Truth Seeker
Pacific Sun - May 22-28, 2002
by Katy ButlerByron

Katie says she’s not a guru or even a teacher. She just asks the right questions and you do The Work.The way Byron Katie tells her story, her life was once filled with a brand of suffering familiar to affluent Californians. She lived in a "gorgeous home" in Barstow on the edge of the Mojave Desert with her second husband Paul and the youngest of her three children. And she had a knack for making money, lots of it, buying and selling real estate. "The setting said, 'This is the perfect life,'" she told me one recent morning as we sat in my Mill Valley backyard surrounded by blooming camellias and birdsong. "Inside I was miserable. Every day I wanted to die. I'd wake up in the morning and notice I was still here and just curse God."

By 1986, she was depressed, eating too much and fighting with her husband and children. She weighed 200 pounds and had entered a depression so deep that she spent most of her time in her bedroom watching television. In despair, she entered a halfway house for women with eating disorders in Southern California. There, on the floor of an attic bedroom, Byron Katie Reid—secular Barstow housewife, television-watcher and real estate investor— had the kind of spiritual awakening that Buddhist monks and Christian contemplatives pray and fast and meditate years for.

"I opened my eyes and there was a cockroach crawling over my foot," she said. "And all my problems were gone. There was no identification with the woman that went to sleep the night before. It was as though something else was born. There was just this amazing laughter."

Soon afterwards, Katie returned to her family in Barstow a changed and strange person, spending long days alone in the desert and leaving her door open to allow anyone to enter her home. In the years since, she has spent much of her time touring this country and Europe teaching what she calls "The Work"—four deceptively simple and liberating questions that her new book, Loving What Is, promises "can change your life."

"Is it true?" she asks, sitting on a stage at a packed hall—most recently at Spirit Rock meditation center in Woodacre—as a man or woman in a chair opposite her reads out his or her most damning thoughts and wounds from a scrawled piece of paper: My wife betrayed me with my best friend; or my boyfriend should get out of debt; or my mother is a bitch; or my stepmother drinks too much; or my abuse ruined my life.

"Is it true?" Katie asks them. "Can you absolutely know that it's true? How do you react when you think that thought? Who would you be without that thought?"

These four questions—plus what Katie calls the "turnaround"—have propelled her into a world far beyond Barstow: About two years ago, she divorced her second husband Paul and now lives in Sedona, Arizona, with her third husband, the writer Stephen Mitchell. (Mitchell is co-author of her book and has translated the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the Book of Job and the Tao Te Ching.) Last year Time magazine named her one of the top "spiritual innovators for the new millennium" alive in America today.

I spoke to her one recent Monday morning, the day after she and Mitchell had given a benefit at Spirit Rock. Simply dressed in a black top and skirt, she is a pretty woman close to 60, with open blue eyes and lustrous gray-white hair. As we spoke, her husband talked quietly on his cell phone at the other end of the garden as he tried to locate extra copies of the galleys of Loving What Is to take into prisons that will not accept hardbound books for fear they will be used to smuggle contraband.

I'd previously watched Katie work during her frequent free appearances at community centers here in Marin County, but had always held back somewhat, suspicious of the adoring audiences for whom she can apparently do no wrong. I felt differently after interviewing her. Cooperating with the Sun photographer, gamely repeating herself when my tape recorder jammed, she met every potentially difficult moment with an odd mix of calm and delight. I began by asking her about her former life as a depressed woman in Barstow.

You've said that before you went into the halfway house, you were full of rage. At what?

I wasn't questioning my thinking. I believed everything I thought. And the thoughts that would come were: Nobody loves me. I don't have a purpose. My children think I'm a terrible mother. I'm misunderstood. Today those thoughts fill me with laughter because I've questioned them and I've come to see what's true. But lying in that bed, I had no questions to ask of those thoughts. It was very deep mental illness. Since then I've come to see that anyone who doesn't question their thoughts is suffering from mental illness. No one has to suffer that kind of pain when life can be so simple.

[unconvinced] Yeah.

That's what my life is about now. When we get free, when our minds are clear, all it leaves is gratitude and how can I help?

