EPISODE 33

Question Your Thoughts and Beliefs to End Suffering with Byron Katie

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Hosted By Stephan Spencer
Byron Katie

Introduction

Byron Katie
"The more we question our judgments, the kinder we become. I think love is the power, so that’s my interest and that’s my invitation."
Byron Katie

Is it possible that any pain and suffering you feel is just a projection of your mind, and can be ended, for good? Byron Katie’s method, The Work, has helped countless people around the nation to live happier, more peaceful lives, and she believes that everyone can apply her method to create change. We discuss how to end pain and suffering, learning to forgive and find peace, how to become open to change and more.

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Transcript

Loving What Is by Byron Katie

Hello, and welcome to another exciting episode of Get Yourself Optimized!  I’m your host, Stephan Spencer. It is such a pleasure, a joy, and an honor to have on this episode, Byron Katie. Katie is well-known as just a world-renowned expert on ending suffering and bringing joy into people’s lives. She’s the author of multiple bestselling books including: Loving What IsI Need Your Love—Is That True?, and A Thousand Names for Joy. She also has other books including:  Question Your Thinking, Change the WorldWho Would You Be Without Your Story?, and for children: Tiger, Tiger, Is It True? Katie, as I said, it is an honor to have you on! Let’s start with, of course, The Work and the four questions.  For folks who have not heard of the four questions of The Work before, what are the four question and where did they originate from?

So, the four questions are a way of identifying The Work. It’s a way of identifying and questioning the thoughts, concepts, and judgments that we believe to be true. Those judgments that cause stress in our life. For example, if I had the thought that, he doesn’t care about me, or she doesn’t care about me, or maybe they don’t care about me, as a group, my mind will show me all of the proof through images when I think about the next morning—maybe it was something I said or did the day before—and so, that will be replayed in my head and I’ll experience the embarrassment and or the stress related to that as I considered that the day before. I would identify that situation and, really, it has already identified itself—it just comes. We wonder why we’re so stressed out but as we look back on it we understand why.  What is the way out of that suffering?

Let’s say, I believed they don’t care about me so, enter the four questions and turnaround—The Work. They don’t care about me—the first question is, is it true? And so, I would contemplate that. I would close my eyes and meditate on that. The second question:  Can I absolutely know that it’s true that they don’t care about me? And so, as I meditate on that, the answers will be shown to me through images and through just listening. The third question:  How do I react when I believe the thought? And then, I meditate on that and I begin to see the cause of stress and the cause of, maybe, becoming isolated, or maybe dropping out of that group, and maybe it’s a course in school and I’m a teenager, and I’m so ashamed to go back and face the teacher and face the students, and so I witness in that with my eyes closed how I react when I believe the thought and the stress and the suffering that it brings up to my life.

The fourth question is: Who would I be without the thought that they don’t care about me? And then, I meditate on that so I’m able to see the entire thing just as it is and just as it was—only without the thought. I have a worksheet on TheWork.com that anyone can download and it takes care of the entire situation of what we’re thinking and believing and it ends the suffering and anyone with an open mind can do this so when we get to the turnarounds—“They don’t care about me” turns around to “I don’t care about me.” Then I just sit in those waves, in that situation of how I wasn’t caring about me and how I’m not caring about me as I, again, stay focus and anchored in that situation that I’m meditating on, then another turnaround: “I don’t care about them.” And then, I sit in that and meditate on that turnaround and see the waves that I’m not caring about them.

Right.

The things I’m thinking about them, I noticed and I want to isolate myself from them and you know, it is that caring and anyway, sit in that and then they don’t care about me, another turnaround—let’s look at them: “I don’t care about me,”–that’s one thing to contemplate. “They do care about me,”—that’s one thing to contemplate. The answers that come to us as we do these four questions and turnaround, the answers that come to us, they shift the way we see everyone and everything in our world—in our waking, in our sleeping, and even our night dreams begin to shift. We lose our fear of being in the world and when we’re living in the world without fear, we’re unlimited. When we’re not fearful of people and situations and what we’re thinking and believing, we are in a position to make changes that we thought could never happen in our lives and in our world.  So—is it true?  Can you absolutely know that it’s true? How do you react if you believed the thought? Who would you be without it?—turn it around and that’s The Work in a nutshell.

We lose our fear of being in the world and when we’re living in the world without fear, we’re unlimited.

