Byron Katie Quotations

I haven't had a single thought for 26 years. I have only understanding. It's somewhat complicated to understand that. I've hardly ever spoken about it. You're in a state of total peace of mind. A kind of nirvana.

One morning, in February 1986, out of nowhere, I experienced a realization. In an instant, I discovered that when I believed my stressful thoughts, I suffered, but when I questioned them, I didn't suffer.

I suffered from severe depression for over a decade. My condition deteriorated steadily. I was suicidal.

When we believe in our thoughts, when we tell ourselves a story, we suffer. 'My husband doesn't respect me.' 'I should be thinner.' Those are stories. When there's no story, there's no suffering.

I used to sleep on the floor next to the bed, because I believed that I didn't even deserve a bed to sleep in. And then, one morning, a cockroach crawled onto my leg. I looked at it, and suddenly I awoke from a kind of hypnotic trance in which I had been all my life.

When I was in my early forties, I slept with a loaded gun under my bed. I'd become severely depressed in my thirties, and for almost a decade I spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and thoughts of suicide.

Realizing that people should lie when they do makes me a little more open-minded, a little more tolerant, when my child or my partner lies.

The world you live in is 100 percent your own responsibility. If you don't like your world, it doesn't work to say, "Well, it's my mother's fault. She taught me how to think."

If people are living their lives for security and comfort and pleasure, then mind's every waking moment will be plotting those things. That's how it stays identified - as a body, as a you.

Mind is infinitely creative. And when it's not stuck, that's where the joy comes from. Something happens, and the way we think about it, understand it, see it, is actually hilarious, whereas before it used to depress us.

I do whatever I can to serve peace. My job is the end of suffering.

I teach people to question their thinking, and this changes their world.

For me, the future lives only here in my mind, as thoughts and images, just as the past does, and I love those thoughts and the world that it produces. I am entirely optimistic about the future.

I know that even at moments of apparent danger, nothing is out of order or lacking, other than our own unquestioned thoughts about those moments.

I see the goodness and beauty in everyone, and everything is a gift given for me and for all of us. If you don't love it, question your mind until you do.

Freedom is our birthright.

The world will be at war as long as the mind is at war with itself.

I love the world, because I love the mind that created the world.

Eating, drinking, and depression disorders are really thinking disorders.

I believe in the power of every human being to end suffering.

Actually, I can't take credit for any of my decisions. I noticed one day that all my decisions were making themselves, and always at the right time. I haven't had to make one decision since then. They are always made for me, and they come from the wisdom that is in us all. I trust that wisdom completely. That trust itself was a decision made for me as inquiry cleared my mind. No decision, no fear.

With inquiry, every painful story unravels. Freedom is possible in every moment.

There is no thought or situation that you can't put up against inquiry. Every thought, every person, every apparent problem is here for the sake of your freedom.

Once the mind is met with understanding, it can always find its way home.

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.

A mind that doesn't question its judgements, makes the world very small and dangerous.

I love what I think, and I'm never tempted to believe it.

If you want a little fear and terror because your life is dull, get a future. Terrifying!

I came to see that there was nothing to forgive, that I was the one who caused my own problems.

Your parents are your projection-nothing more.

Reality is always the story of a past, and what I love about the past is—it's over.

Stress never feels as natural as peace does

You’ve never reacted to someone else. You project meaning onto nothing. And you react to the meaning you’ve projected

What is perfect health? The unraveling of all imagined states of mind

It's important to realize that inquiry is about noticing, not about dropping the thought... Inquiry is not about getting rid of thoughts; it's about realizing what's true for you, through awareness and unconditional self-love. Once you see the truth, the thought lets go of you, not the other way around.

We're all looking for love, in our confusion, until we find our way back to the realization that love is what we already are.

The Work is merely four questions; it's not even a thing. It has no motive, no strings. It's nothing without your answers. These four questions will join any program you've got ad enhance it. Any religion you have-they'll enhance it. If you have no religion, they will bring you joy. And they'll burn up anything that isn't true for you. They'll burn through to the reality that has always been waiting.

So there's only transcendence in the moment. Nobody can be transcended forever. That's why I say, "Who cares if you're enlightened forever?"

Nothing can cost you someone you love. The only thing that can cost you your husband is if you believe a thought. That's how you move away from him. That's how the marriage ends. You are one with your husband until you believe the thought that he should look a certain way, he should give you something, he should be something other than what he is. That's how you divorce him. Right then and there you have lost your marriage.

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.

The WORK 1.Is it true? 2.Can you absolutely know that it's true? 3.How do you react when you think that thought? 4.Who would you be without the thought?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thought the mind can justify itself faster than the speed of light, it can be stopped through the act of writing.

There is no mistake in nature.

Suffering over things that have happened to us is nothing more than an argument with the past.

Love is who we are without our stories.

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.

When a thought appears such as "Do the dishes" and you don't do them, notice how an internal war breaks out... The stress and weariness you feel are really mental combat fatigue.

