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Summary: 2nd Most Important Book I Ever Read
Review: The best single book I now own, or ever will own, is a good dictionary. "Loving What Is", is right under that.
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Summary: The End of Suffering
Review: Read this book. See Byron Katie. Do The Work. End your suffering... and, by extension, the suffering of others. Katie's simple four questions and turn arounds will help you be free. Truly. I mean it. No, really. Stop surfing... go get the book.
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Summary: Great New Approach to Spiritual Inquiry
Review: This book presents a wonderful new form of spiritual inquiry that can be used by everyone. Katie has developed this approach on her own, based on her direct experience and awakening.
Although it has similarities to other psychological and spiritual traditions, Katie's form of questioning is totally contemporary and western. Unlike the Zen koan system or Ramana Maharshi's inquiry, Katie's four questions are not esoteric or philosophical or hard to understand. You take your everyday judgments, "stories," and beliefs that cause any form of anxiety, stress or fear -- and put them up against four simple questions. By doing it, there are often profound results, having seen Katie do "the work" in action. I personally feel that her form of inquiry blends wonderfully with meditation and other forms of spiritual practice. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Finally, an antidote for obsessiveness
Review: A friend of mind literally put this book in my hands. I had been obsessing about someone for months. I have a meditation practice, a therapist, friends who had been listening to me patiently. But this book seems to be helping in a way nothing else has. This cool thing called "The Work"--where you have to write down what's bothering you and then ask four questions and turn your problem around--made me see that he had hurt me once, but I was hurting me every single day, with my thoughts, repeating the whole thing over and over, letting it take me over. I feel so much lighter about the whole thing now, even kind of amused at times by my own craziness. I really recommend this book to anyone who thinks too much. And I really want to meet Byron Katie someday--the way she talks about Reality being God--if only we were willing to truly see it, the way she talks in general is kind of startling, wakes you up. In person, she must be amazing.
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Summary: It's all here..
Review: What can I say to recommend this book? ...there is nothing out there that surpasses what Katie is doing and the power of the Work..There are PLENTY of teachings and techniques out there more complex than this method of inquiry but there is nothing more profound and direct...It's not a philosophy or a religion but philosophies and religions you've studied in the past will become far more accessible and comprehensible..more simple and more clear as a result of doing The Work...Too often we try to access Reality through the "medium" of the profundities and Wisdoms we've read or heard discussed...It's akin to trying to appreciate the Grand Canyon by merely reading about it's beauty, agreeing that it's wonderful and spending lots of our time discussing how great it is with other people..we do that so much we start to think we've actually been there..until we DO go there...when that happens, words fail us..That was my experience anyway...Don't be fooled by The Works simplicity...E=MC2 is simple too...
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Summary: It IS True!!!
Review: I've been reading through some of the reviews of this book. The negative reviewers make statements such as, "It's too basic. It's a band-aide approach. She's unqualified." I think the question they need to ask is exactly what Katie teaches, "Is it true? Can you absolutely know it's true?" What makes a person "Qualified" anyway--a piece of paper? I've met garbage collectors that I considered more "qualified" to comment on "life" than some therapists who had the "credentials." Qualified, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. This "work" has helped me tremendously in changing my thinking. It's helped me identify the "stories" I create around the actual truth, and it's helped me realize that those stories are what create my suffering--not the actual reality itself. I think the main thing Katie helps people do is shed their "victim consciousness" and empower themselves. We all create our own reality. She simply helps us "examine" what we're creating and change our perceptions about it. It's in changing those perceptions that we are able to stop creating the same "patterns" over and over again and create more "consciously." And as Forest Gump would say, "That's all I have to say about that!"
