Byron Katie Says: 'This Work Is a Practise'

Once a day.

Life is a practise.

A verb. Relating is only ever a verb because life is dynamic; it can’t be a noun.

We like to think of life as a known; a noun. Constant, unmoving.

Everything is energy, everything fluctuates, no matter how slowly.

Yes, things happened. Yet, it’s impossible to know concretely, absolutely, what they thought, said, did, and how their intention was in that moment.

The reason being that memory is responsible for this, and memory is malleable.

If you read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, you’ll see how little our decisions come from our rationality. That book is a bit scary. We are not as rational as we like to judge. That’s a hilarious irony.

Life is so rich and full that it would be impossible to analyse, and discern every event that happens, and how your loved one, or colleague, or even that person you met on the street who was funny towards you, felt.

We carry people with us.

You carry people in your memory and emotional energy.

Even if they did feel that way, the reason that you carry them is that it resonated with a piece of your life experience. A part that hurts or makes you feel sad.

They are your teachers. They showed you a piece of yourself that hurts, and it rose in you to be seen, moved, and dissolved.

Show up for yourself, once a day.

Thank you, stranger.

Thank you, dear one.

Thank you, partner and lover.

Thank you for showing me myself.

Thank you for the opportunity to heal and grow.

There are so many aspects to the self-help; self-growth; self-improvement industry, that subtly imbue you with the sense that your broken, or unworthy.

Even the term self-improvement suggests that you don’t already have everything in you that you need. Everything that you might not be able to access right now. Everything that blocked from coming to light.

How about we reframe this process as self-unfoldment?

How about you see this journey as a curious adventure? Get to know yourself better?

Understand your unique version (or vision) of life.

This life is practise.

It is what you practise.

Please don’t believe me, go and try it for yourself.

The four noble truths of Buddhism say:

The truth of suffering (Dukkha) — Life is suffering
The truth of the origin of suffering (Samudāya) — All suffering has a cause
The truth of the cessation of suffering (Nirodha) — Liberation from attachment
The truth of the path to the cessation of suffering (Magga) — Practice Buddhism (or do the work)

It doesn’t have to be Buddhism; it can be any form of life that lights you up.

Joseph Campbell says:

Follow your bliss

Spiritual teachers point at the moon. Choose the finger that resonates with you.

I’ve been joining At Home With Byron Katie, as an opportunity to learn and grow during this pandemic time. It’s a profound opportunity.

It’s an emotional and physical undertaking. Examining life and doing the work.

Katie always mentions that it’s not called the work for nothing; it’s hard. It feels icky.

To sit with things that you feel are undermining ‘you’, attacking ‘you’, shackling ‘you’ to the version of you that exists at this moment.

Everything you think you are is a picture, built from experience, over time.

It’s difficult to fully comprehend this because the ego’s job is not to understand this fully. The ego would disappear if that’s the case.

So I do the work.

I have a loving partnership with my ego; it’s part of the dynamic tension of life. YinYang, if you will.

The work is about contemplation, meditation, self-enquiry.

~ “The unexamined life is not worth living.” ~ Socrates ~

All suffering belongs on paper

Once the mind is examined, and it goes down on paper, it is observed.

Objection; observance of the mind, means that it is no longer controlling and directing you. There is space there for choice.

Immersion in mind means that you play out whatever is in your mind, in each situation in your life.

We socialise in specific ways; we pick up the somatic imprints of our environment and our ancestry.

If you don’t examine your life, then you are accepting the imprints of your ancestry; that’s good if you’re lucky, and you have desirable impressions.

You know that every family has undesirable traits; skeletons in the closest, the time that we all had to get through a callous time in whatever way we could.

No matter how you like to think, there’s no such thing as perfect. No family on this planet have not struggled through hardship.

You inherit the imprint of your family; so do you want to choose who to be? Or do you want to continue the wheels that are turning?

Either answer is acceptable; there’s no judgement.

A decision is the best thing you could give yourself at this moment; it takes motivation and courage to take that journey.

If you don’t have them, then I’d urge you not to embark on the work. Do it next year, or the year after. Do it when you’re ready.

