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

the word monk means someone who is alone. I love that, because in reality we are all alone. Each of us is the only one there is. There’s no other! So for me monk doesn’t describe someone who has entered a monastery. It’s an honest description of everyone—of me and also of you. To my mind, a true monk is someone who understands that there is no self to protect or defend. He’s someone who knows that he doesn’t have a specific home, so he’s at home everywhere.

When I woke up to reality in 1986, I realized that all my suffering had come from arguing with what is. I had been deeply depressed for many years, and I had blamed the world for all my problems. Now I saw that my depression had nothing to do with the world around me; it was caused by what I believed about the world. I realized that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that.

Every no I say is a yes to myself. It feels right to me. People don’t have to guess what I want or don’t want, and I don’t need to pretend. When you’re honest about your yeses and noes, it’s easy to live a kind life. People come and go in my life when I tell the truth, and they would come and go if I didn’t tell the truth. I have nothing to gain one way, and everything to gain the other way. I don’t leave myself guessing or guilty.

There are men and women who authentically want to go beyond themselves. There are sincere men and women who want to be free of suffering. I was one of those without realizing it. I tested what happened when I didn’t respond to the thoughts of “I want,” “I need,” “I shouldn’t,” “I should.” I witnessed the world beyond those apparent requirements, and I found none of them to be true. None of those thoughts could stand up to inquiry.

You could discover this even if you tested it for just twenty-four hours, with one meal. Someone might give you a small bowl of rice, and that’s it for twenty-four hours, and the I-know mind would say, “This isn’t enough nourishment; I’m still hungry; I’m too weak; I’ll get sick; I’ll die.” But when you allow each thought to be met with “Is it true?” life will show itself to you. Eventually, you find yourself ending every thought with a question mark, not with a period. You’re able to rest in the never-ending enlightenment of the don’t-know mind.

Some people would give anything to know how to control it. But the mind can never be controlled; it can only be questioned, loved, and met with understanding. The mind is like an unruly child. Thoughts come, one after another, to pester us and demand our attention, like unloved children. Our job is to discern, to know the difference between an internal argument and a state where we’re open to listen and receive. Suffering appears when we try to control reality, when we think that we’re the source rather than the mirror image or that we’re more or less than anything else in the mirror. But everything in the world is equal. It’s all a reflection of mind. We can control the mind only to this extent: as a thought appears, we can simply notice it, without believing it. We can notice it with a questioning mind. The thought that asserts itself and wants to be believed comes from the I-know mind, the supposed teacher. The questioning comes purely from the student. In the questioning mind we experience a flow. There’s no interruption, no limitation. ”Control” is just a matter of noticing. It doesn’t mean imposing an order onto the mind. If you’re a true student, the thought will always end with a question mark.

The moment you think you’re someone or think you have something to teach, the inner world freezes and becomes the realm of illusion. That’s what it costs when you identify yourself as the person who knows. It’s a concoction of mind. You shrink down into the teacher: limited, separate, stuck.

The teacher who is always a student, who lives with an open mind, is free to continue expanding his consciousness. For the true teacher (that is, the true student), teacher and student are always equal.

The mind can never be controlled; it can only be questioned, loved, and met with understanding.

The only important thing to know is this: if a thought hurts, question it.

Everything painful is undone—now . . . now . . . now. If you think you’re enlightened, you’ll love having your car towed away. That’s the proof of the pudding! How do you react when your child is sick? How do you react when your husband asks for a divorce? Are you thrilled that he’s giving himself the life he wants? Do you love him with all your heart as you help him pack his bags? And if you don’t, what thoughts are standing between you and pure generosity? Whatever these thoughts are, write them down and question them. No stressful thought, no separation, can withstand the power of inquiry. All the enlightenment you’ll ever need is waiting for you to tap into right now.

The only important thing to know is this: if a thought hurts, question it.

