May/June 2005

Who Would You Be Without Your Story?
An interview with Byron Katie

"We are disturbed not by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens."
- Epictetus

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”
­ Baruch Spinoza

In her bestselling Loving What Is: Four Questions to Change your Life, Byron Katie introduces a simple but profound method of finding peace and happiness through questioning the mind. The heart of Katie’s approach - called The Work - is asking four questions that can help us shift our minds and see our problems in an entirely different light. The Work has been compared to Zen koans and Socratic questioning, and people describe it as spiritual or psychological. But it doesn’t stem from any tradition, Eastern or Western; it is American, easily accessible, down to earth, without pretense or lingo. It originated in the mind of an ordinary woman who had no intention of originating anything.

Katie’s newly released second book, I Need Your Love - Is That True? (Harmony Books, 2005) examines a universal, age-old source of anxiety: our relationships with others. In the book, Katie helps the reader question everything he or she has been taught to do, say, or think in order to secure love, approval and appreciation from others and shows the way to find genuine, effortless love. Over the last 15 years, Katie has traveled the world, offering free public events, weekend workshops, conferences and a nine-day “school.” She doesn’t lecture or teach, but instead invites people to do The Work with her and with each other. Here, she shares the story of how The Work was born, and ways to learn to love what is.

RD: I understand you teach and practice something called “The Work.”

BK: Well, I don’t really “teach” anything. I just offer my own experience and a way to look at things differently. And I notice when people use this work, what I call “inquiry,” they experience a radical change in their lives. Their physical bodies, their mental and emotional selves, everything shifts so dramatically. It’s quite remarkable.

The Work, or the inquiry, is based on four questions. The power is in the answers to those questions. People from a broad range of disciplines and practices - 12-step programs, A Course in Miracles, Christianity - find these four questions helpful. The questions seem to apply to any spirituality or practice.

RD: What are the four questions?

BK: The first question is, “Is it true?” The second question is, “Can you absolutely know that it’s true?” The third question is, “How do you react when you think that thought?” What feelings do you get? How far do those feelings travel? And how do you treat other people and how do you treat yourself? How do you react when you think that thought? The fourth question is, “Who or what would you be without that thought?” In this moment, right now, who would you be without that? After the inquiry, the questions, I then invite people to turn those concepts around - to ask if the opposite is true, or if it makes as much sense or more sense than what they’re believing. I invite them to step for a moment out of denial. When people use these four questions, it invokes answers within them that are just mind-blowing.

RD: Could you give us an example?

BK: Suppose you start to look at what you’re thinking about yourself. Maybe you’re thinking, “My life is horrible; nothing ever works out for me, it’s never going to get any better.” And if you’re believing what you’re thinking, you are probably suffering terribly. If you were to inquire into that thought, you would begin by asking yourself, “Is it true?” Maybe your initial response is, “Yes, it’s true, look how bad my life is.” Then you would go on to ask the second question: “Can I absolutely know that it’s true?” Well, you really can’t know that things will continue to be difficult or bad; everything could change in a split second. You could get a new job, your health could improve, you could find yourself in a wonderful relationship. You just don’t know.

Then you would go on to the third question, “How do you react when you think that thought?” Well, when I think, “My life is horrible, nothing works out,” I feel instantly bad. I feel negative and depressed and hopeless. When I really notice how I react to that thought, I can start to understand how it’s running my life. Then you would go on to the fourth question, “Who would you be without that thought?” Who would you be if you didn’t think everything was going to go wrong? What would that feel like? Ask yourself that, then sit quietly and feel it. Don’t just think it or describe it - really feel it.

RD: Is that all there is to it?

BK: After the four questions, I invite people to then turn their statements around - called the “turnaround.” For example, suppose a woman thinks, “I am so unhappy in my marriage; I don’t love my husband.” After the four questions, we would turn her statement around. So, “I don’t love my husband” becomes, “I do love my husband.” I would invite her to feel that. She may realize her unhappiness in her marriage has nothing to do with her husband. It’s just a story that she’s telling herself, that she loves him or that she hates him. There’s another turnaround: from “I don’t love my husband” we come to “I don’t love myself.” (For more examples of how to do The Work, visit www.thework.org.)

RD: Does your work presume, as some practices do, that people can awaken in a split second?

