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by
Byron Katie
Read between
January 18 - July 3, 2018
“The Buddha delivered this discourse especially for very intelligent students. It will enable you to realize the essence of mind. When you realize that wisdom is inherent in your own mind, you won’t need to rely on any scriptural authority, since you can make use of your own wisdom by the constant practice of meditation.”
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.
In the dream-world, the world of suffering, the mind seems chaotic, and people think that it needs to be controlled. 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.
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.
If I’m sitting with someone who thinks he knows something, he has limited himself, and my answers mirror that limitation. But if the student asks with a mind that is truly open, the answer is free.
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.
When we change our perception, we change the world that we perceive.
If you think that someone else is the cause of your problem, you’re insane. You do The Work on your own thinking, clean up your own mess, and the problem disappears. Life always becomes simpler and kinder when we question our stressful thoughts.
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.
It’s painful to believe that anyone needs to be saved.
If someone is suffering—in other words, if someone is believing a world of suffering into existence—then that is what’s left of me.
The suffering that people describe to me necessarily comes from either an imagined past or an imagined future, since an identified mind is always remembering or anticipating what isn’t happening in reality. I realize that everyone is always okay; they’re always in a state of grace, whether they realize it or not.
Some people think that empathy means feeling another person’s pain. But it’s not possible to feel another person’s pain. What happens is that people project what someone’s pain must feel like and then react to their own projection. This kind of empathy is unnecessary for compassionate action; it actually gets in the way.
And eventually, as love would have it, if their minds are open to inquiry, their problems begin to disappear. In the presence of someone who doesn’t see a problem, the problem falls away—which shows you that there wasn’t a problem in the first place.
There are two men: there’s the man in your head, and then there’s him. [Laughter] And when he is not the man of your imagination, you punish him. You become cold, or whatever it was you did. Like saying, “Were you going to leave without hugging me?” In that tone of voice. Okay? You become the one he didn’t fall in love with.
“Make friends with mediocrity.” You can find perfect enlightenment in just doing the dishes. There’s nothing more spiritual than that.
By questioning the belief that these things shouldn’t happen, you can end your own suffering about the suffering of others. And once you do, you’ll be able to notice that this makes you a kinder human being, someone who is motivated by love rather than outrage or sadness. The end of suffering in the world begins with the end of suffering in you.
If you see anything in the world as unacceptable, you can be certain that your mind is confused.
When a thought is met in that way, it loses its power to cause negative feelings. It unravels instantly, it deconstructs, it evaporates, and you are left with your original nature. The goodness of all things becomes evident with every realized moment.
Eventually, through practice, you no longer impose your thinking onto reality, and you can experience everything as it really is: as pure grace.
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.
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.
If your thoughts are opposed to love, you’ll feel stress, and that stress will let you know that you’ve drifted away from what you fundamentally are. If you feel balance and joy, that tells you that your thinking is more in keeping with your true identity, which is beyond identity.
The mature mind is a peaceful mind, a mind in love with reality. Reality is so beautiful that it doesn’t need a plan.
You assure people that questioning is safe. But you also say that it’s necessary to lose everything. Isn’t that intimidating for most people? I can see how it might be intimidating. But are you really safe identifying as a body? As a body, isn’t it certain that all the people you love will eventually leave you or die, and that you’ll age, get sick, hurt in all kinds of ways, and at last die yourself? Is that “you” safe? So to lose your false identity is to gain everything. In the world of no self and no other, there is no suffering, no decay, no death, no falseness. It’s a world of pure
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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. As your mind becomes clearer and kinder, your world becomes clearer and kinder. As your mind becomes beautiful, your world becomes beautiful.
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.
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.
Happiness is who we already are, once our minds are clear.
Here’s the bottom line: suffering is optional. If you prefer to suffer, go on believing your stressful thoughts. But if you’d rather be happy, question them.
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.
People will just keep pressing your buttons until you understand. Isn’t that wonderful? It’s a setup for total enlightenment, as long as you’re willing to question your thoughts. I call it “checkmate.”
People don’t have to get along with me. Do I get along with them?—that’s the important question. People don’t have to understand me. Do I understand myself? Do I understand them? And if I understand myself, I understand everyone. As long as I remain a mystery to myself, people remain a mystery. If I don’t like me, I don’t like you.
