Loving What Is, Revised Edition: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life; The Revolutionary Process Called "The Work"

by Byron Katie, Stephen Mitchell

Overview

Discover the truth hiding behind troubling thoughts with Byron Katie’s self-help classic.

In 2003, Byron Katie first introduced the world to The Work with the publication of Loving What Is. Nearly twenty years later, Loving What Is continues to inspire people all over the world to do The Work; to listen to the answers they find inside themselves;and to open their minds to profound, spacious, and life-transforming insights. The Work is simply four questions that, when applied to a specific problem, enable you to see what is troubling you in an entirely different light.

Loving What Is shows you step by step, through clear and vivid examples, exactly how to use this revolutionary process for yourself. In this revised edition, readers will enjoy seven new dialogues, or real examples of Katie doing The Work with people to discover the root cause of their suffering. You will observe people work their way through a broad range of human problems, learning freedom through the very thoughts that had caused their suffering—thoughts such as “my husband betrayed me” or “my mother doesn’t love me enough.”

If you continue to do The Work, you may discover that the questioning flows into every aspect of your life, effortlessly undoing the stressful thoughts that keep you from experiencing peace. Loving What Is offers everything you need to learn and live this remarkable process, and to find happiness as what Katie calls “a lover of reality.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593234518
Publisher:	Harmony/Rodale
Publication date:	12/07/2021
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	57,505
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Byron Katie experienced what she calls "waking up to reality" in 1986, and since then she has introduced The Work to hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world. In addition to her public events, she has introduced The Work into business settings, universities, schools, churches, prisons, and hospitals.

Stephen Mitchell's many books include the best-selling Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, The Gospel According to Jesus, Meetings with the Archangel, and The Frog Prince.

Read an Excerpt

1

A Few Basic Principles

What 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 Reality

The 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 Business

I 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 Understanding

A 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.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition ix

Introduction Stephen Mitchell xiii

How to Read This Book xxxiii

1 A Few Basic Principles 3

2 The Great Undoing 12

3 Entering the Dialogues 30

4 Doing The Work on Couples and Family Life 34

My Husband's Affair 36

Elise Is Ignoring Me 47

My Father Was Horrible 61

Stanley Didn't Have to Die 86

I Need My Family's Approval 95

Peter Broke His Word to Me 106

My Son and Daughter-in-Law Are Being Reckless 122

5 Deepening Inquiry 143

6 Doing The Work on Work and Money 164

He's So Incompetent! 167

Uncle Ralph and His Stock Tips 172

Angry at Corporate America 190

7 Doing The Work on Self-Judgments 199

8 Doing The Work with Children 203

Abby and Zoë Don't Want Me to Play with Them 207

9 Doing The Work on Underlying Beliefs 218

She Was Supposed to Make Me Happy 224

I Need to Make a Decision 239

10 Doing The Work on Any Thought or Situation 251

11 Doing The Work on the Body and Addictions 257

My Daughter's Addiction 259

12 Making Friends with the Worst That Can Happen 272

My Father Is Going to Beat Me 276

Afraid of Death 294

Bombs Are Falling 303

I'm Angry at Sam for Dying 312

Terrorism in New York City 318

13 Questions and Answers 332

14 The Work in Your Life 349

Appendix: Self-Facilitation 353

Contact Information 359

Notes to the Introduction 361