Byron Kathleen Mitchell (b.1942,) better known as Byron Katie, is an American speaker and author who teaches a method of self-inquiry known as “The Work of Byron Katie” or simply as “The Work”. She is married to the writer and translator Stephen Mitchell.
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The pain shows you what’s left to investigate.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Pain
The Work is the end of the world as we understand it to be, sweetheart. And it’s the opening to reality, as it really is, in all its beauty.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Beauty, World, Heart, Work
I saw that we’re all doing the best we can. This is how a lifetime of humility begins.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Time, Best, Humility, Life, Doing, Responsibility
Would you rather be right or free?
—Byron Katie
Topics: Right
We’ve been looking outside us for our own peace. We’ve been looking in the wrong direction.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Peace
Your nature is truth, and when you oppose it, you don’t feel like yourself. Stress never feels as natural as peace does.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Nature, Stress, Peace, Feel, Truth
That’s what I love about integrity. Each time we go inside, that’s where it is.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Integrity, Time, Love
In reality, there is no such thing as a “should” or a “shouldn’t”. These are only thoughts that we impose onto reality. The mind is like a carpenter’s level. When the bubble is off to one side—“It shouldn’t be raining”—we can know that the mind is caught in its thinking. When the bubble is right in the middle—“It’s raining”—we can know that the surface level and the mind is accepting reality as it is. Without the “should” and “shouldn’t,” we can see reality as it is, and this leaves us free to act efficiently, clearly, and sanely. Asking “What’s the reality of it?” can help bring the mind out of its story, back into the real world.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Thought, Mind, Thinking, Act, Thoughts, Think, Right, Now, World
Without an uninvestigated story, there’s only the perfection of life appearing as itself. You can always go inside and find the beauty that’s revealed after the pain and fear are understood.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Perfect, Beauty, Life, Perfection, Fear, Pain
Just keep coming home to yourself. You are the one you’ve been waiting for.
—Byron Katie
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: Sin, Experience, God, Life
There is no mistake in nature.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Mistake, Nature
If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Cause, Decide, Suffering, Thought
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: Love, Smile, Thought, Doing
The nightmare always becomes laughter, once it’s understood.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Become, Laughter
You can’t drop concepts. You can only shine a little flashlight on them as you do inquiry, an you see that what you thought was true wasn’t. And when the truth is seen, there’s nothing you can do to make the lie true for you again.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Light, Thought, Truth
I find that so often self-realization leaves us only with laughter.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Laughter
You are the effect of your story, that’s all.
—Byron Katie
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
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: Kind, Better, War, Universe, Think, God, Business, Sin, Happy, Time, Earth, Stress, Will
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: Right, Happiness, Become, Happy, Now, Live, Act, People, Fear, Gratitude, Friend, Appreciation
Rather than understand the original cause—a thought—we try to change the stressful feelings by looking outside ourselves.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Cause, Feelings, Change, Thought, Try, Feel, Stress
Gratitude is what we are without a story.
—Byron Katie
All suffering originates from the mind, not the world.
—Byron Katie
You know what I love, sweetheart? The thoughts that used to send us into deep depression—these same thoughts, once understood, send us into laughter.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Love, Now, Thoughts, Thought, Depression, Laughter, Heart
If I had a prayer, it would be this: “God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen”.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Love, Appreciation, God, Prayer, Desire
Spare yourself from seeking love, approval, or appreciation—from anyone. And watch what happens in reality, just for fun.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Appreciation, Love
You’re never given more pain than you can handle. You never, ever get more than you can take.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Pain, Give
Once the mind is met with understanding, it can always find its way home.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Mind
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: Will, Earth, Become, People, Change, Now, Mind, Think
I love not rushing the process. Mind doesn’t shift until it does, and when it does shift, it’s right on time, not one second too late or too soon. People are like seeds waiting to sprout. We can’t be pushed ahead of our own understanding.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Time, Right, Love, Mind, People
When you run in fear, it’s square into the wall.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Fear
It’s not easy to find your own way when you believe that you need love, approval, appreciation, or anything from your family. It’s particularly hard when you want them to see things your way.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Love, Family, Believe, Appreciation
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: Money, Thought, Fear
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: Thinking, Judgment, Perception, Think
I came to see that there was nothing to forgive, that I was the one who caused my own problems.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Problems, Give, Cause
We don’t attach to people or to things; we attach to uninvestigated concepts that we believe to be true in the moment.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Believe, People
Everything happens for me, not to me.
—Byron Katie
The world is as you perceive it to be. For me, clarity is a word for beauty. It’s what I am. And when I’m clear, I see only beauty. Nothing else is possible.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Beauty, World
In the fall, you don’t grieve because the leaves are falling and dying. You say, “Isn’t it beautiful!” Well, we’re the same way. There are seasons. We all fall sooner or later. It’s all so beautiful. And our concepts, without investigation, keep us from knowing this. It’s beautiful to be a leaf, to be born, to fall, to give way to the next, to become food for the roots. It’s life, always changing its form and always giving itself completely. We all do our part. No mistake.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Now, Cause, Yin, Life, Giving, Give, Become, Mistake, Dying, Win
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