The Work reveals that what you think shouldn't have happened should have happened. It should happened because it did, and no thinking in the world can change it. This doesn't mean that you condone it or approve of it. It just means that you can see things without resistance and without the confusion of your inner struggle. No one wants their children to get sick, no one wants to be in a car accident; but when these things happen, how can it be helpful to mentally argue with them? We know better than to do that, yet we do it, because we don't know how to stop.

Clarity moves much more efficiently than violence or stress.

I have discovered that in every language and every country I have visited, there are no new stories. They're all recycled. The same stressful thoughts arise in each mind one way or another, sooner or later.

I don't let go of concepts -I meet them with understanding. Then they let go of me.

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.

When you do The Work, you see who you are by seeing who you think other people are. Eventually you come to see that everything outside you is a reflection of your own thinking. You are the storyteller, the projector of all stories, and the world is the projected image of your thoughts.

Your suffering is never caused by the person you're blaming.

The nightmare always becomes laughter, once it's understood.

Every (stressful thought) 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.

When you're operating on uninvestigated theories of what's going on and you aren't even aware of it, you're in what I call "the dream." Often the dream becomes troubling; sometimes it even turns into a nightmare. At times like these, you may want to test the truth of your theories by doing The Work on them. The Work always leaves you with less of your uncomfortable story. Who would you be without it? How much of your world is made up of unexamined stories? You'll never know until you inquire.

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.

But when you think you're supposed to do something with it and imagine that you're the doer, that's pure delusion. Just follow your passion. Do what you love. Inquire, and have a happy life while you're doing it.

Do you want to be right more than you want to know the truth? It's the truth that set me free. Acceptance, peace, and less attachment to a world of suffering are all effects of doing The Work. They're not the goals. Do The Work for the love of freedom, for the love of truth.

An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.

The last story: God is everything, God is good.

Here’s how a child listens: you tell him something, and he puts his own interpretation on what you said. That’s what he hears. No one has ever heard you.

Once we begin to question our thoughts, our partners-alive, dead or divorced-are always our greatest teachers. There's no mistake about the person you're with; he or she is the perfect teacher for you, whether or not the relationship works out, and once you enter inquiry, you come to see that clearly.

You would be amazed at who people are once you know yourself.

It's difficult to seek other people's love. It's deadly. In seeking it you lose what is genuine. This is the prison we create for ourselves as we seek what we already have.

When you stay present with your children, that’s where abundance is. And when you stay out of their business, that’s where everything you deserve in life is. When you’re in presence, there’s no story, and you are abundance. And you come to trust that space so often that you just eventually hang out as that, because there is nothing that can move you out of it, not even a perceived child or a perceived anything.

Sleep just gives the ego a little time out. It has to stay strong in order to be something that it isn't.

Every uncomfortable feeling, every pain, every moment of stress & suffering is for your own self-realizatio n.

If you want to enter a state of grace, question the assumption you’re defending right now.

If I say, if I talk about, 'I want to be enlightened...' it implies a future. And there isn't any.

Forgiveness is just another name for freedom.

You cannot hurt me. Only I can do that.

To argue with reality is to argue with God

No one can give you freedom but you.

The perfect world is created when the mind is free to see it.

Love is worth living. Why do you trade life for less?

I can't love you as you have been or will be. I can only love you as you are.

We don’t attach to things; we attach to our stories about them.

Fear is always the result of an unquestioned past imagined as a future.

Forgiveness is discovering that what you thought happened, didn’t.

As we watch the world embrace the Olympics in the coming days, let us remember why the modern Olympics came into being: to bring nations closer together, to have the youth of the world compete in sports, rather than fight in war. As long as we believe our own war-driven thoughts, there will always be war, in ourselves, in our families, and in our world. As long as we believe our thoughts, there will always be war.

If you are mentally somewhere else, you miss real life

I've heard people say that they cling to their painful thoughts because they're afraid that without them they wouldn't be activists for peace. "If I feel peaceful," they say, "why would I bother taking action at all?"

When a thought hurts, that’s the signal that it isn’t true.

There is no peace in the world until you find peace within yourself in this moment.

The Ego’s job is to kill everything but itself

There are no physical problems-only mental ones.

The end of suffering happens in this very moment, whether you're watching a terrorist attack or doing the dishes. And compassion begins at home. Because I don't believe my thoughts, sadness can't exist. That's how I can go to the depths of anyone's suffering, if they invite me, and take them by the hand and walk them out of it into the sunlight of reality. I've taken that walk myself.

I am never unhappy, you can achieve that as well.

Lack of understanding is always painful.

Some of us are returning to sanity, because we're tired of the pain. We're in a hurry. No time to mess around.

The pain shows you what's left to investigate.

It's good that it hurts. Pain is the signal that you're confused, that you're in a lie.

I am the perpretor of my suffering - but only all of it.

When you act like a teacher, it's usually because you're afraid to be the student.