Right, but you started this process of creating The Work from some very deep suffering that you went through.

Yes, I did! You know, this is tested. It is well-tested now and millions of people in the world are testing it and finding freedom themselves. I was very and extremely clinically depressed for more than a decade and I had an experience that, as I lay sleeping on the floor one morning and I opened my eyes and in place of all that suffering and confusion, was a life that I have tried to describe but it’s really beyond that and in that moment, the four questions and turnarounds were born. I could just see it. I saw without reference and then I noticed my mind had a thought and then, the image appeared—in other words, the entire world began to appear and there was a window, a ceiling, a floor, and then me. I began to laugh because I saw that I am a creation of an accumulation of what I’m thinking and believing. And so is the world. This may sound a bit strange to someone who is hearing something like this for the very first time but I hope that that doesn’t deter any of you listening to this to not just consider questioning the thoughts that are causing the stress in your life, the separation, those judgments that are causing you pain and—

Yes! So often, we don’t question our own thinking.

Yeah.

I think of us as just receivers for thoughts that are not our own. I learned this from Oneness University in India. That if we just tune in, we’re going to, hopefully, at a higher vibration get higher-quality thoughts but when we’re in negativity, we get lower-quality thoughts. We just need to be critical in our thinking to know which thoughts to take in and which ones to discard. One of the really profound experiences I had with The Work was, and I have the book—I think it was your second book? I Need Your Love—Is That True? really was profound for me. I had attended your workshop or your keynote at Omega NYC and then a few months later, my fiancée, at the time, and I had broken up.  This was like, four years ago. It was a tough time and I had a lot of self-defeating thoughts and I was going through a lot of suffering. I read the book and it really brought a lot of comfort and then I gave a copy of the book to my ex and she read it too. It helped her. She started going to Buddhism, silent meditation retreats, and so forth so I think that helped her on her path as well.

I Need Your Love – Is That True? by Byron Katie

That’s beautiful!

Yeah, so you’ve changed so many people’s lives. It’s such a beautiful thing. Do you have an example of a case study or just somebody you’ve helped who—and I’ve listened to a number of your interventions by applying The Work to people in workshops. I just saw the one with a woman who was an alcoholic and she hadn’t been in touch with her daughter for something like five years and, wow, that was incredible to see that transformation in front of our eyes.

Yes.

Do you have an example of that—

Well, you know, there are many on YouTube.  I think that we can each decide that for ourselves as we witness someone actually doing The Work. You know, sitting in these four questions and turnaround and that way, we all have our own experience but as far as a case study or something like that, I’m the one I’m closest to so it really works from here. And also for your listeners, if they go to TheWork.com and go into the Institute for The Work, we have facilitators there who can certainly tell you their own experience.  They’re there to work with people. We can all look at their profiles and see who we gravitate toward. They are so excellent. They have been through the school for The Work—that nine-day school.

They have been through the Institute for The Work and they are really qualified to give us the most shocking stories of what they have—the shifts, and how their lives have changed. We also have a helpline that’s absolutely free and anyone can call and we don’t have to sign up for a newsletter—nothing!—we’ll just support you in getting your feet wet and how to question yourself without a teacher or without a facilitator. Anyone can do this if their mind is open to it. It’s really quite a thing to question what we are believing to be true.  You know, we believe that so many things all of our lives and when we start to question it, identity begins to fall away and that question, “Who am I?” begins to arise. We notice we’re becoming kinder. We’re becoming better listeners. We’re becoming, without even realizing, that serving others is our joy and selflessness begins to take on a kind of life in us. There’s a lot to do when we’re not depressed and it’s almost as though we’re not doing it. It’s really a moment-to-moment joy without those negative judgments running in us.

And you know, I don’t ever try to get rid of thoughts. Any thoughts that would cause me stress at all or separation from my fellow man, my children, my husband, the people in my life—anyone, I would question and see for myself of what I’m thinking and believing about those people in that situation is true rather than just taking what I’m believing for granted and in that, it’s like being so intimate with oneself—you know, the mind is beginning to understand itself and what could be more intimate than that? The mind waking up to itself and there is such peace in that. It’s where the mind can rest and see through the eyes of reality what really is and what isn’t and to know the difference.  Freedom is our birthright and we have the right to know rather than just go through life as believers and suffer in the faults. And not the world’s faults but our own and that’s what’s important—our own and no one can fool us.  You know, we can’t fool ourselves either so it’s very personal work.