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Summary: A powerful spiritual tool
Review: Byron Katie's "Work" is so incredibly profound it is easy to miss the power of it. I misunderestimated it at first because of the simplicity of it, until a friend sat down with me and helped me go through the steps she outlines, without allowing my mind to fall back into it's normal habits. Spiritual teachings for thousands of years have taught us that the road to happiness and personal power is detaching ourselves from our desires and assumptions, but this is an extremely difficult process. It is easy to memorize a philosophical theory, and easy to figure out the things we need to work on, compared to how difficult it is to actually release those old thought patterns. Byron Katie's "work" gives us powerful and practical steps that help to lead our mind through the correct process of analyzing just how transparent, stressful, and un-necessary some of our beliefs are. This allows our mind to let go of these beliefs ("stories" as she calls them) with love and understanding. We still have to put out the effort for our growth, but this book is a powerful tool. Byron Katie's statement "Arguing with 'what is' is like trying to tach a cat to bark," is so true. It is wonderful the peace that comes when we finally stop fighting "what is," stop trying to impose "what should be," and learn to just "be."
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Summary: who or what would you be without your thoughts? PEACE!!!
Review: Who or what would you be without your thoughts?, Katie asks. A seemingly oversimplified question that does nothing to help solve your problems. Katie shows us that there are no problems except your thoughts about them. Behind every single negative or stressful emotion lies some direct or indirect thought. That is the premise of this book. It is the premise of the Buddha's teaching, but Katie's method is far simpler. That is her genius. The simplicity is what makes this book immense. Here's what this book has taught me. You can't pay the mortgage is simply a fact of life, until your THOUGHTS about what that means depresses you. Your wife leaving you is simply a fact, until the THOUGHT of that depresses you. Everything is simply what it is, reality, until your THOUGHTS about that reality depresses you. Otherwise, reality is just reality. You and me supply 100% of what reality means, of what life means, through the instrument of thought. Every single reference point in life is just a thought. We THINK we need love, appreciation, money, God, good career and so on, so in their absence, we become depressed because our thoughts are arguing with the reality of the situation. Where did this depression originate? From our THOUGHTS about needing this and that. We think ourselves happy, we think ourselves miserable. In reality, there is no love and hate, no happiness or unhappiness, good or bad, just what is. When we see this, it will hit you like a bolt of lightening. Everything you have ever thought, felt and experienced will fly out of the window. When we see this, as Katie would wish, we come to LOVE WHAT IS. In our full acceptance of reality, we become at peace with existence. Your problems as you knew them come to an end. For those that cannot find the answers in this book, it's because there are no answers to life. We have THOUGHTS that there are answers to life's problems. What problems? If there are no problems, there is no need for solutions. Your thoughts that problems exist will keep you perpetually searching for an answer to a non-existent problem.
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Summary: The tag line is true
Review: This may be the first self-help book I've ever read all the way through. I was attracted to it by the name "Stephen Mitchell" on the cover. His paraphrase/translation of the Tao te Ching was my previous Most Influential Book. In his introduction we learn that Byron Katie is his wife. They appear to share a sort of Zen/Taoist outlook. The tag line on the cover of the book reads "Four questions that can change your life." I like the use of the word "can." It's not that the questions "could" or "may" or "might" change your life: they "can" if you use them. I know because my life has changed. But it's not just the questions that have changed my life. Rather, it's the outlook expressed in the book's title: "Loving What Is." My suffering comes from arguing with my reality. Peace comes from accepting and even loving my reality, whatever my situation.
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Summary: It's simple, it's usable, it works.
Review: This book is about a very simple tool to change your life: ask yourself 4 questions. Nothing more, nothing less. When you do this with every thought that gives you stress you end up where all the other self-help and religious books try to bring you: pure happiness. Happiness with what is, with reality. It works. And strangely enough: your life changes. Your relationships change, everything gets better. But you end up not caring whether they change or not, because you're happy anyway. Total freedom!
You don't have to change your thinking, you don't have to go through workbooks, you just ask yourself these four questions whenever you feel like they might help.
Just a quick note about the concerns of review 'True to a point...'. I've heard Katie say several times: 'When I've come to love someone unconditionally, it doesn't mean I have to live with them!' So if someone abuses you, you can learn to love them, but you can still leave! Simply because you've also learned to love yourself too much to be hurt this way. But you leave without pain, without resentment, without wanting revenge etc.
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