Byron Katie

Do you know anyone who hasn’t changed his mind? This door was a tree, then it will be firewood for someone, then it will return to air and earth. We’re all like that, constantly changing. It’s simply honest to report that you’ve changed your mind when you have. When you’re afraid of what people will think if you speak honestly, that’s where you become confused.

There is only one problem, ever: your uninvestigated story in the moment.

Just keep coming home to yourself. You are the one you’ve been waiting for.

God, as I use the word, is another name for what is. I always know God’s intention: It’s exactly what is in every moment.

Nothing outside you can ever give you what you’re looking for.

That’s where the fear comes from—from your uninvestigated thoughts.

Everything happens for me, not to me.

Nothing terrible has ever happened except in our thinking. Reality is always good, even in situations that seem like nightmares. The story we tell is the only nightmare that we have lived.

You’re never given more pain than you can handle. You never, ever get more than you can take.

It’s only our story that keeps us from knowing that we always have everything we need.

We’re all looking for love, in our confusion, until we find our way back to the realization that love is what we already are.

After you’ve been doing inquiry for a while, if you have the thought “She doesn’t love me,” you just get the immediate turnaround with a smile: “Oh, I’m not loving myself in this moment.”

The nightmare always becomes laughter, once it’s understood.

As you inquire into issues and turn judgments around, you come to see that every perceived problem appearing “out there” is really nothing more than a misperception within your own thinking.

In the fall, you don’t grieve because the leaves are falling and dying. You say, “Isn’t it beautiful!” Well, we’re the same way. There are seasons. We all fall sooner or later. It’s all so beautiful. And our concepts, without investigation, keep us from knowing this. It’s beautiful to be a leaf, to be born, to fall, to give way to the next, to become food for the roots. It’s life, always changing its form and always giving itself completely. We all do our part. No mistake.

There is no mistake in nature.

Lack of understanding is always painful.

Without an uninvestigated story, there’s only the perfection of life appearing as itself. You can always go inside and find the beauty that’s revealed after the pain and fear are understood.

A teacher of fear can’t bring peace on earth. We have been trying to do it that way for thousands of years. The person who turns inner violence around, the person who finds peace inside and lives it, is the one who teaches what true peace is. We are waiting for just one teacher. You’re the one.

I find that so often self-realization leaves us only with laughter.

When you run in fear, it’s square into the wall.

You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer.

Do you want to be right more than you want to know the truth? It’s the truth that set me free. Acceptance, peace, and less attachment to a world of suffering are all effects of doing The Work. They’re not the goals. Do The Work for the love of freedom, for the love of truth.

I’m a lover of reality, not because I’m a spiritual woman, but because it hurts when I argue with what is. And I notice that I lose, 100 percent of the time.

I love not rushing the process. Mind doesn’t shift until it does, and when it does shift, it’s right on time, not one second too late or too soon. People are like seeds waiting to sprout. We can’t be pushed ahead of our own understanding.

The Work is: Judge your neighbor, write it down, ask four questions, turn it around. That’s it. Simple stuff.

The greatest stock market you can invest in is yourself. Finding this truth is better than finding a gold mine.

I am entirely motivated without anger. The truth sets us free, and freedom acts.

Clarity moves much more efficiently than violence or stress.

Would you rather be right or free?

I like to say that no one can hurt me—that’s my job. This is good news.

When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100 percent of the time.

Nothing ever goes wrong in life.

Reality doesn’t ever wait for our agreement or approval. It is what it is. You can count on that.

When a thought appears such as “Do the dishes” and you don’t do them, notice how an internal war breaks out… The stress and weariness you feel are really mental combat fatigue.

What I call “doing the dishes” is the practice of loving the task in front of you. Your inner voice guides you all day long to do simple things such as brush your teeth, drive to work, call your friend, or do the dishes. Even though it’s just another story, it’s a very short story, and when you follow the direction of the voice, the story ends. We are really alive when we live as simply as that—open, waiting, trusting, and loving to do what appears in front of us now…What we need to do unfolds before us, always—doing the dishes, paying the bills, picking up the children’s socks, brushing our teeth. We never receive more than we can handle, and there is always just one thing to do. Whether you have ten dollars or ten million dollars, life never gets more difficult than that.