That's it. I get the sense from reading your book that beforehand, you had a hard time with your husband—he left his socks everywhere, he yelled at you...

Well, that's an ex-husband. It's been so long, but oh yes. "My children should pick up their socks, my husband should pick up his socks. And look what they are doing! If they really loved me they would do just that one simple little thing!" [laughter] They just kept leaving them there and leaving them there. I would rage, I would cry, I would die a thousand deaths. The next morning, the socks were still on the floor. I use that as an example—the simplest thing can just put you over the edge. [laughter] Until we question our thoughts.

If someone else would just do this one simple thing, I would be happy—isn't that pretty universal?

If they would just cooperate, we would all have better lives! I know the way! Well, I don't think so. Often I couldn't even take a shower or brush my teeth! [laughter] And paranoia—if my children just glanced in my bedroom, it would be like, "I know what they think about me." And that would send me into a rage. Not my children, the little innocents. They just walked by and looked at their mother. Mentally, I did all the rest. I was my enemy. Until we question those stressful thoughts, we believe we're right. When you question one, it, leads to the next stressful thought. And to the next stressful thought. Until eventually, it's done.

You've undone them all?

I've undone them all. These four questions take people directly to the truth. If you want to make the trip.

For example?

I'd think the thought, my children don't really care about me. If I don't question that thought, if I really believe it, how do I react when I think that thought? That's the third question. Well, I become depressed. And then I have a lot of thoughts to prove that the first thought is true. That's the mind's job, to prove that it's right. Without questioning, it just rolls on. How do I react when I think that thought? I'm stressed out, I'm angry, then I go to the refrigerator, then I go to the alcohol, then I go to credit cards and I'm shopping, buying things that I have no interest in or need for. That's how I react when I think the thought.

[The tape recorder jams. After a new tape is inserted, Katie repeats the following sentences]

If we can question these old thoughts, then this is the end of our internal war. What's left is genius, infinite mind, and it knows how to deal with things effectively.

Going back to the halfway house. I can imagine someone involved in the Twelve Steps would say you hit bottom.

I got a moment of clarity. There are a lot of theories around it. Whatever it was, I'm grateful. I had a moment of grace, and I understood. Then I have a way of sharing that with the world where I just use questions, and people find their own freedom.

After that, did you just pack up, go back to Barstow and be a shining light and everyone started flocking?

No, I just knew one day to go home. Well, they wouldn't release me. They said I wasn't ready. So I just left. And then I began a very strange life at that point, a very strange life.

Which was?

Well my doors were open, for one thing. I knew enough not to shut the door. Someone would walk into the house, and I would just sit with them. And then the phone would ring and I would go to the phone. Then I'd have the thought, do the dishes. And I'd do the dishes. Then one of my children would need me, and I would just do that. For me, everything is God. Everything and everyone. So it was just, God needs me now, now, now. And everything got done. And it still does to this day. There is never too much. I am totally enjoying this. You look so beautiful in that hat.

Thank you. I feel a freedom and a relaxation interviewing you that I don't always feel.

That's it. We sit in the same position. Really liking each other.

What else did you do when you returned to Barstow?

I would go out into the desert. The desert was my teacher. I didn't know about gurus and wise people—I wasn't a reader. That wasn't my world. The desert never moved. It was so clear. That's where I learned that there are no new stressful thoughts, that they are all recycled. The version I tell is that I went out into the desert to get away from all the noise in the world, and I took the whole world with me in my head. Every thought that's ever been thought. And I just sat there, and I undid them, and I undid them.

I'd have the thought, "It's too hot, I'm going to die." And I would just live that one through. I would walk so far, without water. Not on purpose, it just happened. I had the thought, I’m lost. Because of the questions, I would see that I was found, that I am always where I am. And then someone would always find me. I wasn't out there like some weird person. I just needed to do these things.

I would sit and know I had a terror of snakes, rattlesnakes. I would close my eyes and wait, and I knew that they were there. That's how powerful imagination is. How do I react when I think that thought? And just let the terror take me over. Who would I be without the thought? And I discovered that if a thousand snakes bit me it would be less painful than those thoughts. All I was doing was noticing mind.

