Byron Katie’s Work

Living an “Inquiry Kind of Life”

May 7, 2012

in Byron Katie's Work, Creating Community, Inquiry, Radical Kindness

Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. ~ Rainier Maria Rilke

I’m an impatient sort. So I’ve been living my way into answers right now. Fascinating insights.

To do this, I’ve taking a class the last six weeks that has rocked my world. Funny thing is, it’s one that I led. And it’s hard to write that without it sounding like PR. Which it definitely isn’t.

What does it mean to live in inquiry? You’d think after walking this path for the last ten years I’d have a simple answer, but this feels new, like I’m just beginning to find out. So far the world seems far kinder, simpler, and more compassionate to me. I like who I am when I actually LIVE the answers that come when I don’t believe who I am without my story.

This teleclass is one that came along after I stated publicly I was no longer going to offer teleclasses. It’s been much like a late-life baby, but this birth was much easier, and the results have been a delightful surprise. An alchemical concoction of deep and intimate inquiry with folks from around the world, the experience has widened my world and my opened my mind. I’m even thinking of having another baby…next fall.

We’ve been dipping into the Four Questions and the Turn-Arounds of Byron Katie each session, with a focus on how we can take our insights into the next week. At how we can live into the questions and our answers. It has been deeply transformational for me to be to witness such radical honesty and practical wisdom at work in each of our lives.

I have the impulse to offer some quick and easy questions in blog form, some quick tips that readers can take and bake at home. But the process has been far more profound that this.

I can offer this: a testimony to the powers of “warm observation” of yours own sweet self, foibles and all. When I truly understand that I don’t have to believe everything I believe about the world or about myself, I’m free to “live into the answers” with warm curiosity. I can see for a time where I cause myself misery and what’s on the other side of that.

Tagged as: Byron Katie, Inquiry, Investigating the Mind, Questioning the mind, Radical kindness, Self-care

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It’s the Glue

February 23, 2012

in Byron Katie's Work, Confusion to Clarity, Questioning the Mind, Radical Kindness

I recently heard of a Tibetan Rinpoche who said “it’s not the thought. It’s the glue.” Body and mind shouted, YES!

I’ve spent a whole lot of time in the last seven years looking for THE thought that would bring freedom, finding thought after thought that opened the doors of truth. Painful beliefs have a way (only always) of not being true.

But, dang it, some of those doors are pretty determined to slam shut again. It’s as if there is a very viscous and sticky substance that allows them to open just enough to get a peek of possibility, but then pulls them closed. So I’ve been getting curious about that glue, poking a stick in it and then pulling it out and seeing what happens, as I sit in my own inquiry.

Here’s my partial conclusion. There are many types of glue-like substances. But a big one is fear. Fear of change, even though the change is good. Fear of being abandoned, of not being included, of (the big one), fear of death itself. Sometimes this fear waits in the wings, and sometimes it comes closer. But it becomes a powerful adhesive when it binds with a long-held belief.

A few years ago my son was in a house fire that almost took his life. He managed to wake up and get out of the house, which exploded within a minute later. He was in a medically-induced coma for more than five weeks. Bone-chilling fear. The kind of glue-like fear that could easily have kept me stuck in inaction.

Inquiry (and a whole lot of support from sources seen and unseen) got me through. I was able to experience waves of fear. Poking around, I noticed the Big Kahuna of Beliefs. He could die. Or the Little Kahuna: he would be permanently damaged and unable to live a happy life.

As I poked, I noticed how deeply painful these beliefs were. I could barely manage to feel the terror of them. As I continued questioning my mind, I could only see that I didn’t know that they were true. I could see that they were actually a fanciful creation of my own terror.

I juxtaposed the effect of both beliefs in my mind. With them: fear. Without: hope. The first belief glued my body to the bed. The second motivated clear thinking.

Poking around in the glue gave me the ability to stretch it to the point of freedom. Kind and intentional action.

That experience changed Ben forever. He’s now safe and alive, living a life that sustains him, gratefully.

It changed me, too, in many ways. But what stands out in my memory right now is how powerful a couple of questions can be to stretch or even dissolve the Super Glue of the worst fears of all.

Tagged as: Awakening, Crafting clarity from chaos, Getting Unstuck, Inquiry, Investigating the Mind, Self-care

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Subtracting Insult from Injury

February 5, 2012Byron Katie's Work

Instead of adding insult to injury, I’ve been learning to subtract. Three weeks ago I broke my collarbone in the middle of the night on Day 2 of a long-anticipated tropical vacation with my husband. I slid on some slippery Mexican tile and catapulted down three steps to land on my collar bone. At three a.m. on a Sunday morning. The story of How I Spent My Vacation starts with that event, with riding a ferry from the island to a hospital and harnessing myself into a splint for the next two weeks.

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