What do I mean by that? Dave, for example, will only and always be who you believe him to be—no more, no less. Do you understand? You believed him in, and you believe him out. He’ll always be who you believe him to be. You can never know him. To know yourself is what’s important. To know yourself is truly to know all of us. Okay.

If your thinking changes, the pain changes.

pain is a projection of mind. If you observe it closely, you’ll see that it never arrives; it’s always on its way out. And it’s always happening on the surface of perception, while underneath it is the vast ocean of joy.

When you realize the cause of pain, you understand that all pain is in the past. It’s impossible to feel pain in the present, because there never is a present.

Usually when you think that pain is unbearable, it’s a lie. The pain is bearable: you’re bearing it. What’s so painful is that you’re projecting a future. You’re believing thoughts like “This will go on forever,” “This will only get worse,” or “I’m going to die.” The story of the future is the only way you can be afraid. As you’re projecting what will happen, you miss what’s actually happening.

If you see anything in the world as unacceptable, you can be certain that your mind is confused.

What is there to be aware of other than mind? So mind aware of itself is awareness. And when mind is aware of itself, it realizes that not only is it not personal, it doesn’t even exist;

My job is to take the mystery out of everything. It’s really simple, because there isn’t anything. There’s only the story appearing now: the story of buddhas and non-buddhas, the story that some people are enlightened and some aren’t, the story that you need more than you already have, the story that you need to attain some high spiritual state before you can be whole. You can just watch these stories arise and pass away, and be aware that in this moment only the story exists.

You are who you believe you are. Other people are, for you, who you believe they are; they can be nothing more than that. If you realized that the mind is one, that everyone and everything is your own projection (including you), you would understand that it’s only yourself you’re ever dealing with. You would end up loving yourself, loving every thought you think. When you love every thought, you love everything thoughts create, you love the whole world you have created. At first, the love that overflows in you seems to be about connecting with other people, and it’s wonderful to feel intimately connected to every human being you meet. But then it becomes about mind connected to itself, and only that. The ultimate love is the mind’s love of itself. Mind joins with mind—all of mind, without division or separation, all of it loved. Ultimately I am all I can know, and what I come to know is that there is no such thing as

If I can teach you anything, it is to identify the stressful thoughts that you’re believing and to question them, to get still enough so that you can hear your own answers. Stress is the gift that alerts you to your asleepness. Feelings like anger or sadness exist only to alert you to the fact that you’re believing your own stories. The Work gives you a portal into wisdom, a way to tap into the answers that wake you up to your true nature, until you realize how all suffering is caused and how it can be ended. It returns you to before the beginning of things. Who would you be without your identity?

“Develop a mind that abides nowhere.”

The world you see is a reflection of how you see it. If your world is ugly or unfair, it’s because you haven’t questioned the thoughts that are making it appear that way.

We’re afraid of losing the world of opposites that we depend on to maintain our precious identity as the one who is justified in suffering. Some of us would rather be right than free.

The worst thing that can happen always turns out to be the best thing that can happen.

The only place we can be happy is right here, right now—not tomorrow, not in ten minutes. Happiness can’t be achieved. We can’t get it from money or sex or fame or approval or anything on the outside. We can only find happiness within us: unchanging, immovable, ever present, ever waiting. If we pursue it, it runs away. If we stop pursuing it and question our minds instead, the source of all stress disappears. Happiness is who we already are, once our minds are clear. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want. We’re happy with whatever life brings us. That’s enough, and more than enough.

How can we not take criticism personally, especially when it comes from the people closest to us? Just consider the suffering you create when you believe their thoughts about you, and yours about them in return. It’s huge, and it goes on and on. As for the how, it’s simple. Question the thoughts you had while your mother or father or husband or wife or apparent enemy was criticizing you. Hurt feelings or discomfort of any kind cannot be caused by another person. No one outside you can hurt you. That’s not possible. Only when you believe a story about them can you be hurt. So you’re the one who’s hurting yourself. This is very good news, because it means that you don’t have to get someone else to stop hurting you or to change in any way. You’re the one who can stop hurting you. You’re the only one.

