Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

No dust gathering here!

I have done the therapy, read 100 or so psych books, so here comes another one to soon collect dust after the words on the pages have been dissected, meditated on and worshipped, only to find myself shelving it and once again in search of another, right? Very simply, no...not this book! I read it with cynicism the first time around (My mind did not want to accept the simple but complex truth). Picked it up again and began my dissemimating. The second time through, I became pensive as well as investigative and realized I was perhaps, on to something. There is always hope at the onset of all of these relief type books but this one leaves you with hope, and that's the key. The rest is up to you. What I found, was that unlike the slew of books on my shelves and every buddhist philosophy, religious experience etc...., this book told me in exact detail how to take my mind on the journey to get to the place of the great authors who have broken the suffering barrier, to find the place the buddha calls nirvana, find the end of the illusions the cognitive therapist's role tries for years to accomplish but somehow doesn't. All of these resources are great but they don't give you the 'how to', they simply explain the final destination. Some words of wisdom we illicit from all of these books, 'The greatest love is self', 'no one can make you happy but you', 'today is a gift, that's why they call it the present'. All these things we read and absorb but how do we feel it? How do we live it? We know this is what peace feels like, but how do we get there? READ LOVING WHAT IS. All it purports to be, is. I question why this book has not made it to the best seller list and have come to the conclusion, that the reality of it is that this book takes work. It is a magic bullet in all it says life can be, but the thing that sets it apart from other books like Tolle's 'The Power of Now' is that when you close the cover on the last page, the magic bullet is all there but it doesn't end with that last page. It is just beginning. It will show you exactly how to embrace the words of wisdom and leaves no room for your mind to run and return to its old ways. If you choose to run from this reality, you run from truth, you run from yourself. In other words, there is no place else to run and you are left with what is. The truth is that by doing 'the work', you will experience pain, you will see yourself in all your imperfections and flaws. It is very difficult. However, after doing 'the work', time and time again, you realize you are loving it all, not accepting it all, or justifying it all, but loving it all...just as it is. So clean off those shelves, dust them off and keep one book there that you will never have to dust as it will be your toolbox, your best friend, and your very own peaceful reality that makes life so beautiful, the ability to love everything just as it is.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

Great Source of Tools and Info

Loving What Is, a must for anyone to help themselves have a fuller richer life through letting go of negative thoughts and patterns that taint their experience of life. Worth a read at least. Worth a better life at the most.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Where has this been all my life?

The 4 questions can change your life today! As long as you do some of the work today. I do recommend if you have never been exposed to Byron Katie to also listen to some of her work from her website in conjunction with the book. I am amazed! I want to continue to do the work on issues that bother me and have these questions and the results burned into my brain, so I will no longer react so negatively to people. This work is just so simple and so freeing! The examples in the book are so so powerful.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Loving What Is -- Your story!

I had heard of Byron Katie's, "The Work" and thought how hard is it to ask myself four questions? Now, I am learning that it is hard to really want to know the truth about myself -- and reality. This book and "the work" helps one to stop the blame game with all relationships, at home and at work. I am not "there" yet, but because of this book I am learning to love what is and the freedom that comes with the thoughts and emotions of being free and loving what is. This is really well written and the stories are close to home for all of us.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Finding Peace in Who and Where You Are

Byron Katie's book, LOVING WHAT IS, provides an easy-to-grasp key to finding peace where you are, right now -- no matter what is going on in your life. While many coaches and therapists advocate acceptance as being the key to overcoming destructive inner negative self-talk, few have so clearly delineated a method for people to achieve this healing state of being. Katie's premise is that your beliefs are what cause you the most pain and suffering, and that by carefully reviewing those beliefs, you can more easily differentiate the things you can change from those you must learn to accept as they are. LOVING WHAT IS describes a simple technique for reviewing and revising your beliefs with a four-question technique that cuts to the core of what is really troubling you. Like a wise grandmother, Katie shows how she lovingly soothes those she assists in transcripts of sessions in which she helps people take a look at whether their beliefs are true... whether they can absolutely know that those beliefs are true... how they react when they think those thoughts... and who they would be if they didn't believe those thoughts. While emotions such as fear and anger may take time to transform into peace and joy, LOVING WHAT IS provides an excellent road-map to a more peaceful and enjoyable life for anyone who is ready to chart a new course.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

SAVING MY LIFE

I just found out that my beloved wife of 14 years wants to leave me. For 3 days I have been destroyed. This book was referred by a friend. She said," To survive you must stop trying to work on your wife. You have to work on you". In one night of reading I can see a vision with or without my best friend and wife and this future is going to be an intense and joyous ride.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

I have been recommending this book to my friends and family

I love the simplicity and effectiveness of the work!