I say that with kindness, and I mean it. Do it when you’re ready.

Mind is an illusion

So to partner with the mind is a fantastic endeavour, because ultimately our reason is an interpretation. We use our cognitive function to make sense of things.

Therefore, our mind is a suggestion.

It interprets the world in the way that it knows best.

How are you supposed to interpret experience from a situation that you have never seen? Of which, you have no recollection. You’re not able to resource that.

It’s impossible.

We shame our minds. Asking to kill them, to dissolve the ego.

Love your mind, dear ones. You cannot get away from it. It is a part of you.

The only way to do better is to learn and grow.

Do you teach your children by shaming them into silence?

O.K., that’s a sore subject in our culture.

Which one is better, shame, or empowerment?

Mind is an illusion because it is an interpretation.

Try saying:

thank you, and…

Try it on, see how it fits in your life. Because life is partly a game, to see how things work for you.

Try saying:

I hear you, how else can I think of this? I wonder what else I can find in this situation?

Once a day

Tara Brach talks about the “Sacred Pause” in her book Radical Acceptance.

Once a day, engage in the sacred pause and reflect on the things in your life; are they aligning to your long term goals, do you feel that they reflect your values, purpose, who you are?

So many people I know say that they are on the self-improvement path, and then never practice.

Practise what you preach.

Well, not strictly true, because they are interrelated parts. Thinking, feeling, and doing are different energies that fit together to form our lives.

It’s in the doing; the physical change happens — the densest of forms.

I’m not going to sugar coat it for you, life is unfair, it’s hard, it’s always changing.

All any of us can do is to show up every day, in our reality, and take the next step forward.

If you want to hide for a bit, that’s fine too. That is the next step forward.

You see, dear one, you’ll only ever be able to take the next available step forward, so stop being so hard on yourself.

Try starting a daily journaling practice, get your thoughts down on paper; out of your mind.

A common misconception is that thoughts are only real if you write them down; in fact, the opposite is true.

Once they’re down and on the paper, then you can decide if you want to choose them, and continue to believe them.

If you don’t write them down, or meditate on them, then they remain in control of your actions.

It’s this awareness of your thinking that evolves your thinking.

Once it’s down on paper, it’s out of your head; there’s some crazy alchemy that happens in my experience. It feels like it literally flows down my arm, and then it’s gone.

I must have journaled thousands of words by now, each morning, or evening. Am I every one of those words? No.

Some of them fly off into the universe, never to be seen again. Others reoccur because they align with my beliefs.

The practice of journaling is to know thyself.

The more you journal, the better you know. The more data you have for reference; the more you can discern.

Katie mentions that if you show up once a day and do ‘The Work’, then you’ll be able to be freer, and exist in ‘The Clearing’ space; the essence of who you are; not just who you think you are.

I love you, how can I help?

When you become seasoned at this, you’ll be able to show up in presence.

You’ll be able to approach more and more scenarios with:

I love you, how can I help?

You’ll know that helping others is helping yourself.

Because we are all connected, we are all mirrors to each other’s internal experience. We are all experiencing the same set of things in our unique way.

Profoundly, even around life’s most significant hardships. I’ve started to experience this myself around my childhood trauma.

It comes from a sense that I am greater than my identity; my ego; or the things I happen to have experienced.

There’s always the energy that is observing everything that I go through.

~ “Our minds influence the key activity of the brain, which then influences everything; perception, cognition, thoughts and feelings, personal relationships; they’re all a projection of you. ~ Deepak Chopra ~

Integrating thoughts

Life is a practise.

In British English, there are two different spellings:

Practice — noun.
Practise — verb.

Your environment builds from the decisions you make every day, the people you surround yourself with, the job that you decide to do.

I’m not arguing that class doesn’t exist, and sometimes you do what you’ve got to do. In that case, that’s the next step forward. If class makes you angry, then you’re on this planet to help to change how the class system works; I celebrate you for that. Join me.

We have a skewed view of what wealth and success is. Wealth and success are acceptance of who I am.

If you show up once a day and examine your thoughts, then you will experience profound shifts in your life.

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Previously published on medium

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