Everything in the world is doing its job. The ceiling sits on the walls, the walls sit on the floor, the curtains are hanging in front of the windows; they’re all doing their jobs. But when you tell yourself a story about how reality is supposed to look, you end up arguing with the ceiling or the wall, and it’s hopeless. It’s like trying to teach a cat to bark. The cat won’t ever cooperate. “No, no,” you may tell it, “you don’t understand. You should bark. It would be so much better for you if you barked. Besides, I really need you to bark. As a matter of fact, I’m going to devote the rest of my life to teaching you how to bark.” And many years later, after all your sacrifice and devotion, the cat looks up at you and says, “Meow.” Trying to change people leaves you in a hopeless state of mind, because you just can’t do it. That’s what I love about reality: it is what it is. It won’t accommodate itself to you, however you try to will it or force it or trick it or positive-think it into changing. As I often say, if you argue with reality, you lose—but only 100 percent of the time. People change or they don’t. It’s not your business; your business is to understand your own mind. When you understand your mind, you feel gratitude when they change and gratitude when they don’t. You can argue with reality all you want, or you can stop arguing long enough to understand it and be free. You come to know for yourself what’s true, and that’s where your freedom is; it has nothing to do...

Stop invading her privacy. ARTHUR: Because she has the right to think whatever she thinks. KATIE: Just like you. ARTHUR: Yeah. That’s true. Yeah. KATIE: Different worlds. And it’s a wonderful thing to share them. If you share your world with me, it doesn’t affect my world. Now I have two worlds to appreciate. ARTHUR: So I . . . Wow! Okay. KATIE: Different planets. Different solar systems. ARTHUR: It’s just . . . [Laughing] KATIE: In her world, it’s not okay to be gay. In your world, it’s okay. ARTHUR: Yeah. KATIE: And why do we have to fight with these worlds that have different traditions, different ideas, different ways of being? ARTHUR: That’s true. Yeah.

And I would listen to her world, to her suffering, to her beliefs, and how some we have in common and some we don’t.

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...

The Work is a practice. I suggest that people have it for breakfast every morning, and have a good day. Even if you’re graced with the deepest experience of enlightenment, you still need to practice awareness, because there are ancient thoughts that will keep arising in you, and if you don’t question them, they’ll take you over, however enlightened you are. For me, the major thought was “My mother doesn’t love me.” I worked on this one, and dozens of variations, every day for a whole year. I would write down the thoughts as they came to me, and I would meditate on each one, using the four questions and turnarounds of The Work, for hours, sometimes for days. I knew I wasn’t dealing with a person; I was dealing with concepts, and once I investigated the concepts about my mother, I had unraveled all my concepts about everyone and everything.

The Work is a way to step in between thinking a thought and believing the thought.

Suffering is what creates buddhas. Where there’s no suffering, there’s no buddha, because there’s no reason for a buddha to exist.

So I don’t move, I’m being moved; I don’t do, I’m being done; I don’t breathe, I’m being breathed; I don’t think, I’m being thought. There is no me. There’s nothing real about it. When you realize that there’s no such thing as a self or an other, you realize that all human relationships are reflections in the mirror. It’s not you that people like or dislike; it’s their stories of you. They aren’t attacking you or leaving you; they’re attacking or leaving who they believe you are. What does any of that have to do with you? You’re their projection, just as they are yours. Realizing this makes it easy not to be affected by praise or blame.

praise is more like our true nature; blame hurts the blamer.

inquiry? When you learn to meet your thoughts with understanding, you can meet us with understanding. What could anyone say about you that you haven’t already thought? There are no new stressful thoughts—they’re all recycled. We’re not meeting anything but thoughts. The external is the internal projected. Whether it’s your thinking or my thinking, it’s the same. Only love has the power to heal.

When you imagine any scenario, that is your world in the moment, and there are many worlds within the illusion of time—as many worlds as there are grains of sand in the Ganges or stars in the sky. You think that you know what other people are thinking, but it’s just you thinking. Even if they tell you what they’re thinking, that doesn’t mean it’s so. You hear and see only from the perspective of your own world.

