Most people come to The Work of Byron Katie because they are looking for a way to find more peace in daily life.
What’s unique about The Work is that it that it makes you look for peace in a very strange place. Instead of looking for it by quieting the mind through meditation, it invites you to look into the very areas of life that you find stressful.
This sounds counter-intuitive.
But the process of The Work gently shows you how to transform your perception of these stresses, so that you can see the same thing with new eyes. You question what you believe, and the world often starts to look much kinder.
And with greater peace, the next thing many people naturally do is to stop doing The Work.
You got what you came for. The job is done. Let’s move back to living life.
There’s nothing wrong with this approach. I’ve done it many times. I’ve sometimes questioned the first statement on a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet, gotten some freedom, and didn’t finish questioning the rest of the sheet.
When the mind shifts towards peace during inquiry, it can feel like a weight has lifted off your shoulders. It can feel like you just cut down a big redwood tree.
But redwood trees, like many trees, don’t always die when you chop down the trunk. The roots of the tree can start to send up shoots again, and before you know it, there’s another big tree in the first one’s place.
Often the things you write on lines 2 through 6 of a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet, contain many of the underlying beliefs that hold up the stressful concept you wrote in line 1.
By taking the time to question and turnaround each of these concepts, it’s like doing stump removal service for yourself. Of course, you may not get all the roots, but by being a little bit thorough, you greatly lessen the chance of regrowth.
Any roots you missed will show up eventually as new sprouting stressful thoughts, showing you exactly where those roots were hiding.
If you’re doing The Work as an ongoing maintenance program, you’ll be able to uproot these remaining stressful thoughts before they grow into new trees. Roots don’t have much of a chance long term when you’re both thorough in your work and ongoing in your practice of it.
The next time you write a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet, and you’re tempted to move on to a new Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet after the very first shift of perspective, do yourself a favor. Keep going.
You may find a world of insight waiting there for you.
Join us in Inquiry Circle where we commonly do The Work this way.
We are not meant to live stressed lives. Learn how to address the root cause of your stress and find your freedom again. Otherwise, stress will keep accumulating. Learn how to break the cycle of stress here.