BK: Awaken to what? What is there to awaken to? I’m sitting here talking to you. That’s all I’m awake to, and that’s enough. It’s a wonderful thing. I’m looking out the window, and it’s incredible, it’s beautiful, it’s life. I’m looking at my bicycle, and some trees, the sky, and it’s very beautiful. That’s all I need to be awake to. It’s a lot. It’s a whole world.

RD: Tell me about your journey. How did you come to do this work?

BK: I was extremely depressed for more than a decade, and I was full of so much rage, my children were afraid of me. There was no reason for my anger or depression. I had plenty of money, I had a wonderful home, my children were healthy, and yet it continued. I didn’t know what to do. I spent most of the last few years of that time shut up in my bedroom. I was terribly agoraphobic; I could barely leave the house. I stayed in bed for weeks at a time, not even bathing or brushing my teeth. It was very painful. I used to sleep on the floor; because my self-esteem was so low, I didn’t believe I deserved to sleep in the bed.

Finally, I checked into a halfway house, and they put me in an attic room. A cockroach crawled over my foot, and I opened my eyes, and in the face of all that hopelessness and darkness, I experienced something that I can’t describe - I’ll just call it “joy.” Everything changed, and there was no reason for it. I just woke up without any concept of who or what I was. There was just no me. All my anger, my anxieties, my depression were gone. Nothing was unacceptable or separate any longer; everything just was as it was.

What I saw in that moment was that when I believe what I think, I suffer, but when I question what I think, I don’t suffer. I’ve come to see this is true for everyone. As long as we believe what we think, our lives, our entire lives, develop out of that mental construct.

RD: So, in that moment, in the attic, did you cease to believe what you thought?

BK: Yes. It could be that I was so terrified of bugs, that when I saw the cockroach and felt it crawling on me, my mind couldn’t project past it. In that state of mindlessness, I just thought that nothing was true, and then I saw that everything was true. And that’s why I ask, “What is awakeness?” I’ve learned that for me to question my mind, to confront my beliefs, is to wake up from the nightmare.

And it’s a process, because we may question one thing, and say, “Oh, my gosh. I believed that all my life. That’s crazy!” But then there are other concepts left to wake up to, so it takes some time.

RD: But in your case, in the attic, it sounds less like a process and more like grace.

BK: Yes, it was pure grace.

RD: Was that experience of joy an isolated incident? Or did you go back to being depressed after that?

BK: You know, that moment went back to the fourth question for me, “Who would you be without that thought?” Who would I be without the thoughts and beliefs in my depression and anxiety? From that moment, I haven’t experienced even a problem, and it’s been a long while. I have three children and five grandchildren, I have family, I have a life just like everyone else. But I refuse to go to the depression again, or the anger or anxiety. Maybe it was pure grace at that moment, but it has evolved since then into understanding. I understand my mind. It makes sense to me. And there’s nothing to be angry about. The place I’m in now is, “How can I help? What can I do from here?” That’s an amazing place to live. It’s real, and it’s natural; we’re all happiest when we’re helping other human beings.

RD: So you didn’t have any kind of formal spiritual or psychological study?

BK: No, I studied hell. And I thought it was forever. I was suicidal. I thought you had to die to be free. I didn’t think you could exist and be free of pain. No one told me there was a way out besides death. In a way, I suppose I did die. My children and husband didn’t recognize me at times after that; I was in the same body, but everything else about me was unrecognizable. It was such a radical shift, people began to call me a walk-in - like an alien had walked into my body.

RD: What did you tell your husband and your children when you came down from the attic?

BK: I didn’t recognize them. They were like people I’d never seen before. I just had to start all over again. My ex-husband used to say it was like I’d fallen out of one tree and climbed into another. He would just wail through the house, “What did you do with her? I didn’t marry you! Where did she go?” He was so bitter, but he was very kind and concerned. After that point, we didn’t have a lot in common.

RD: So you really didn’t have a way to explain to your children what had happened. How would you explain it to them now if you could go back and be there?

BK: The way I would explain it is, I just broke down. It’s like I saw that nothing was true, and I saw that thought actually creates life. And without the story, there’s no life. No story, no world. It’s all projected. When the mind understands the mind, it’s a very beautiful thing. But if the mind starts projecting something that brings on a lot of anxiety or anger, then it’s time to question what you believe. It’s everyone’s responsibility to set themselves free of any mindset that’s dreadful; when they do, their life changes. When we question what we believe, we work with our minds, and we become kinder human beings. Fear is not kind; there’s a lot of cruelty in fear. And no one would be fearful if they knew how not to be.