It’s easy to see how the mind functions: no thought is true. So it’s easy for me to guide people to nothing, if they’re open to that, because that’s where they are in the first place. I just guide them to unravel everything they think. I don’t move; they’re the ones who move. I ask questions and occasionally point to nothing. I help them notice that the thoughts and images in their minds are pure imagination. However substantial a belief appears to be, there’s no substance to it, and I point them to that no-substance. When the mind is tempted to land on any thought, it’s because it believes that thought. And to believe a thought is to exist in an imaginary world, however real it may seem. So I guide people out of their imaginary worlds, into Buddha-mind—in other words, into nothing. You can’t describe Buddha-mind. You can only point to it with words such as serene, joyous, whole.

People sometimes compare thoughts to clouds that come and go in the sky of the mind. But if we want to be really accurate, nothing comes and nothing goes. Something would have to exist before it could come or go. It may seem radical to say that not even thoughts exist, until you begin to notice that every thought is in the past. Even the present moment is the past as soon as you notice it, and that is obvious to anyone who has spent much time in meditation. So how is a thought possible? It’s not. Just because you believe that thoughts exist doesn’t mean that they do. The imagined past is your only proof that there is even a “you” who thought the thought.

Wealth is a state of mind; if anything is held back, it’s not true wealth. True

Every time I give something away, what comes back to me is freedom.

When I woke up to reality, I had never heard of meditation; there was no one to tell me that thoughts were enemies. It was only natural that I could meet each thought arising and welcome it as a friend. I can’t meet you as an enemy and not feel it as stress. So how can I meet a thought as an enemy and not feel it as stress? When I learned to meet my thinking as a friend, I noticed that I could meet every human being as a friend. What could you say about me that hasn’t appeared within me as a thought? It’s so simple.

You say that thoughts aren’t enemies, so you don’t try to get rid of thoughts. What kind of thoughts do you think? Once I understood my thinking, life became pure joy. I love what is, so that’s where my mind is. If I have the thought I love to walk, it’s because I’m walking. If I have the thought I love to be still, it’s because I’m being still. If I have the thought I love to do the dishes, it’s because I’m doing the dishes. My mind is in harmony with reality. I’m always aware of the match. Do you enjoy thinking? Very much. More accurately, I love being thought. I love never finding one thought that can be captured.

We all get what we need, exactly when we need it.

You can’t see what you don’t believe. Belief creates the world of illusion—all of it.

I look around and I see people attempting to frighten themselves by believing what they think, innocently creating their own fear, anger, and misery, with all their arguments against reality used as proof. And I wait. Every mind ultimately finds its way back. It’s wonderful to watch the mind that was so convinced dissolve into nothing and rest in that simple reality. When someone loves what is, she makes use of anything life happens to bring her way, because she doesn’t con herself anymore. What comes her way is always good. She sees that clearly, even though people may say otherwise. There’s no adversity in her life. And from her experience, others learn the way of it. If someone says, “I’m leaving you,” she feels the excitement rising inside her, since she can see only the advantages that come from that. What could be a more fulfilling experience than to witness the gift of reality? If someone says, “I’m joining you,” she can see only the advantages in that. What could be a dearer experience than having you join me? She’s going to die: good. She’s not going to die: good. She’s going to lose her eyesight: good. She’s not going to lose her eyesight: good. She’s crippled; she can walk again: good, good, good. She, like everyone and everything else, is the beautiful, simple flow of reality, which is always kinder and more exciting than our thoughts about it.

Is there anyone in this room who can stop believing what you’re believing in the moment you’re believing it?

Believers have a lot of suffering in their lives. And if The Work becomes your daily practice, you’ll find that there’s no longer any war in your life. When the war ends in you, it ends in your family. You’re the one who can end it. You’re the only one. Our husbands or wives can’t do it for us.