Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

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I found it disenchanting and troublesome how fundamentalisticly Byron believes in the power of these 4 questions as the sure and only way to salvation, if not now, then later on. The Work is a series of questions you are to ask yourself that are designed to lead to eventual insight.

Reality, for me, is what is true. The truth is whatever is in front of you, whatever is really happening. Whether you like it or not, it’s raining now. “It shouldn’t be raining” is just a thought. In reality, there is no such thing as a “should” or a “shouldn’t.” These are only thoughts that we superimpose onto reality. Without the Without the “should” and “shouldn’t,” we can see reality as it is, and this leaves us free to act efficiently, clearly, and sanely.Loving What Is shows you step by step, through clear and vivid examples, exactly how to use this revolutionary process for yourself. In this revised edition, readers will enjoy seven new dialogues, or real examples of Katie doing The Work with people to discover the root cause of their suffering. You will observe people work their way through a broad range of human problems, learning freedom through the very thoughts that had caused their suffering—thoughts such as “my husband betrayed me” or “my mother doesn’t love me enough.” CAN YOU ABSOLUTELY KNOW THAT'S TRUE? (Relate to that. In my experience, it'd not the event but your THOUGHTS about the event that are so painful. Well, when you apply it to any aspect of your life, you will most probably realize that you have been stressed over for nothing. You don't talk to you because you're mentally over there running his business and then you're feeling all the loneliness of that. The loneliness of not being here for yourself. Can you be absolutely positive that you hate ALL fat people? Do you hate every single fat person in the entire world? What about nice fat people, do you hate them? Do you hate fat people who are just a little over weight? What if they are fat because they have a health condition?

Do not do The Work in your mind. Our thoughts are too chaotic, and you cannot completely comprehend them if you do not write them down. In the midst of a normal life, Katie became increasingly depressed, and over a ten-year period sank further into rage, despair, and thoughts of suicide. Then one morning, she woke up in a state of absolute joy, filled with the realization of how her own suffering had ended. The freedom of that realization has never left her, and now in Loving What Is you can discover the same freedom through The Work. For instance, when I heard someone say, “People should be more loving,” the question would arise in me, “Can I absolutely know that that’s true? Can I really know for myself, within myself, that people should be more loving? Even if the whole world tells me so, is it really true?” And, to my amazement, when I listened within myself, I saw that the world is what it is in this moment and that in this moment people couldn’t possibly be more loving than they were. Where reality is concerned, there is no “what should be.” There is only what is, just the way it is, right now. The truth is prior to every story. And every story, prior to investigation, prevents us from seeing what’s true.

Doing the Work

The book's basic tenet is that all our suffering is caused by our attachment to the stories we create about our thoughts. Here's a good example because it's raining in Holland. It's raining. That's the reality. It's not causing me any stress or irritation. However, the moment I start thinking that it shouldn't be raining, I get irritated and sad. Now, the thought that it shouldn't be raining comes to me in thoughts like "I'm so tired of this weather; if it's not warm and sunny I get depressed; rain is such a pain because i get wet, etc" We told you this hypothetical story, so we can make you realize that stress is not caused by people around you, but by your very own interpretation of events or actions of those that surround you. Once you get that thought in your head: (s)he does not love me anymore, you will connect all his or her actions to your preconceived conclusion. Many times we cannot see the thoughts that trouble as. And even more often, all the stress blinds us to the fact that our thoughts are the ones who are causing our unease. With this question, we begin to notice internal cause and effect. You can see that when you believe the thought, there is an uneasy feeling, a disturbance that can range from mild discomfort to fear or panic.

Beneath the judgments we find thoughts we've believed for years that we use as our fundamental judgements of life called UNDERLYING BELIEFS! I’ve summarized those Big Ideas in a video review that you can watch here: https://youtu.be/yRF4zypaavo?feature=... If your answer is still yes, good. If you think that you can absolutely know that that’s true, that’s as it should be, and it’s fine to move on to question 3. How do you react when you believe that thought? The Work only gives you options so that you can assess the problem more objectively; it does not give you an easy way out. This book has taught me that the rain isn't causing my irritation; my irritation is caused when I attach my belief that it shouldn't be raining. Who am I to determine whether or not it rains? It's not my business whether or not it's raining - that's Nature's business, not mine. How about I stay in my own business? How about I figure out what's really causing my irritation?He should stop blaming you? Is that true? Now you want to control his thinking, even who he should blame? You want to take over your son's whole mind. You know what's best for him. You know what he should be thinking. Excuse me Christopher. Don't think unless I've told you what to think, don't think until I want you to. And then let's work on your wife. And by the way I love you. I don't think Byron Katie is 100% right. I found her attitude a little arrogant at times, and condescending. But the basic ideas can be useful and provide a way to logically see how you can better a problem by controlling your part in it. Likewise, it asks you to accept the past as it was, because that's the only way it can be -- you can't change it, only the way you relive it in your mind. So, when they forget to kiss you, you think they do not love you. If they are tired and want to sleep, you assume they do not care. And so on, and so on.