A Mind At Home With Itself Quotes

“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.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“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.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“I already please everyone, and I already have everyone’s approval, though I don’t expect them to realize it yet.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“And that goes not only for mothers but for every human being you haven’t forgiven yet. Every human being, every cat, dog, tree, thing—to be separate from anyone or anything goes against your heart. The only time those people or things are not okay is when you believe they’re not.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“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.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“Atheist, agnostic, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan—we all have one thing in common: we want happiness and peace.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“That’s like saying, “May my will be done, not God’s will,” rather than realizing, deeply, that God’s will is your will at every moment. It’s trying to get what you want, rather than wanting what you have, which is the only way you can ever be happy.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“The basic realization that other people can’t possibly be your problem, that it’s your thoughts about them that are the problem—this realization is huge. This one insight will shake your whole world, from top to bottom”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“You can argue with reality all you want, or you can stop arguing long enough to understand it and be free.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“Is it true?        2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?        3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?        4. Who would you be without the thought?”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“Here the Buddha repeats what he said in previous chapters. These chapters make important points that are worth repeating: that the bodhisattva’s focus is always on selfless service to others, that there are no others, and that there is no such thing as enlightenment. If you understand these three points, you understand everything. If you understand just one of the points, you understand everything. Each is a different aspect of the same truth.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“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.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind At Home With Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around

“Mind’s job is to be right, and it can justify itself faster than the speed of light. Stop the portion of your thinking that is the source of your fear, anger, sadness, or resentment by transferring it to paper.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“It’s not you that people like or dislike; it’s their stories of you. They”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: Finding Freedom in a World of Suffering

“learn how to call the free Do The Work helpline;”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“I’m sorry I did this to you. It’s all my fault. What can I do to make it right?”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“There’s no light, no up or down, no possibility of movement, no anything. There’s nothing, forever, with no way out. I felt such terror.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“As I often say, if you argue with reality, you lose—but only 100 percent of the time.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“I use the word to mean a natural state of peace and clarity.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“ARTHUR: I don’t want her to stop attacking me. I don’t want her to accept me, love me, and embrace me as good enough. Well, yeah. Why should she? KATIE: And when you consider how you behaved on that phone call, how could she? ARTHUR: Oh, gross. Yeah, I agree. KATIE: Stay in the situation; otherwise you’ll generalize and turn this onto yourself and start to feel guilt. In that situation, “I don’t want her to do all those things, when I consider my part.” ARTHUR: Why would she? Yeah. That’s true.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“ARTHUR: I want me to stop attacking my mother. I want me to accept her, love her, and embrace her as good enough for me. KATIE: Yes, sweetheart. That’s your prescription for”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered,” Katie says, “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. I found that suffering is optional.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy

“People used to ask me if I was enlightened, and I would say, “I don’t know anything about that. I’m just someone who knows the difference between what hurts and what doesn’t.”
― Byron Katie, A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around – The Work Meets the Diamond Sutra for Liberation and Joy