The world is as you perceive it to be. For me, clarity is a word for beauty. It’s what I am. And when I’m clear, I see only beauty. Nothing else is possible.

But when you think you’re supposed to do something with it and imagine that you’re the doer, that’s pure delusion. Just follow your passion. Do what you love. Inquire, and have a happy life while you’re doing it.

That’s the purpose of stress. It’s a friend. It’s an alarm clock, built in to let you know that it’s time to do The Work.

I don’t let go of my concepts. I meet them with understanding. Then they let go of me.

There is no thought or situation that you can’t put up against inquiry. Every thought, every person, every apparent problem is here for the sake of your freedom.

That’s what every uncomfortable feeling is for—that’s what pain is for, what money is for, what everything in the world is for: your self-realization.

Until you can see everything in the world as your friend, your work is not done.

You are the effect of your story, that’s all.

You might believe that it’s only for their own good, but how does it feel when you try to manipulate the people you love? Are you teaching them that your love is conditional? Maybe through inquiry we can find another way.

We’ve been looking outside us for our own peace. We’ve been looking in the wrong direction.

It’s not easy to find your own way when you believe that you need love, approval, appreciation, or anything from your family. It’s particularly hard when you want them to see things your way.

Reality doesn’t wait for your opinion, vote, or permission, sweetheart. It just keeps being what it is and doing what it does.

You can’t drop concepts. You can only shine a little flashlight on them as you do inquiry, an you see that what you thought was true wasn’t. And when the truth is seen, there’s nothing you can do to make the lie true for you again.

I’ll tell you that for me, one when someone used to say something that was true, one way I knew it was true was that I immediately felt defensive. I blocked it off, and I went to war with them in my mind and suffered all that goes with it. And they were only saying what was true.

In reality, there is no such thing as a “should” or a “shouldn’t.” These are only thoughts that we impose onto reality. The mind is like a carpenter’s level. When the bubble is off to one side—“It shouldn’t be raining”—we can know that the mind is caught in its thinking. When the bubble is right in the middle—“It’s raining”—we can know that the surface level and the mind is accepting reality as it is. Without the “should” and “shouldn’t,” we can see reality as it is, and this leaves us free to act efficiently, clearly, and sanely. Asking “What’s the reality of it?” can help bring the mind out of its story, back into the real world.

When you think that someone or something other than yourself needs to change, you’re mentally out of your business.

I came to see that the world is always as it should be, whether I opposed it or not. And I came to embrace reality with all my heart. I love the world, without any conditions.

Some of us are returning to sanity, because we’re tired of the pain. We’re in a hurry. No time to mess around.

It’s important to realize that inquiry is about noticing, not about dropping the thought… Inquiry is not about getting rid of thoughts; it’s about realizing what’s true for you, through awareness and unconditional self-love. Once you see the truth, the thought lets go of you, not the other way around.

Without our stories, we are not only able to act clearly and fearlessly, we are also a friend, a listener. We are people living happy lives. We are appreciation and gratitude that have become as natural as breath itself. Happiness is the natural state for someone who knows that there’s nothing to know and that we already have everything we need, right here now.

As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there”—as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering—the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you’re suffering in paradise.

Self-realization is not complete until it lives in action.

I saw that we’re all doing the best we can. This is how a lifetime of humility begins.

When you realize that suffering and discomfort are the call to inquiry, you may actually begin to look forward to uncomfortable feelings. You may even experience them as friends coming to show you what you have not yet investigated thoroughly enough.

No one can hurt me—that’s my job.

If our thinking is clear, how could work or money be the problem? Our thinking is all we need to change.

Who would you be without the thought “I need more money to be safe?” You might be a lot easier to be with. You might even begin to notice the laws of generosity, the laws of letting money go out fearlessly and come back fearlessly. You don’t ever need more money than you have.

Your nature is truth, and when you oppose it, you don’t feel like yourself. Stress never feels as natural as peace does.