So, that’s what I do. Once I got back from the halfway house, my house started filling up, phones started ringing, and for an agoraphobic, that’s pretty radical. Soon, people begin to invite me to their homes, then their towns and their countries. They sometimes asked me if I was “enlightened.” I’m just someone who knows the difference between what hurts and what doesn’t. People want an institution built around me, but that doesn’t make sense to me. So I distilled my inner inquiry into the four questions that anyone can ask themselves. I call it the school for The Work - it’s a way to put them through their own minds, to show them how to question their thoughts and beliefs.

We work with people’s stressful thoughts - about their families, their children, their friends, their partners, their parents, anything that’s stressful. I put it all together so they can just fill in the blanks, and then learn how to question what they believe. The results are nothing short of miraculous. It’s nothing special about me. No one needs a teacher. We just need to know how to question what we believe.

RD: I imagine there was some time between your experience in the attic and when you started to teach other people.

BK: Actually, what happened was people noticed that I had undergone a radical change. By word-of-mouth, people would call me and ask what I’d done. I had no idea what they were talking about, so I just invited them, basically, to come live with me. That doesn’t work so well when you have a husband and three children. Also, I saw that people started to become dependent on me, and that wasn’t the answer. So I stopped inviting people into my home, and I would just give them the questions to do on their own.

RD: And you saw these four questions early in the process?

BK: Well, in that moment in the attic, I saw that nothing I thought or believed was true, so those first two questions came to me right away. Then after a while, I saw the reaction from believing our thoughts, and that’s the third question. Then the fourth question came to me: Who would you be without the thought? There was absolutely nothing in that space for me. It was as if there was something looking out through these two holes in my head, these eyes, that was new. Everything was new. It was like being born.

RD: In my experience, I’ve found that most people’s beliefs are strongly held; it’s a very stuck condition, and many spiritual teachings have methods to “unstick” people. You describe this method as being fairly easy; you ask the questions and the fallacy of one’s conclusions becomes evident.

BK: Yes, if you really ask, if you really answer the questions with depth and honesty. But not everyone’s in that space.

RD: What do you mean by, “really ask the questions?”

BK: Well, let’s say we believe the war in Iraq should come to an end, and that we should ship all the troops out of Iraq. If a person were to use those four questions on that belief, it might be hard to really look for other answers inside that perhaps might change their minds. For example, if we say, “I need George Bush to pull the troops out of Iraq,” we could ask, “Is that true? Is that what I need? Do I absolutely know that that’s what the world needs, that that’s what people in Iraq need? Can I absolutely know that that’s true?” We really ask the question and look for new answers. Then look at how we react when we think that thought, “Can I really know that’s true?” Look at any negativity it brings up.

Some good things can come out of that kind of open, honest inquiry. But people’s minds often jump to, “I don’t even want to look at it. Of course we should get the troops out. It’s only right, people are dying, people are suffering, that’s all I need to know.” We shut down our minds, our inquiry, and stick to the beliefs we’re comfortable with, the ones we’re invested in. Most people don’t want to really, really go deep.

Then comes the turnaround. If our starting belief is, “George Bush should pull the troops out of Iraq,” the turnaround is, “George Bush should not pull the troops out of Iraq.” It takes a very open mind just to look at that and to see reasons why it could be better if he does not. Most people don’t want to look at it, to really question their beliefs.

What people believe is their religion. They’re devoted to it. They can’t do those four questions; they are just too invested in what they believe. My religion was to believe I had to pick up my children’s socks. Everyday their socks were on the floor, and everyday I stuck to that religion - I picked them up. How did I react? I was brutal. I would yell. I would say things like, “You don’t appreciate me. You don’t listen to me. You don’t respect me.” It just went on and on and on - all that, over some socks on the floor. And no matter how much I yelled, everyday the socks would be there and everyday I would believe that they shouldn’t be.

I was denying reality and I was creating war in my own home. And inside of me, what a story I had going. “I’m unloved, unappreciated, overworked.” Then I asked myself, “Who or what would I be without that story?” The socks are there one way or the other, but there are two ways of experiencing something. One is as the mother from hell, and the other is with a little understanding and acceptance: “Okay, the socks are on the floor. Now what can I do from here?” Obviously my children don’t mind - this is how they live. It’s me who doesn’t want the socks on the floor. So if the thought is “My children should pick up the socks” and I turn it around, it comes out, “I should pick up the socks.” I picked up the socks for me, not for them, and it changed my life. It was like “Oh, my God. This is heaven with the socks off the floor.” It had nothing to do with them - they didn’t care that the socks were on the floor. It had to do with me all along.

