”’There’s a plastic garbage dump twice the size of Texas floating in the Pacific. How in the world am I supposed to love that? Is your mental image of the garbage dump the same as the garbage dump?’ Byron Katie asks. ‘Which is causing your stress: the reality or the image?’ When you’re able to understand how stress is created, to clean up your inner environment, you can act more effectively to clean up your outer environment. copyright2015 Byron Katie International, Inc. All rights reserved. For more information, visit thework.com."

Inner and Outer Pollution

Byron Katie, founder of The Work, has one job: to teach people how to end their own suffering. As she guides people through the powerful process of inquiry she calls The Work, they find that their stressful beliefs—about life, other people, or themselves—radically shift and their lives are changed forever. Based on Byron Katie's direct experience of how suffering is created and ended, The Work is an astonishingly simple process, accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds, and requires nothing more than a pen, paper, and an open mind. Through this process, anyone can learn to trace unhappiness to its source and deal with it there. Katie (as everyone calls her) not only shows us that all the problems in the world originate in our thinking: she gives us the tool to open our minds and set ourselves free.

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Jo-Jo from Hercules, California asks, "What if the Santa Barbara shooter had had the chance to do inquiry, to challenge the thoughts that led him to kill people? Perhaps he wouldn't have done what he did." "If I have no cause to kill. why would I kill?" Katie says. "Every time we do The Work and question the thoughts that cause anger and separation, we lose the ability to do harm, because we are taking care of original cause, which is the mind and what it's believing." "Is it possible to do The Work as a community for Elliot and for kids who are not able to discover the questioning of their minds, so maybe they won't harm people?" Jo Jo asks. "If that shooting is of concern to me," says Katie, "then I'm going to do The Work on that shooter. I'm going to question every judgment I have about that shooter from the moment I first heard about him. I'll put those judgments, what I'm thinking and believing, onto the Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet. And then I'm going to give myself what I want the community to have. And if I don't find peace with it, I'm going to do another Worksheet. I'm going to call a Certified Facilitator of The Work, I'm going to call the Do The Work Helpline. I'm going to go to the School for The Work. I'm going to go to thework.com and follow the simple directions. I'm going to give myself everything I want the community to have. Then I'll call the community together and invite them to do The Work. Some of them will come, some of them won't, but you're serving the community just through the invitation." "Is it possible to do The Work for Elliot and other mass murderers, even though they're gone?" Jo-Jo asks. "To do The Work on him is to shift that," Katie says. "Do The Work as him. Put yourself in the place of someone who is so bitter, so angry at women, and what he might have been thinking and believing in order to do such thing. You'll recognize thoughts there, whether they were his or not; you'll be sitting inside the mind of a murderer. That's in all of us. "When you do The Work on him, you'll find the murderer in you, and when you do The Work as him, sitting in that car just before he went in to do the deed. By doing that you're going to clean out everything you don't want in this world. Once that's cleared out, there will never be a mass murder that will upset you again. When you're really clear, he could be aiming at you or at your nieces and nephews, and you will not be alarmed. You will be of service instead. There's nothing more powerful than peace. And it's so exciting." In the clarity of awareness, you're unlimited. --Byron Katie Website: http://www.thework.com Webcasts: http://www.livewithbyronkatie.com Subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/theworkofbk Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/theworkofbyronkatie Twitter: https://twitter.com/ByronKatie © 2018 Byron Katie International. Inc.  All rights reserved.

How to Find Peace After Another School Shooting

A woman from Denmark asks, "How do you know when it's time to make changes? You get to love everything as it is, but still, Katie, you make changes, for instance, you left Paul, your ex-husband. So I'm confused, because I am happy and content, but I still feel a need to change my life. I can always find a way to love what is, but then am I not being true to myself?" Byron Katie answers, "I didn't change my life; I lived a yes to my own heart's desire. Even though I was married to Paul, I found a deeper marriage: to my inner voice. So I became only answerable to that. The only thing that could stop me from living out of that was fear. Love is a fearless state of mind. I had no other reason except that yes to leave Paul. I began to travel and was very rarely home. That was too much for him. He naturally began to make another life for himself, and I'm grateful for that. So the change came from inside. If you're afraid to make a change, write your fearful thoughts on a Worksheet and set yourself free to make change, or not. "There are no do's or don'ts. Inquiry is about the end of suffering. It's freedom to ask anything of anyone, and then trust that they'll say yes or no. Freedom doesn't look the way we think. It's just a natural flow of words, and humor, and life. I know there is this precious place of no past and no future. The Work can open us to that. This precious place is always there. It's always to be trusted, unfailingly." As the mind changes, life changes. --Byron Katie  Website: http://www.thework.com Webcasts: http://www.livewithbyronkatie.com Subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/theworkofbk Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/theworkofbyronkatie Twitter: https://twitter.com/ByronKatie © 2017 Byron Katie International. Inc.  All rights reserved.