The desert was close to a base, and they do desert maneuvers there. These bombs would go off. And I'd notice that the desert doesn't mind. There would be a bird taking something to build a nest, and over there the desert is being bombed, but she just gives and gives and gives. She [the desert] never says Stop, she never says Don't. She just lives the reality. And that's me... When I'm not giving to that last breath, it goes against what I learned. It becomes a privilege to give, because we are not resisting our own nature.

Let me be honest. I can see saying 80 to 90 percent of our world is self-created by our thoughts. When I have a thought like, oh no, the tape recorder has stopped. Because of this missed five minutes, the whole thing is ruined...

What's true is the tape recorder stopped.

Right.

Everything else is just the story about reality. Reality and the story never match. Reality is always kinder. The tape recorder stopped. But then you go off into an internal war when you begin to tell the story about such a simple thing. So that's all this Work is about.

What's fascinating is that because it was OK with you that the tape recorder stopped...

Not only OK. I love it. I love reality. I know it's for good. Either that or God's a sadist.

Because you were so comfortable, I could fix the problem right away.

I could just have given you "the look" or said, "Well, you know, those things happen" in a certain tone of voice. Then it would have taken ten minutes or more to fix the tape, who knows? But in the presence of truth, there's a shortcut. We think the tape recorder shouldn't have stopped. Well, that's not true. It did stop, that's how I know it should have. Because of our limited thinking, because of the story we superimpose onto reality, we still have war in the world. We have been doing it forever—if you look back at our oldest history books, our oldest, most sacred texts. There is war, we're still doing it. We just have nicer clothes.

Until you find peace, we don't find peace. We are one mind. When I work in Europe, a thousand people will show up. And when one person gets it, everyone in the room gets it. I was at a bookstore recently, and a woman stood up. She was furious, furious. And she told everyone in the room what she thought of them; she was right; she attacked one woman, and then later stormed out.

Two days later, she came to our benefit at Spirit Rock, and paid $75 and brought a friend! Very shyly, this I-know mind said, "Hi, are you surprised I'm back?" She was unrecognizable. That's how powerful the truth is. This Work is just four questions. But when we answer those four questions—oh my. Then we heal ourselves. It doesn't take a teacher. We are all our own teacher.

So she was there, freaking out, attacking you....

She wasn't attacking me. No one can attack me. That's not possible.

Because?

What could people say about me that I couldn't go inside of, and see where they are right, at one time or another in my life? I could say, "How dare you say that to me?" But that is war, internal war. So as she talked to me, I am saying to myself, "Well, she's right, she's right, she's right." I don't say that out loud. But inside me, it is soft, realizing how beautiful it is—that she would realize about me the very thing that I realized 16 years ago.

I just fall in love with people. It is like when people have cancer and they are on their deathbeds, and they are suffering, we don't kick them and say "Get up." It is the same when someone is angry or attacking. This is a confused human being. And if I am clear, where is it that I could not meet them? That is when we are the happiest, when we're giving without condition.

And yet the tape recorder did stop. Your old husband, your former husband, used to yell at you and eventually you decided to leave him...

But I didn't leave him because he yelled at me. He would say, "You don't love me." Well, that is the woman he thought he was married to. I loved him with all my heart; what did that have to do with it? This is his story he is living. "You don't ever want to stay with me." Well, I'm traveling the world. And I would say, "Sweetheart, I do want to stay with you. I love you, and I know to do this other thing." And he would think, "If you loved me you would stay." So here is what it gets down to: He is married to a woman who doesn't love him, a woman who doesn't care, a woman who cannot wait to leave him, a woman who is insensitive, a woman who is not there for him. So if you loved someone, what would you do?

You mean, leave him?

Of course. I spared him from that woman. Even though I was not that woman.

What I’m arguing for is that it may be 90 percent story but it's 10 percent real. This is a beautiful garden, we are in a beautiful place. We could be doing this interview down the block in the parking lot at Whole Foods, and it wouldn't be as pleasant.

Oh really?

And can you absolutely know that's true? What we do know is that we are here, and it is pleasant. But why would I make the rest of the world small in my mind, to have a pleasant time here with you?