A Thousand Names for Joy by Byron Katie

Let’s make it really personal because I think the power of The Work is in the application of it and not just the passive listening like, “Oh, that’s really interesting!” and so, I’m going to open myself and be very vulnerable here and I’m going to apply The Work right now. I don’t think anybody knows this, except for my closest family, that one of my three daughters is estranged from me.

Yeah?

She hasn’t spoken to me for two years and it’s caused me a lot of pain.

Yes.

But then, again, if I turn it around, I caused myself a lot of pain. I actually caused myself a lot of joy and so, if I look at these different turnarounds, I can see quite quickly that there is a gift in it—maybe the bow is on the bottom but I have a beautiful, rich relationship with my youngest and my oldest daughters and so, I had some self-defeating thoughts but I’ve worked on those. For example, she never wants to speak to me again, could be a thought that comes across my mind.

So, let’s look at that. Let’s look at that. Let’s anchor in where you are right now.

Yeah.

Sometimes, we anchor in another place—like, maybe we were in the shower when it just hits us and we burst into tears, we would anchor there but let’s just do it for right here and right now so, you’re sitting in there and your daughter never wants to speak to you again. Is it true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true that she never wants to speak to you again?

No, I can’t.

Now, notice how you react when you believed the thought, “She never wants to speak to me again.”

Yeah, I constrict. I close up. I become wounded, hurt, sad, and depressed.

Yes, and notice the images in your head of past and future when you think the thought, “She never wants to speak to me again,” and as you notice, there she is in the past and there are the two of you are and in the future, those images you see in that moment are of the future with you without your daughter and just see for yourself. This gets really, you know, I’ve meditated on this and it’s like, I see images of my daughter, maybe, in trouble and she doesn’t call me and other people are included and I’m not and I just want to tell her I love her. I mean, all those images of past and future happen when we think the thought, “My daughter doesn’t want to speak to me again.” We’re really witnessing a movie and as we witness that movie of past and future, we begin—just like we were sitting in a real movie—to experience the sadness—

Right.

Question Your Thinking, Change The World by Byron Katie

And the longing, the guilt, and it’s all there. The low self-esteem for some of us and then, as we witness that, we shift into that fourth question. The Work is a meditation—we’re meditating, in this case from this moment in time. Who would you be right here, right now? Just sitting there as you are now without the thought, “She never wants to speak to me again?”

It would feel liberating and—

But without guessing it would be—

Yeah?

“She never wants to see me again”—without that thought, just look around.  It’s like, I have a daughter also and I’d be like, “You know, I’d be talking to my friend, Stephan.” I’d be aware of what’s going on. There’s no pain and there’s no suffering here now.

Right.

And I can see the window and I can deal with everything that’s right here and right now without the sadness.

Right. I can serve others. I can be more of me. I can be my best self.

Yes, and without the thought, I am. This is my best self right here and right now. I’m not suffering. I’m no longer in the movie of past and future.

Right.

Of my daughter not wanting to speak to me and all that comes with that. So, she never wants to speak to me again? Let’s find an opposite. Let’s turn it around. What is the opposite of “my daughter never wants to speak to me again?”

“She always wants to speak to me.”

My daughter—I’m going to hold you to this, Stephan, because that’s what we’re doing here, but “She never wants to speak to me again”—“She does want to speak to me again.” You see, how I’m not shifting the words?

Got it!

I’m staying with what I wrote that’s so valuable. I’m staying with that thought—it’s anchored. So, “She never wants to speak to me again,”—“She does want to speak to me again.”  Okay, now, as you contemplate that turnaround—How could that be: “She does want to speak to me again?”

I think she wants to speak her truth and she wants to be heard. When we stopped communicating, she wasn’t heard. I wasn’t really listening.

Yes.

I only want to hear what I wanted to hear.

Oh, my goodness! That’s beautiful! When we have awareness like that, any time we have an opportunity, we’re aware of it. We’re awake to, “I have the privilege of listening now no matter what she says. I want to hear it.”

Yeah, so now, I’ve worked on this a lot and I absolutely see the blessing in this situation, right? For example, right now, maybe I’m helping and you’re helping to heal some rifts between siblings, between mothers and daughters, fathers and daughters, and fathers and sons.