Dont waste your money

If you want to be a robot or a stepford wife read this book. So you look the other way everytime something or someone upsets you then 10 years from now all your anger is built up and you go postal . Bad book, bad bad bad. Wasted 13.00 on this!!!

this book is wonderful and has changed my life

i have bought many of these books and handed them out....it has help my ex-husband and i become better friends...i dont leave home without it...thank you byron katie

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Love What Is

This is a great way to learn to do just what the title says.

THE (self-help, spiritual guide) book

Amazing book, powerful and simple techniques. Katie gives us 4 questions and a turnaround which if used sincerely can help deal with any painful/stressful situation. She says, we don't let go of stressful concepts, they let go of us after we investigate them. This has been my experience. The Work of Byron Katie should be required reading for everyone on this planet.

Truth and Freedom

Like many of the other reviewers here, this book changed my life. But only in every way. All of my relationships have improved dramatically, issues I've had since childhood have lost their hold over me, and it gave me a a career! I was already on a career path when I read it, halfway through a master's program in spiritual counseling. Now, having finished my grad school program and started a private practice, I use The Work almost exclusively with my clients, while nearly everything I studied in school has been left by the wayside. My intention is to help my clients live a life of truth, free from suffering. Why beat around the bush with namby-pamby therapeutic techniques and outmoded paradigms? The Work works like nothing else. In my experience, most other approaches, including the psychotherapeutic model in general, are just Band-Aids, doing little or nothing to catalyze true healing and transformation. How many people do you know who have been in therapy for a decade (or two or three) and are still rehashing the same issues that brought them there in the first place? Enough already! For myself, my clients, and my colleagues in The Work, doing this inquiry process for even just a few hours has proven, time and again, to be more effective than years of psychotherapy. 'Loving What Is' was my introduction to The Work, and I am grateful for it every day. It's highly readable, and, if you let it in, it will change your life in amazing ways. Are you ready for a miracle? Hold onto your hat!

In a category of it's own

I have picked up many books on spirituality and pschology. Some I have gotten quite a ways through and some I barely got started before putting down. Much of it was wonderful and made me feel good for a while but ultimately it was someone elses explanation of their knowledge and truth. Byron Katie's 'work' gave me an unbelievably powerful practice that literaly sets me free whenever I so choose. Every time I do the work I feel like I literally unload so much baggage I am floating up off my couch. It is mostly fun, mostly easy and very freeing. I'm not done doing my work and some stories I am really attached to but that is okay, until I am able to give them up I'm not and that is reality. The difference is I am now a lover of reality.

Wonderful eye-opener!

This is a wonderful book that helps us open our eyes to the things we are hiding from. In this book, the author claims that we hold on to our 'stories' in order to avoid pain and experience pleasure in the short term even though we are selling ourselves short in the long run. The 'stories' are like jail cells we trap ourselves into to make us feel safe and secure. But as long as we stay in it, we can never experience true freedom and happiness. Like Toru Sato explains so clearly in his exceptional book called 'The Ever-Transcending Spirit', opening our eyes to these things enables us to take one more step closer to our true selves. This book is extremely helpful if you are ready to transcend your present state and take one more step in the unfolding of your soul. Enjoy...

This Book is a Treasure

This book has the potential to be life-changing. This is way beyond the self-help books out there. Byron Katie's four questions reminds me of the great Zen system of koans, except that this is for everyone, not just monks in kyoto monasteries. You take any thought that causes you stress and you put it up against this form of inquiry - four questions. So simple, yet when i first did it -- i couldn't believe how powerful and direct it was. No wonder everyone is talking about "Katie." The first question alone -- IS IT TRUE? -- can change your life. For years, I had beliefs about myself and others and the world that i never questioned. Even after years of meditation, i never asked the simple question - IS IT TRUE? This approach is a treasure.

The Worst That Can Happen Is An Uninvestigated Thought

If you've done it all -- therapy, meditation, affirmations, etc. -- and you still get derailed, it's because you are attaching to thoughts that are not true for you. Katie's Work is a simple way to meet those thoughts with understanding. Briefly, when we work with the projector, the projected becomes beautiful. Gurus have said as much from the beginning of time, characterizing "self-realization" as this mystical thing that comes only after years of purification and practice; daunting at best, and empty words without the experience. If you follow the directions in LOVING WHAT IS, you can be self-realized in every moment. The Work of Byron Katie can indeed change your life; it changed mine

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