The four questions that can help your mind heal | Byron Katie

0:00 So the work is a way to identify and question the thoughts that cause all the suffering in the world, all the suffering in your life. I spent three years when the work found me just alone in the desert, to just get away from everyone and just be in this hunger to understand. And there is this small little grocery store and I walk in and near the produce over by the apples. It was this woman.

0:35 She had these two large shopping bags, one in each hand, and then I lost all reference, which happened quite frequently for a while. I said, "Would you hold me please?" And she put these bags down immediately and she wrapped her arms around me and she started rocking me and sang me a lullaby. And that's a friendly universe. And that's how I experience every human being, every cat, dog, and tree.

1:13 It's who we are without our story. I think people would describe me as ordinary and there's nothing about me that would stand out. So I had a very usual life, high school, a couple of years of college, married, then three children, and then divorced, and then married, and then a depression hit.

1:50 It was so deep, so dark, so non-stop. I spent years, more than a decade, of an agoraphobic experience terrified of leaving my home. Often I couldn't leave my bedroom. Life was so painful. For my children, I was so full of guilt and shame that they would see me that way. It was a horror. It was a prison with no way out.

2:23 Then one day, my husband brought me to this halfway house recommended by this doctor. I was introduced to three women and they said I frightened them to the point that they didn't want me in the house. But they said there is an attic and it would be better if I stayed there. And I was just a yes to everything. I was in the surrendered state. My self-esteem was so low I didn't believe I even deserved a bed to sleep in.

2:54 One day, as I lay sleeping on the floor, a cockroach ran over my foot and I opened my eyes and before the ego could intervene in that space, I saw how my entire world was created. Ego naming things I was seeing. Light, window, ceiling, walls, naming the unnamable.

3:32 Prior to that, there was no identification. There was no I. There was no world. I was seeing this body as it. It stood up. It walked and just out the door and faced a mirror and looked into the depth of those eyes and it was as though I met myself. Love happened.

4:09 I saw that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered and when I didn't believe them, I didn't suffer. My husband and children came to get me and the shift they experienced in me, it was unrecognizable. I didn't know I had my family until I was being identified. I'm a woman. I have a husband. I have three children. I have a home. I'd start to walk out the door this agoraphobic and my husband would say something like, "Where do you think you're going Kate?" and I would just think that is one of the most amazing questions I've ever heard. Where the hell do I think I'm going?

5:01 The excitement of the don't know. I have no idea. In the desert, the wind can blow hard for several days and I loved it. The adventure of meeting the world was just falling in love with everyone and everything. People would say, you know, there's this crazy woman that talks about making friends with the wind but other people would call and say, "Can you help me?" and obviously their minds were open.

5:41 I'd say, "Yes." I would just listen to them talk and they would tell me their problems. Like my husband left me or there's something wrong with me or I'll never find work. I've got cancer. I'm dying. I ask four questions. The first one is, "Is it true?"

6:14 and then the next question is, "Can you absolutely know it's true?" and then, "How do you react when you believe the thought?" and then that fourth question, " Who are you without the thought?" Suffering, I've come to see, is it's optional but to anyone that has the courage to answer the questions, life is a gift and anyone can do this work if their mind's open to it.