An Evening With Byron Katie

Last night I had the privilege of seeing, in person, Byron Katie. Her husband, Stephen Mitchell, was along with her. The venue was packed. Someone who is as loving as Katie will attract many people. I was struck by Katie's innocence. To me, she is the picture of free, the epitome of Original Innocence. She's good at life. Actually, we're all good at life, we just haven't noticed it yet.

I had a moment of epiphany when she was talking about a little boy and a tree. By nature, a little boy can look at a tree and not know that it's a tree. He doesn't know what it's called. He just knows that there's something he's looking at. It isn't until mom or dad say, “Look at the tree,” that the child begins to identify what he sees with a word. And then the child is told that the tree is “pretty” or “green” or “big”. The child believes what he is told. Pretty tree, green tree, big tree, etc. Katie went on to explain that all of our stress, all of our problems, stem from believing what we have been told.

I'm reminded of a funny little bit that Steve Martin used to do in his stand-up routines. He said that if you have a three-year-old kid and you want to play a dirty trick on him here's what you do: whenever you're around him, you “talk wrong”. So when the child has his first day at school and has to go to the bathroom, he raises his hand and says, “Ma'am, may I mow dogface to the banana patch?”The point? His parents showed him a bathroom and called it a banana patch. And he believed it. His parents also replaced the verb “go” with “mow dogface”. It's hilarious to think about, but it just demonstrates what Katie has been telling us.

Who am I? Doug. Can I be absolutely certain that that's true? NO!! It's what I've been called all of my life. It was taught to me, and I believed it. My name is Doug.

We look at something, say, a car accident, and we call it terrible and believe that it shouldn't have happened. First of all, how do we know that it's terrible? We were shown similar things in the past, and someone taught us that it was “terrible”. “Terrible” things should never happen. But what happens when they do? We label it as “terrible”, then we believe that it shouldn't have happened, which then leads to other grand theories on life. Once that's done, we've shifted away from reality, from what is, and it will hurt every time. Throughout our lives, we were taught that certain things are terrible, or scary, or ugly, or wrong, or whatever. We believed it, and we've lived our lives accordingly. What Katie says is to challenge those concepts by questioning them and notice what happens to you when you believe that they're true. On my drive home I started questioning concepts that give me stress: Traffic jam bad– is it true? Headache bad (I had a blistering one last night)– is it true? Dark sky scary– can I be absolutely sure that it's true? A feeling of peace welled up inside of me that I haven't felt in a long time, and it came in the midst of a traffic jam, a headache, and a dark sky. And that doesn't mean that I wasn't glad when I finally got home and took some Tylenol. But I could've been stuck on the freeway for hours, and it wouldn't have bothered me.

Katie autographed my copy of her new book. When I shook her hand, she told me that I looked very familiar to her and wondered if we had ever met. I told her I didn't think so, and she said that she was remembering a wonderful face that she had seen and I reminded her of that. I didn't know what to say, so I just said, “Thank you!” Anyway, I told her that I've begun using The Work in my ministry, but many times I feel I'm at a loss on when to use it and when to just be quiet. I asked her if she could give me any guidance on this. She said that as I become more familiar and grounded in the The Work it will become easier to discern when to use it. She also said that if people are open to it, then go for it with gusto. But if not, then have some tea!

A fitting ending for a wonderful evening!!