A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around

by Byron Katie

For example, sometime early on, in 1986 or ’87, I was doing The Work with a woman from Kansas City who had come to stay with me for a few days. She said she suffered from chronic pain. One day, as she was leaving, I put my arms around her. According to her, a shock went through her, and she said, “Oh my God, the pain is gone!” She burst into tears and said I was a great healer. I told her that whatever had happened resulted from her projecting this role onto me so powerfully, but it was all her; she was the one who had healed herself. After this, she kept flying back to Barstow and spent as much time as she could hanging out with me, living in my house. This went on for several months. Then one day her husband appeared at the front door, furious. I invited him in. He stood in the living room and began screaming accusations at me, yelling at the top of his lungs. He said he had forbidden his wife to come to my house again. She was growing more and more obsessed with me, he said. I must be controlling her mind somehow. She no longer listened to him or loved him the way she loved me. Then he started pacing back and forth in the living room. He was a large man, and he looked like a character in an animated cartoon, waving his arms and shouting. At times he put his face within inches of mine and screamed out his accusations, and I could feel his breath on my face. What I saw was a man terrified of losing control over his wife, a man who was driving himself crazy with fear. I sa...