Who Would You Be Without Your Story? by Byron Katie

Yes. Between the two of us, we have no idea how the freedom that we experience through this can support someone else’s freedom. Just like our depression supports depression. These living examples that we are. So, with “She never wants to speak to me again,” can you find another turnaround?

“I never want to speak to me again.”

What does that mean as you contemplate that turnaround in regards to the situation with your daughter?

That there is some sort of dissociated part of myself that I didn’t want to accept, perhaps. I mean, I’ve been on a long journey of self-discovery and self-improvement and the person I was ten years ago is not nearly as good of a person as I am right now. So, I mean I—

So, “I’d never want to speak to me again,”

I don’t resonate with that statement, but—

Well, I can give you my experience in it. So, you’re open to that obviously?

Of course.

“I never want to speak to me again,” any time I would speak to myself the way I spoke to my daughter. I never want to speak to me again in my mind when I’m being critical of her for not speaking to me.

Right, or judging.

I never want to speak to me again when I’m deluded and haven’t done The Work yet.  Whatever that work is for everyone—whether it would be, as you say, Buddhism. You know, this is a meditation. It’s not really a process. These questions don’t even say “Answer me.” They’re just there. My job is to make sure that as many people as possible know that these questions exist and they’re always free at TheWork.com. I never want to speak to me again when I’m not willing—and this is just my own—to question what I’m believing against another human being: myself, the world, and my daughter.  Another turnaround for “My daughter never wants to speak to me again,” is “I never want to speak to my daughter again,” and we looked at that. “My daughter does want to speak to me again,”—we looked at that. Through this process, I’m discovering, Stephan, that I, when I was doing this one, was able to get in touch with my daughter and apologize for overriding her in the conversation and to let her know that I have done some very deep, inner work and I want to apologize. I was wrong.

I realize that she doesn’t want to speak to me and I also want to respect that but I also want her to know that I’m available any time she’s ready to speak to me. I love her so I’m prepared for that on the other side of this. I fully expect her to never to speak to me again but I have got to speak this out when I am as clear as I have become in this work. As I experience the clarity, I’m very clear that I’ve got to do this for me because I find it difficult to speak to me again if I’m not righting these wrongs on my own. If I’m not connected to my child—it’s like, people have a right not to connect with me but I am not okay if I don’t connect with them when I have done something that I wouldn’t want to speak to me either in that situation as I look back on it. So, it’s not right with me until I make it right. And if my daughter—let’s say, my daughter has died and there’s no way I can make it right with her. I still do this work as though she’s alive because these are the things that go bump in the night and day and it’s not done until it’s done and I can still make it right. If I override my daughter when she is telling her truth, for example, I do that with other people—it’s not just my daughter.

Exactly.

It’s a pattern. So, I can make a right with myself for my daughter by making this right with everyone in my world as though they were my daughter. In other words, that’s how I can live with myself, come to love myself, and the people in my world. And then I notice that in that quiet—when I’m not overriding them? Oh my goodness! They’re really baring their souls and I was interrupting!

Yes.

Tiger-Tiger, Is It True? by Byron Katie

They were telling me where they were and who they are at that point and I was overriding with “I, I, me, me, and me” that would override their world. And it cost me their world and my understanding of their world that they’re giving me.

Yes, it was like I refused to climb that wall of context between me and her and experience and try to understand and really be in what life was like for her. Or for anyone who I just judge. When you—and I learned this in Kabbalah classes—when you are in judgment, you have stopped loving so—

Well, you know, in my experience, we don’t stop loving but we certainly in those judgments lose the awareness of our true nature. That’s why it’s so beautiful to identify them and question them so that our true nature just shines through of what was an illusion.

Yeah, and it’s never too late. I forgave my grandfather who significantly abused me in my childhood.  I forgave him well after his death. Maybe it was five years ago. It was really healing and I’m sure that forgiveness affects other people. And I believe it helps him wherever he is.

You’re more in touch with who and what you are. You’re more in touch with your true nature and that is less destruction in the world for all of us and more integration of what’s real and true and can never die.

Could you, maybe, distinguish the difference between pain and suffering? Because I hear that expression, of course, that “pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.” What distinguishes these two concepts for you and why is suffering something that is a choice regardless of the circumstances that you’re in?

