Byron Katie
Rather than understand the original cause—a thought—we try to change the stressful feelings by looking outside ourselves.
Byron Katie
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.”
Byron Katie
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.
Byron Katie
I use the word inquiry as synonymous with The Work…Inquiry is a way to end confusion and to experience internal peace, even in a world of apparent chaos. Above all else, inquiry is about realizing that all the answers we ever need are always available inside us.
Byron Katie
You’re either attaching to your thoughts or inquiring. There’s no other choice.
Byron Katie
When you do The Work, you see who you are by seeing who you think other people are. Eventually you come to see that everything outside you is a reflection of your own thinking. You are the storyteller, the projector of all stories, and the world is the projected image of your thoughts.
Byron Katie
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.
Byron Katie
When you realize that every stressful moment you experience is a gift that points you to your own freedom, life becomes very kind.
Byron Katie
Thought the mind can justify itself faster than the speed of light, it can be stopped through the act of writing.
Byron Katie
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.
Byron Katie
Once the mind is met with understanding, it can always find its way home.
Byron Katie
Everyone is a mirror image of yourself—your own thinking coming back to you.
Byron Katie
If I had a prayer, it would be this: “God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen.
Byron Katie
My experience is that the teachers we need most are the people we’re living with right now.
Byron Katie
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.
Byron Katie
The whole world is simply my story, projected back to me on the screen of my own perception. All of it.
Byron Katie
