Plain Sailing In Schools

Have you heard about Byron Katie and her transformative practice for all those interested in spiritual growth and personal development?

Byron Katie has known great pain and suffering in her life. In highly unusual circumstances she woke up one morning to a sudden and dramatic shift in awareness, which brought her an inner clarity. Since then she has been travelling the world demonstrating the value and simplicity of four very special questions, and how they work.

Byron’s practice, known simply as The Work, allows you to go inside yourself and find your own happiness, to experience what already exists within you, unchanging, immovable, ever-present, ever-waiting. She strongly believes that anyone is capable of ending their own suffering, whatever it may be. Have a go at the following exercise, which very much sums up what The Work is all about and can be applied to many situations.

Choose a person or situation and write down, using short, simple sentences, who or what it is. Point the finger of blame or judgement outward. Write from your present position and your point of view.

1. Who angers or saddens or disappoints you? What is it about them that you didn’t or still don’t like?

2. How do you want them to change? What do you want them to do?

3. Do you need anything from them? What do they need to give you or do in order for you to be happy?

4. What do you think of them? Make a list.

5. What is it that you don’t ever want to experience with that person, thing or situation again?

Now, one by one, put each of your answers up against the four questions below, and then turn around the statement you’re working on. Throughout the process, practice being open to possibilities beyond what you think you know. This is a way of discovering your don’t -know mind. Keep asking the question and wait. Let the answer find you.

Here are the four questions of The Work:

1. Is it true?

Take your time. There is no right or wrong answer. Just listen for your answer.

2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

This is an opportunity to go into the unknown, to find the answers that live beneath what we think we know.

3. How do you react when you think that thought?

Make a list. How do you treat yourself, how do you treat the person you’ve written about, when you think that thought? What do you do? Be specific.

4. What would you do without the thought?

Close your eyes and wait. Imagine yourself just for a moment without that thought. What do you see? How does it feel? How is the situation different?

Now turn it around – rewrite the statement. This time write it as if it were written about you. Where you have written someone’s name, put yourself. Instead of “he” or “she”, put “I”. Consider whether or not the turn-around statement is as true as or truer than your original statement.

Now it’s time for you to continue applying the four questions and the turnaround to your own judgements, one at a time. Read all the sentences that you originally wrote and then one by one investigate each statement by asking yourself the four questions.

For more information about Byron Katie and The Work visit www.thework.org. If you would like try her online coaching programme, just click on Start Now! on the banner below. Good luck with The Work.

Please leave a response if you would like to ask me any questions about The Work, or indeed if you would like to share your experiences of implementing it.