The Inquiry
1. Is it true?
2. Can I absolutely know that it’s true?
3. How do I react when I think that thought?
4. Who would I be without the thought and then
Turn it around.
—Byron Katie
It is easy to be swept away by some overwhelming feeling, so it’s helpful to remember that any stressful feeling is like a compassionate alarm clock that says, “You’re caught in the dream”.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Stress, Feel, Passion, Compassion, Dream
God, as I use the word, is another name for what is. I always know God’s intention: It’s exactly what is in every moment.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Act, God, Now
An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Suffering
Who would you be if you didn’t believe this thought?
—Byron Katie
Topics: Thought, Believe
We’ve been looking outside us for our own peace. We’ve been looking in the wrong direction.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Peace
That’s what every uncomfortable feeling is for—that’s what pain is for, what money is for, what everything in the world is for: your self-realization.
—Byron Katie
Topics: World, Feel, Pain, Money
As you inquire into issues and turn judgments around, you come to see that every perceived problem appearing “out there” is really nothing more than a misperception within your own thinking.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Judgment, Perception, Think, Thinking
I like to say that no one can hurt me—that’s my job. This is good news.
—Byron Katie
Topics: New, Good
Every story is a variation on a single theme: This shouldn’t be happening. I shouldn’t be having this experience. God is unjust. Life isn’t fair.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Experience, Sin, God, Life
The whole world is simply my story, projected back to me on the screen of my own perception. All of it.
—Byron Katie
Topics: World, Perception
Do you know anyone who hasn’t changed his mind? This door was a tree, then it will be firewood for someone, then it will return to air and earth. We’re all like that, constantly changing. It’s simply honest to report that you’ve changed your mind when you have. When you’re afraid of what people will think if you speak honestly, that’s where you become confused.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Become, Now, Think, Change, Will, Mind, People, Earth
Thought the mind can justify itself faster than the speed of light, it can be stopped through the act of writing.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Mind, Act, Thought, Light
Lack of understanding is always painful.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Pain
After you’ve been doing inquiry for a while, if you have the thought “She doesn’t love me,” you just get the immediate turnaround with a smile: “Oh, I’m not loving myself in this moment”.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Smile, Love, Thought, Doing
One day I noticed that I wasn’t breathing—I was being breathed.
—Byron Katie
When you run in fear, it’s square into the wall.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Fear
When I am perfectly clear, what is, is what I want.
—Byron Katie
You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Believe, Reason
What I call “doing the dishes” is the practice of loving the task in front of you. Your inner voice guides you all day long to do simple things such as brush your teeth, drive to work, call your friend, or do the dishes. Even though it’s just another story, it’s a very short story, and when you follow the direction of the voice, the story ends. We are really alive when we live as simply as that—open, waiting, trusting, and loving to do what appears in front of us now…What we need to do unfolds before us, always—doing the dishes, paying the bills, picking up the children’s socks, brushing our teeth. We never receive more than we can handle, and there is always just one thing to do. Whether you have ten dollars or ten million dollars, life never gets more difficult than that.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Life, Doing, Live, Yin, Act, Work, Trust, Children, Practice, Follow, Friend, Aging, Now
I’ll tell you that for me, one when someone used to say something that was true, one way I knew it was true was that I immediately felt defensive. I blocked it off, and I went to war with them in my mind and suffered all that goes with it. And they were only saying what was true.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Yin, New, Mind, War
I use the word inquiry as synonymous with The Work…Inquiry is a way to end confusion and to experience internal peace, even in a world of apparent chaos. Above all else, inquiry is about realizing that all the answers we ever need are always available inside us.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Experience, Rent, Peace, Work, World
Who would you be without the thought “I need more money to be safe?” You might be a lot easier to be with. You might even begin to notice the laws of generosity, the laws of letting money go out fearlessly and come back fearlessly. You don’t ever need more money than you have.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Thought, Money, Fear
That’s what I love about integrity. Each time we go inside, that’s where it is.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Integrity, Time, Love
I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours and God’s. Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our business. When I think, “You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself,” I am in your business. When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God’s business. If I am mentally in your business or in God’s business, the effect is separation.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Stress, Time, God, Think, Better, Will, Kind, Sin, Business, War, Happy, Universe, Earth
All suffering originates from the mind, not the world.
—Byron Katie
When we try to be safe, we live our lives being very, very careful; and we wind up having no lives.
—Byron Katie
Without our stories, we are not only able to act clearly and fearlessly, we are also a friend, a listener. We are people living happy lives. We are appreciation and gratitude that have become as natural as breath itself. Happiness is the natural state for someone who knows that there’s nothing to know and that we already have everything we need, right here now.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Live, Right, Fear, Gratitude, Now, Become, Happiness, Appreciation, People, Friend, Act, Happy
I realized that it’s insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100% of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It’s blowing!
—Byron Katie
Topics: Time, Now, Win, Reality
No one has ever been able to control his thinking, although people may tell the story of how they have. I don’t let go of my thoughts?—I meet them with understanding. Then they let go of me.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Control, Thoughts, Think, Thought, Letting Go, People, Thinking
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Ken Keyes Jr. American Self-Help Author
- Denis Waitley American Motivational Speaker
- John C. Maxwell American Author, Speaker
- Mark Victor Hansen American Speaker, Author
- T. Harv Eker American Motivational Speaker
- Earl Nightingale American Motivational Speaker
- Wayne Dyer American Self-help Author
- Marie Chapian American Christian Writer
- Marianne Williamson American Activist
- Shakti Gawain American Author
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