Well, even physical pain is a projection of the mind so to answer to your question, we might say that one is emotional pain and one is physical but the physical body, as long as the mind is always identified there as that object, who cares? Pain is pain. Suffering is suffering. But what I have come to appreciate is, (starting here is where the audio currently picks up again) there is nothing and there is no pain and suffering that is not a projection of mind. That’s the short version. So, if I believe my thoughts, I suffer but if I question my thoughts, I don’t suffer and I’ve come to see that this is true for every human being. If their mind is open to self-inquiry and this is something we can do alone with ourselves and get the job done because no one could end by suffering for me—not mother, not father, not money, not looks, not health, not recognition, not other people loving me—nothing. I had to do that alone. That’s why we call it self-realization—we realize for ourselves. As far as physical pain, you know, all I can say is, again, it’s no different than suffering as far as: Can we do something about it?  We can question what we believe and we find that our physical suffering becomes less and less and less and less as we just work on and we just question our thoughts about mother, father, sister, brother, and life. It all lessens and those of us who continue to question our thoughts and our judgments, just suffer less and less and less and this is consistent with anyone who begins to question what they believe. It’s quick and it’s fast. It’s direct and it is suited to each of us personally. It’s our own.

Pain is pain. Suffering is suffering. But what I have come to appreciate is, there is nothing and there is no pain and suffering that is not a projection of mind. Share on X

My experience is, as you practice this more, you initiate it sooner, right? Just like becoming aware of judgment. As you get better at catching yourself in judgment, you’ll question those thoughts.

Well, you become more aware of how you react when you believe the thought. When you’re very comfortable and all of a sudden, you’re not. You just notice what you are thinking and believing and there’s your Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet. That’s also free at TheWork.com. You just go in, push print, and there it is. We also have an app. It’s $1.99 in the iTunes store.  It’s just The Work and we can take clarity on the road with us.

That’s wonderful! It’s just beautiful—what you’ve done to make the world a better place. So, if somebody is noticing like a knot in their stomach or tightness in their chest and they’ve done some of The Work to realize that that’s a clue to judgment or—

Yeah, I call it The Little Temple Bell that’s ringing, “Look at me! Look at me!”—meaning, judgments. You know, “Look at me, judgment!” “Look at me, judgment!” and it’s identified then and we can just meditate on that judgment through what we witness as we use these four questions and turnarounds.

Right. One thing that I’ve learned through—and I’ve studied a lot of different disciplines and things like Nonviolent Communication is one that comes to mind where Marshall said that “should” is the most violent word in the English language that we “should” all over ourselves all the time. It can be easy to recognize the thoughts that are judgments after doing The Work but then the “shoulds”—those where you kind of beating yourself up like, “Oh, I should have done this stuff—“

Well, really, those “shoulds” are harmless until you believe them because the “shoulds” are always in the future and past so it’s not a lot of help right now. They’re just not valid. It’s an illusion. But when the thought comes, if we’re not smiling when it passes through our consciousness, when we believe those thoughts, yeah, we’re left with shame, guilt, and less than. If we understood, there’s nothing violent about it at all.  It’s just like, “Oh my goodness! I remember when I used to believe that!” It just really becomes hilarious because you can see that it has nothing to do with life as it really is and awareness.

Those “shoulds” are harmless until you believe them.

So, if you believe it and if you take ownership of that “should,” then it becomes violent but if you just look at it as one of the many harmless thoughts that just come and go—

Well, we’d all like to do that, but when we believe them, we can’t just look at them as harmless.  We go into denial very quickly.

How would you recommend to somebody who wants the world to awaken—we see so many people sleepwalking and we do too. I mean, we’re all in various stages of sleep, wakefulness, awareness, thoughtfulness, and thoughtlessness. How do we change the world when there’s so much unhappiness, suffering, anger, hatred, and so forth? With the elections coming up and all of this polarization that’s within families and things like that. My youngest daughter and her uncle are at it all the time over Trump versus Bernie and I was like, “Ugh!” How do we help change the world beyond just doing this work ourselves? I know that’s the first step and that’s the most important step but what else can we do to keep this momentum going?