OK, but isn't it more pleasant being with your current husband, Stephen, than it was being with your former husband who yelled at you?

Well, I'd have to sit with that. I would say, hmmm—my internal life is always pleasant. Stephen sees me in the way that I see me. So that’s really dear. And I tell him that if he ever has stressful thoughts about me and doesn't question them, sooner or later I'll do something, he will think thoughts about it and he will separate himself.

If he doesn't question his thoughts, then we as a couple will begin to emotionally pull apart.

If he doesn't question his thoughts about you, then at some point he may become disappointed? Exactly so. And it is not my job to undisappoint him; it is his job.

Can we take a simple example of doing the four questions?

I recently worked with a man whose business partner called him a troublemaker in front of their employees. He was furious. He said this man owed him an apology. Now that's an old one. If you look at Arafat and Sharon they are doing that: "You owe me an apology." So I said, "He owes you an apology—is it true?" He said, "Well, yes." And the people watching are nodding their heads: Of course, look what he did. Then I asked him the second question: "Can you absolutely know that it's true?" Now this was an intelligent man. So he started looking at it. "Well, I can't come from his point of view. I don't know how he sees me. So I can't absolutely know, from his position, that he owes me an apology." So I said, "That's very good. And what's the reality of it? Has he apologized? No. He should apologize… Is it true? How do I know it's not true? He hasn't. Not yet. That's reality."

And then the third question: "How do you react when you think that thought, that he should apologize and he hasn't?" The man said, "I talk about him behind his back. He comes up with a really good idea that could make the company money and I slam it down. I become angry. I'm separate from him. I don't want to be in the same meeting with him. I am angry, defiant, and when I go home I carry this into my family." I said, "How does it feel inside you to think the thought that he owes you an apology and he doesn't do it?" He said, "I get tight, I get red, my heart beats fast." So we can see what brings on illness. People who are trying to heal an illness—until they take care of their mind, they can't heal most efficiently. We are shutting off our breath, our bloodstream, our heart. That's how we react when we believe a lie. Not the world's lie; our own.

As he was running this list, he said, "Oh my God. I am a troublemaker. He's right." He found that third question so potent.

So then I ask him the fourth question: "Who would you be in that office, with your partner, without that thought? Who would you be living in the world if you didn't believe he owed you an apology?" He said, "A friend. A loyal partner. One who wouldn't resist good ideas. One making a lot more money. One kinder to his family."

Then I said, "Turn it around." He went to the original statement "He should apologize to me" and he became very humble. He said "I should apologize to him. Look what I've done. I've taken my business partner and made him look bad in other people's eyes. I'm that kind of troublemaker."

Another turnaround he found was "I should apologize to myself." And that brought a few tears.

And why should he apologize to himself?

He put himself through hell. When we talk about another human being in an unkind way, it hurts us. It doesn't matter whether we like it or not, that's the way of it.

So could you just explain the turnaround a little bit?

You look at the statement—and always write the statements down. And then find an opposite. Sometimes you can find three, four, five that are all truer than what you believed originally.

But aren't they all just thoughts? Couldn't the thought like "I should apologize to him" be just as much a construct as "He should apologize to me?"

Well, it is. But these turnarounds show us how to live. Realization is a very powerful thing. But until it's lived, it's not solid realization.

It's just one more beautiful thought.

Just one more beautiful thought. So as we begin to step into our integrity, life begins to change.

This is my final question: 10 or 15 years ago, the prominent religious teachers were mostly men. Now there's a wave of female teachers—you, Gangaji, Buddhist women like Pema Chodren. Do you have any thoughts about this, culturally? Why women now rather than men?

I don't really see the difference. I think a clear mind is a clear mind, and that is attractive to people. I don't have any secret powers. I'm not a teacher. I come with four questions, and people see it as teaching. Just four little questions. Stick them on a slip of paper in your pocket and walk down the street. And if you have a problem, just walk up to any stranger and say, "Can you read?" And if they say yes, hand them the paper and ask them to take you through it. If you really want to know the truth, all you need is the questions. It doesn't take a teacher.

---------- • ----------

Copyright © SBGi. All rights reserved.