How Do You Know When It's Time to Make Changes?

An audience member is angry at a loved one who died. She believes that "Stanley didn’t have to die." Sensing him sitting at the breakfast table with her, she wrestles with feelings of blame such as "He shouldn't be okay that he died," "He should be trying to fix this," and "He should come back in his current, enlightened state." Byron Katie takes her through a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet available at http://thework.com/sites/thework/downloads/worksheets/JudgeYourNeighbor_Worksheet.pdf . Together they discover some illuminating turnarounds that help her find peace in the passing of her loved one. "It doesn't matter what's in our head," Katie says. "Is everything welcome there? Is your mind at home with itself? Because if you're not comfortable with it, it could use a little Work." August 2017 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center Website: http://www.thework.com Webcasts: http://www.livewithbyronkatie.com Subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/theworkofbk Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/theworkofbyronkatie Twitter: https://twitter.com/ByronKatie © 2017 Byron Katie International. Inc.  All rights reserved.

Stanley Didn't Have to Die

Jason Wachob, founder of mindbodygreen.com, interviews Byron Katie about her system of self-inquiry known as The Work, which helps people to tell the difference between what they believe about reality and reality itself. JASON: Katie cuts through the bullshit pretty quickly: "The Work isn't meant to support you to feel good. There's no feel-good in it. It's about waking up to reality," That's good stuff. "When I sat down with Katie, she shared intimate details about her awakening and what life was like beforehand. It wasn't easy. As a mother of three, she—understandably and relatably—was always worried about money, depressed, and stuck in a cycle of compulsive eating and smoking. One day in 1986 everything changed; she suddenly saw the world through different eyes and recalls in great detail exactly what it was like. That's how The Work was born. Katie shares several examples that illustrate The Work, dives into the essential questions to ask yourself (which she details in her new book, "A Mind at Home with Itself"), and helps us see ourselves as entirely separate from our belief systems. In her words, "Suffering is the flip side of our true nature," and The Work is one way to guide yourself in the right direction.   Website: http://www.thework.com Webcasts: http://www.livewithbyronkatie.com Subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/theworkofbk Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theworkofbyronkatie Twitter: https://twitter.com/ByronKatie © 2017 Byron Katie International, Inc. All rights reserved.

Podcast: Mind Body Green interview

A woman resents her husband because she feels he pressured her into having an abortion. BK: Get still. "You didn't want to have an abortion"--is it true? Woman: I only have yes or no? BK: That's it. Woman: I want a disclaimer (laughing). Yes. BK: How do you treat your husband when you believe the thought "I didn't want to have an abortion"? Woman: I blame him. I treat him with suspicion. I question his motives at every turn. BK (to audience):  I invite you all to get out of your head as she has. Be courageous enough to ask, get still, and see what arises to meet the question. (To woman) Who would you be, living with this man for forty-one years, without the thought "I had an abortion when I didn't want to." Look at the difference in your marriage. Woman: We'd both be free. BK: What is the cause of your suffering? Woman: The thought, for sure. BK: Turn it around. Woman: I did want to have an abortion. BK:  Feel it. Take responsibility for it. You've been trying to get him to do it for forty-one years. You've been putting that thought onto him for four decades. Woman: It feels easier to blame him than to take responsibility. BK: No one can change my mind. You can talk all you want; My mind shifts or it doesn't. I can never say someone made me decide anything. There was a moment where I believed what I believed and made a decision. That was all mine—I'm 100% responsible. © 2017 Byron Katie International, Inc. All rights reserved.

Inner and Outer Pollution

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