Byron Kathleen Mitchell, better known as Byron Katie (born December 6, 1942) 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. She is the founder of Byron Katie International (BKI), an organization that includes The School for the Work and Turnaround House in Ojai, California.
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Biography
Byron Katie was born in Breckenridge, Texas in 1942, [citation needed] and grew up in Barstow, California.
In 1986, when she was 43, after a ten-year-long downward spiral into depression, agoraphobia, self-loathing, and suicidal despair, she checked into a halfway house. A week or so later, she had a life-changing experience. As she opened her eyes one morning, she found that all her depression and rage, all the thoughts that had been tormenting her--all thoughts, period--were gone. "I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn't believe them, I didn't suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment." Katie, Byron; Mitchell, Stephen (2017). A Mind at Home with Itself.
Soon after Katie's return from the halfway house, word spread about a "lit lady." As more and more people came to see her, she became convinced that what they needed, if anything, was not her personal presence, but a way to discover for themselves what she had realized. The Work is an embodiment of the wordless questioning that had woken up in her. Over the past three decades it has helped millions of people around the world begin to free themselves from stress, frustration, anger, and sadness. Katie, Byron; Mitchell, Stephen (2017). A Mind at Home with Itself.
The Work
Byron Katie's method of self-inquiry, The Work, consists of four questions and what she calls turnarounds, which are ways of experiencing the opposite of what you believe. The questions are: 1. Is it true? 2. Can you absolutely know that it's true? 3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? 4. Who would you be without the thought? The Work has striking similarities with the Zen koan and the Socratic dialogue. Katie, Byron; Mitchell, Stephen (2007). Loving What Is. It is on the cutting edge of current biological research on concepts of self and story. Contemporary neuroscience identifies a particular part of the brain, sometimes called "the interpreter," as the source of the familiar internal narrative that gives us our sense of self. This discovery, based on solid experimental work, show that we tend to believe our own press releases.Damasio, Antonio (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotions in the Making of Consciousness. Gazzaniga, Michael (1998). The Mind's Past. Often when we think we're being rational, we're being spun by our own thinking. That trait explains how we get ourselves into the painful positions that Katie recognized in her own suffering. The self-questioning she discovered uses a different, less-known capacity of the mind to find a way out of its self-made trap.
Bibliography
- Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, with Stephen Mitchell, Harmony Books, 2002, ISBN 0-609-60874-6 (HC)
- I Need Your Love - Is That True? How to Stop Seeking Love, Appreciation, and Approval and Start Finding Them Instead, with Michael Katz, Harmony Books, 2005, ISBN 1-4000-5107-X (HC)
- A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are, with Stephen Mitchell, Harmony Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-307-33923-2 (HC)
- Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie, edited by Stephen Mitchell, Hay House, 2007, ISBN 978-1-4019-1730-2 (PB)
- Who Would You Be Without Your Story?: Dialogues with Byron Katie, edited by Carol Williams, Hay House, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4019-2179-8 (PB)
- Tiger-Tiger, Is It True?, illustrated by Hans Wilhelm, Hay House, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4019-2560-4 (HC)
- Peace in the Present Moment, with Eckhart Tolle, Hampton Roads Pub Co Inc 2010, Newburyport, MA 2010, ISBN 978-1-57174-643-6
- The Four Questions: For Henny Penny and Anybody with Stressful Thoughts, by Byron Katie, Illustrated by Hans Wilhelm, TarcherPerigee 2016, ISBN 0399174249
- A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn Your World Around, by Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell, HarperOne 2017, ISBN 0062651609
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