Well, the kindest thing I can do—I mean, the most powerful thing I can do to change the world is to change my own first. I’m not so advanced that I would change the world for anyone else. I’m still working on my own which keeps me busy. It keeps me focused, it keeps me present and as a result, the way I see life, people, and situations shifts as my mind shifts. I see a friendly universe and, as you described your youngest daughter and her uncle, I see two people who want the best for the people in the United States, in the world, for each other—the daughter for her uncle and the uncle for her niece—that’s what they have in common. They really believe that, as as far as we know and as we listen to them, their candidate is going to be the best choice so I just hear sharing. I don’t hear a contest but what I can tell you is, I’m listening. I’m listening and I see love beyond what I could ever have fathomed in the world of suffering, which is where I came from, but I can honestly say that, I see a different world. To change the world, I can’t—but to change my world and the way I see it, that’s a process that’s ongoing and the creative mind is infinite so I don’t expect it to end and I’m very grateful for that.

Very true.

You know, once we understand the universe is friendly then we will really understand that there’s nothing outside of that and it just all becomes crystal clear.  I look at the world and I see believers—people are still lost in what they’re thinking and believing as though it were true and I’m not saying it’s not, I just stay in my own and so far, it has changed a lot of lives.  Kindness is not a little thing.  The more we question our judgments, the kinder we become. I think love is the power so that’s my interest and that’s my invitation.

Once we understand the universe is friendly then we will really understand that there’s nothing outside of that and it just all becomes crystal clear.

Right. So, for example, in the previous exercise, we did together regarding my middle daughter, I can’t change the world. I can’t change her. I can only change myself and that changes my world and through whomever I affect.

Yes.

That will change her in whatever way that it’s meant to be.

Yes! The way you see yourself and the way you see your daughter and that inquiry, it shifts the way you see period. You become a kinder, more connected, and more understanding father with or without her.

Yeah, so I could write her a letter or leave a voicemail or however I show up—

Well, I would just tell her the truth if this is what the truth is. I was wrong.  I was hurtful and I wasn’t listening.

Yeah, exactly.

And I missed it. And with all my heart, I would love to hear what you were saying clearly and without me interrupting you.

Yeah. Without judgment. Without negativity or justification.

Well, I don’t think my children would be very interested in that. That’s my own stuff. But I want to hear you. That’s something people can hear. But I want to hear you and then, when it becomes all about me after that, then I’m pretty much into the same-old, same-old.

Climb that wall of context and really feel what life is like for her on the other side—

Yeah, and the way you receive it when you’re listening and you could still feel anger arise again—notice your mind justifying that anger; notice you’re out of touch with her again—just notice and then, that would make a good worksheet later and then come back and continue to listen to your beloved daughter.

Yeah. That seems so simple when you just see the four questions but it’s a lifetime exercise. What is the difference for you—as far as you see it—between conditional love and unconditional love?

Well, conditional love is something that I believe in about you that would keep me separate. And you know? It’s something I expect of you.  That’s conditional.

Right.

You don’t have to love or care about me—that’s my job: to love and care about you because it’s the only way I can fully accept myself.

And in that fourth question: Who would I be without my story? Who would I be without that thought I believe in about you?–the condition has dropped so I’m connected. Now, you don’t have to connect to me. I’m connected—that’s my job.  You don’t have to love or care about me—that’s my job: to love and care about you because it’s the only way I can fully accept myself. You are a projection of my mind so to not connect to you is not to connect to myself.

Right, and it’s so profound to think about everything is a projection of our minds: the past, the future, our suffering, the pain, the people we love, the people we hate—they’re all projections. We’re not—

Well, it’s one thing to say that but it’s quite something else to realize that.

Yeah. I’m still working on it.

That’s what I love about inquiry. You know, I definitely don’t want to believe myself ahead of my own evolution, it just puts a distance between me and me, and me and the world.

Yeah, and it was really profound what you said in one of the videos: “No one can hurt me, that’s my job.”

Yeah, completely!

What about forgiveness? Where do you see forgiveness?

Well, for me, forgiveness is, through inquiry, I see over and over and over that forgiveness is understanding that what I thought happened absolutely didn’t so there’s nothing to forgive. So, if I forgive you—it still assumes that you did it. That’s not forgiveness. Forgiveness is powerful. It’s the end of the old projection onto that being so when you see that being, you see them without that projection that you have taken care of inside of you. B: So, it would be like if my husband walks into the room and says, “Good morning!” I think, “There’s something wrong with him. He acts like we didn’t fight last night. Blah-blah-blah-blah…” so I say, “Good morning!” but without my story, he walks in and he says, “Good morning!” and I see him new, as though I’m seeing him for the very first time—this is unconditional love!

