldment as a simple written process: the four questions— Is it true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true? How do you react when you think that thought? Who or what would you be without it? These questions are, Katie says, “the ones the heart has been asking for eons.”

Now, chances are, you haven’t woken up on the floor in a permanent state of rapture; perhaps you’re someone whose boss has just yelled at you, and suddenly you’re not feeling so spiritual. Your mind creates stories and you’re attaching to them: My boss doesn’t appreciate me. Nobody respects me. I shouldn’t be upset about this. How can The Work help you?

In The Work, everyday thoughts like these are the route to freedom. Co-written with Katie’s husband, the distinguished author-translator Stephen Mitchell, Loving What Is provides the means to “undo” beliefs that cause suffering . . . along with dozens of examples of The Work in action with people of all ages and temperaments: an idealistic teenager, a cancer patient, victims of serious trauma and of a volatile stock market.

Beginners in The Work are exhorted to “Judge your neighbor, write it down, ask four questions, and turn it around.” So we list on paper every petty thought we’ve ever had about the boss, the family, men, women, terrorists . . . and to do a full inquiry on each statement. Take “My boss doesn’t appreciate me:” using the first of the four questions, you’d ask, “Is it true?” Yes or no? Upon deeper inquiry—question two, “Can you really know that it’s true?”—you may find you can only know your reaction to what the boss says and does. Question three: “How do you react when you think that thought?” What do you say to your boss, what do you do? How do you treat yourself and the other when you think she doesn’t appreciate you? How does this single story color your entire life?

The final question is, “Who or what would you be without that thought?” If it never occurred to you that the boss doesn’t appreciate you, how would you feel? Last comes the “turnaround”—”My boss doesn’t appreciate me” gets turned around to its exact opposite, “My boss does appreciate me.” Could this be just as true sometimes? Other turnarounds: “I don’t appreciate me” (my hurt feelings could stem from believing what my boss says about me) and “I don’t appreciate my boss” (especially when I think she doesn’t appreciate me).

Katie’s Work is a surgery that cuts to the core of reality, letting us know for ourselves that we are always okay now . . . even in annoyance, anger, or fear. As Katie says, “Confusion is the only suffering.” Confusion stems from wanting circumstances—or people, or who you are—to be different. To inquire deeply and deconstruct the story leaves us more peaceful; we “love what is.” Of course, some stories may be working for you; you can keep those. “The Work is just four questions,” Katie says. “They don’t even say ‘answer me.’” But if something hurts, you may just want to inquire. Loving What Is can help you do that anytime, anywhere; all it takes is a pen and paper, and the willingness to wake up.

CAROL L. SKOLNICK is a New York City-based freelance writer and creativity consultant. Her work has appeared at Salon.com, Four Corners, pacific REVIEW, Glamour, The Sun: A Magazine of Ideas, and in anthologies. Carol is also the managing editor of Eclectic Spirituality. com, home of The Spiritual Curmudgeon™ column. E-mail: sput6@aol.com.

AHP PERSPECTIVE April/May 2002 Table of Contents

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