When you realize that every stressful moment you experience is a gift that points you to your own freedom, life becomes very kind.

Thought the mind can justify itself faster than the speed of light, it can be stopped through the act of writing.

Every story is a variation on a single theme: This shouldn’t be happening. I shouldn’t be having this experience. God is unjust. Life isn’t fair.

Once the mind is met with understanding, it can always find its way home.

Everyone is a mirror image of yourself—your own thinking coming back to you.

I have discovered that in every language and every country I have visited, there are no new stories. They’re all recycled. The same stressful thoughts arise in each mind one way or another, sooner or later.

If I had a prayer, it would be this: “God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen.”

My experience is that the teachers we need most are the people we’re living with right now.

The Work is the end of the world as we understand it to be, sweetheart. And it’s the opening to reality, as it really is, in all its beauty.

Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to change the world so that they can be happy. This hasn’t ever worked, because it approaches the problem backward. What The Work gives us is a way to change the projector—mind—rather than the projected. It’s like when there’s a piece of lint on a projector’s lens. We think there’s a flaw on the screen, and we try to change this person and that person, whomever the flaw appears on next. But it’s futile to try to change the projected images. Once we realize where the lint is, we can clear the lens itself. This is the end of suffering, and the beginning of a little joy in paradise.

It’s good that it hurts. Pain is the signal that you’re confused, that you’re in a lie.

You know what I love, sweetheart? The thoughts that used to send us into deep depression—these same thoughts, once understood, send us into laughter.

Who would you be if you didn’t believe this lie?

That’s what I love about integrity. Each time we go inside, that’s where it is.

It makes sense that no one else can cause you pain. That’s your job.

I came to see that there was nothing to forgive, that I was the one who caused my own problems.

If I think that someone else is causing my problem, I’m insane.

Who would you be if you didn’t believe this thought?

The pain shows you what’s left to investigate.

The whole world is simply my story, projected back to me on the screen of my own perception. All of it.

The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.

If you want reality to be different than what it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark.

I realized that it’s insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100% of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It’s blowing!

The Work reveals that what you think shouldn’t have happened should have happened. It should happened because it did, and no thinking in the world can change it. This doesn’t mean that you condone it or approve of it. It just means that you can see things without resistance and without the confusion of your inner struggle. No one wants their children to get sick, no one wants to be in a car accident; but when these things happen, how can it be helpful to mentally argue with them? We know better than to do that, yet we do it, because we don’t know how to stop.

When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.

I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours and God’s. Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our business. When I think, “You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself,” I am in your business. When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God’s business. If I am mentally in your business or in God’s business, the effect is separation.

To think that I know what’s best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what’s right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve problems for you.

A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.

One day I noticed that I wasn’t breathing—I was being breathed.

The Work is merely four questions; it’s not even a thing. It has no motive, no strings. It’s nothing without your answers. These four questions will join any program you’ve got ad enhance it. Any religion you have—they’ll enhance it. If you have no religion, they will bring you joy. And they’ll burn up anything that isn’t true for you. They’ll burn through to the reality that has always been waiting.

Stories are the untested, uninvestigated theories that tell us what all these things mean. We don’t even realize that they’re just theories.

When you’re operating on uninvestigated theories of what’s going on and you aren’t even aware of it, you’re in what I call “the dream.” Often the dream becomes troubling; sometimes it even turns into a nightmare. At times like these, you may want to test the truth of your theories by doing The Work on them. The Work always leaves you with less of your uncomfortable story. Who would you be without it? How much of your world is made up of unexamined stories? You’ll never know until you inquire.

I have never experienced a stressful feeling that wasn’t caused by attaching to an untrue thought. Behind every uncomfortable feeling, there’s a thought that isn’t true for us.

Rather than understand the original cause—a thought—we try to change the stressful feelings by looking outside ourselves.

It is easy to be swept away by some overwhelming feeling, so it’s helpful to remember that any stressful feeling is like a compassionate alarm clock that says, “You’re caught in the dream.”

If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.