There are many ways of doing this work. Some people are open-minded enough, and tired enough of the pain they’re in, that they’ll question what they believe and turn it around. And some people are so curious about the mind and have such a love of truth, that they love these questions and the turnarounds. And then some people will ask the questions and answer them, and they have not really done inquiry - often it’s a superficial process, and that’s okay, too. We lose our religions when we question what we believe, and there’s a great freedom in that. It just leaves us open to see something else, how beautiful life really is.

RD: Some people derive comfort and security from their beliefs, and may feel that to discard them would be to discard security or comfort, and even perhaps to throw their fate to the winds.

BK: Yes, and that’s the mindset that so many people have when they consider inquiry. And that’s okay - it’s not for everyone. But of course, when you inquire into your beliefs with an open mind and heart, the opposite happens. Any time we find the heart of a matter, the truth, we always come out kinder.

RD: What brings most people to your work? Are they hurting or depressed? Are they just curious?

BK: I think all of the above. They’re in pain, or they’re curious to see how their friends have shifted so radically - they want to know what happened, and they want it too. People with cancer, people who have lost a loved one, people who are depressed, who have had a tough divorce, who are basically unhappy. People who are worried about their security or their health. People who want to find God.

RD: Do you mention God in your teaching?

BK: A lot. But, you know, it’s synonymous with reality for me.

RD: Is that how you define God, as reality?

BK: What I say is reality is, for me, God - because it rules. It is what it is. I’m sitting here talking to you, and it’s benevolent, magical. The story we superimpose upon reality is the problem. The story is what makes suffering possible.

RD: Some would say that’s not superimposing; some would say it’s human nature to have desires, and that it’s inevitable that those desires will go unsatisfied.

BK: Well, if we don’t believe what we think, where is desire?

RD: It could still be a stirring inside.

BK: Not without a concept. I see some bananas and some roses on a table; if I walk over and eat the banana, I see my desire in that moment, as I’m eating the banana. Then I’m looking at the roses; if my desire was to smell one of them, I would just notice that. And then when I was smelling the rose, that’s when I see my desire. It’s wonderful to live that way, because I don’t desire to eat the banana until I’m actually eating it; I don’t desire to smell the rose until I’m actually doing it. So all the desires are always met, but there’s no mental running all over the place and questioning, “Should I? Shouldn’t I?”

RD: Suppose, for example, that you had the desire to send your son to a skiing camp or summer camp, but ...

BK: I got excited just hearing that! I would grab my credit card, pick up the phone and enroll him. That’s exciting! That’s what I’d do if I had the desire, and I didn’t have a mind that told me why I shouldn’t.

RD: But suppose you couldn’t afford it; wouldn’t that be irresponsible?

BK: I would go to my son and say, “I just had the most fabulous thought to send you to camp. That’s what I want for you. I had pictures of you swimming and hiking and having a great time,” and I would share all of that with him. Then I’d say, “It occurred to me that I don’t have the money, but I want you to know what I want for you. And if you have any ideas of how we could bring this about, let’s talk. Here’s the amount of money we need, here’s the amount of money I have, and if you’re interested in going to camp, let’s talk about some ideas for getting the rest of the money.” Maybe it will be this year; maybe it will be a couple of years from now. But it’s still exciting. You get to share your dreams with someone you love and care about. That’s how I live my life. It opens minds, and it opens hearts, and it creates true intimacy.

RD: So you wouldn’t even wonder if that dream were reasonable or unreasonable?

BK: Well, I just saw I didn’t have the money. That’s just the reality. Maybe my son has some ideas. Or maybe some other people whom I share this happy thought with have some ideas. The whole world opens up to a thought. It’s action, and it’s sharing, and it’s beautiful.

RD: Some would see it as a guarantee for disappointment and pain for your son, so perhaps it’s best to avoid even talking about it.

BK: But it puts the two of you in partnership, and it’s a shared goal and experience. I guess I just missed the pain. The sharing is so beautiful, and if he really wants it, who knows? If we work toward that dream together, the dream can come true. It’s a better place to live than in the isolated, lonely place of depression and pain and poverty - both financial and emotional poverty. In that place, people see themselves as failures, and think the things they want aren’t possible. They don’t think they have the ability to open their hearts, to share and find ways to make things work, ways to receive. They’re just believing what they think.