I’m not putting onto him what I believe him to be. I’m just with who he really is. So, if I don’t love or care about someone, I look to me and I don’t look to that person. If I see them as less, you know, then 100% forgiven, then I’m never going to meet the person I live with. I like to say, “No two people have ever met,” so I have the privilege of seeing my children, my husband, the world, and myself as always out of that “don’t know” mind, out of that “amazed,” and just this living in a state of gratitude—basically, gratitude for this wonderful world that I have the privilege of seeing more clearly than I did the first 43 years of believing what I believed about people. Which left me without the ability to know people.

That’s so profound and beautiful!  You know, we’re out of time so I really thank you for sharing your wisdom, love, vulnerability, and everything with my listeners. We’ve already mentioned TheWork.com, has a lot of great materials, more worksheets, and there’s the helpline and so forth but where else can folks go for more information? I know you have a blog, ByronKatie.com. Any other resources that you want to mention for our listeners?

Well, I just suggest people to go to TheWork.com and if I have anything that’s valuable whatsoever, it’s all free there. We do have some paid events so we can keep the bills paid but really, they’re unnecessary because it’s all free at TheWork.com.  Thank you, Stephan, for this time together.  It’s really just such a privilege to hear from you what you do to become a kinder, better human being and your path, and the people you serve out of that and so, thank you for that.

Thank you!  

Goodbye!

All right, everyone, thank you for listening! That was another great episode.  Wow, amazing episode!

Important Links

CHECKLIST OF ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

  • Create a quiet, peaceful space where you can meditate on the four questions and their turnarounds. Write down your feelings and conclusions.
  • Start forgiving people in your life who are causing you pain, even if they are not alive. Forgiveness, letting go, and moving forward has to start within you.
  • Download the free worksheet on TheWork.com, it walks you through the steps of taking care of the entire situation of what you’re thinking and believing to help end suffering.
  • Changing your viewpoint can help you see the world differently. Share the love and joy that you feel with others, and in turn that can help them feel more happiness.
  • Check out The Institute for The Work to find facilitators in your area, they will be able to tell you their own experiences, and are there to work with people.
  • When you feel pain or suffering, remember that it’s a projection of your mind and can be changed.
  • Use the turnaround of situations to question the belief and feelings within yourself. The issues may not just lie with the other people involved, but could be inside of you.
  • If you come to profound conclusions, apply those conclusions to your relationships. Even if the other people involved are not ready, you can show them that you will be there when they want to talk.
  • Being vulnerable is an important part of changing your viewpoint. Stay open-minded and accept the feelings and thoughts that you create during your meditation.
  • Be critical in your thinking. Your thoughts are not all true, and when you have a thought that doesn’t bring joy, learn to discard it.

About the Host

STEPHAN SPENCER

Since coming into his own power and having a life-changing spiritual awakening, Stephan is on a mission. He is devoted to curiosity, reason, wonder, and most importantly, a connection with God and the unseen world. He has one agenda: revealing light in everything he does. A self-proclaimed geek who went on to pioneer the world of SEO and make a name for himself in the top echelons of marketing circles, Stephan’s journey has taken him from one of career ambition to soul searching and spiritual awakening.

Stephan has created and sold businesses, gone on spiritual quests, and explored the world with Tony Robbins as a part of Tony’s “Platinum Partnership.” He went through a radical personal transformation – from an introverted outlier to a leader in business and personal development.

About the Guest

BYRON KATIE

Byron Katie is a speaker, author, and world-renowned expert on ending suffering and bringing joy to people’s lives. She teaches a method of self-inquiry known as The Work. She is the author of multiple bestselling books including: Loving What Is, I Need Your Love-Is That True?, A Thousand Names for Joy, Question Your Thinking, Change The World, Who Would You Be Without Your Story?, and for children: Tiger-Tiger, Is It True?. You can find her on Twitter @ByronKatie.

DISCLAIMER

The medical, fitness, psychological, mindset, lifestyle, and nutritional information provided on this website and through any materials, downloads, videos, webinars, podcasts, or emails is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical/fitness/nutritional advice, diagnoses, or treatment. Always seek the help of your physician, psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, certified trainer, or dietitian with any questions regarding starting any new programs or treatments, or stopping any current programs or treatments. This website is for information purposes only, and the creators and editors, including Stephan Spencer, accept no liability for any injury or illness arising out of the use of the material contained herein, and make no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the contents of this website and affiliated materials.

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