Interview mit Byron Katie mit Ralf Giesen - Impulse am Meer

Interview mit Byron Katie mit Ralf Giesen von März 2007 auch erschienen in der K&S, März 2007 RALF: Katie you often say, it is not what happens in reality that makes us angry, it´s the stories we tell ourselves about it. How can the stories we tell ourselves in our heads make us angry? KATIE: No one and no situation can make us angry. The only thing that can make us angry is a thought. “He’s lazy.” “She shouldn’t have lied.” It’s only when we believe a stressful thought—when we confuse our thoughts with reality—that we become angry or sad or depressed. The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that you think thoughts like this dozens of times a day. “People should be kinder.” “Children should be well-behaved.” “My neighbors should take better care of their lawn.” “The line at the grocery store should move faster.” “My husband (or wife) should agree with me.” “I should be thinner (or prettier or more successful).” These thoughts are ways of wanting reality to be different than it is. If you think that this sounds depressing, you’re right. All the stress that we feel is caused by arguing with what is. What I offer people is a method of self-inquiry that I call The Work (available free of charge at www.thework.com ). It consists of four simple questions and what I call a “turnaround”—a way of experiencing the opposite of what you think is true. People new to The Work often say to me, “But it would be disempowering to stop my argument with reality. If I simply accept reality, I’ll become passive. I may even lose the desire to act.” I answer them with a question: “Can you really know that that’s true?” Which is more empowering? — “I wish I hadn’t lost my job” or “I lost my job; what can I do now?” The Work reveals that what you think shouldn’t have happened should have happened. It should have happened because it did, and no thinking in the world can change it. This doesn’t mean that you condone it or approve of it. It just means that you can see things without resistance and without the confusion of your inner struggle. No one wants their children to get sick, no one wants to be in a car accident; but when these things happen, how can it be helpful to mentally argue with them? We know better than to do that, yet we do it, because we don’t know how to stop. I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality, and feelings such as anger will let me know. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless, and anger becomes outmoded as the chief motivator. RALF: How can a thought make us angry? Can you give me an example of how this works? KATIE: Sure. Once, as I walked into the ladies’ room at a restaurant near my home, a woman came out of the single stall. We smiled at each other, and, as I closed the door, she began to sing and wash her hands. “What a lovely voice!” I thought. Then, as I heard her leave, I noticed that the toilet seat was dripping wet. “How could anyone be so rude?” I thought. “And how did she manage to pee all over the seat? Was she standing on it?” Then it came to me that she was a man — a transvestite, singing falsetto in the women’s restroom. It crossed my mind to go after her (him) and let him know what a mess he’d made. As I cleaned the toilet seat, I thought about everything I’d say to him. Then I flushed the toilet. The water shot up out of the bowl and flooded the seat. And I just stood there laughing.

Seite 1 / 4

In this case, the natural course of events was kind enough to expose my story before it went any further, and before I went so far as to approach this person as an angry human being. Usually it doesn’t; before I found inquiry, I had no way to stop this kind of thinking. Small stories bred bigger ones; bigger stories bred major theories about life, how terrible it was, and how the world was a dangerous place. I ended up feeling too frightened and depressed to leave my bedroom, I isolated, ate ice cream, and spent my life watching television day after day to escape the world as I believed it to be. When you’re operating on uninvestigated theories of what’s going on and you aren’t even aware of it, you’re in what I call “the dream.” Often the dream becomes troubling; sometimes it even turns into a nightmare. At times like these, you may want to test the truth of your thoughts by doing The Work on them. The Work always leaves you with less of your uncomfortable story. Who would you be without it? How much of your world is made up of unexamined stories? You’ll never know until you inquire. We all want to be happy. No one wants to suffer. Anger and sadness appear to be real and necessary, until you realize that all suffering comes from believing what you think. How can we erase these emotions unless we get Alzheimer’s? We can’t. We’ve tried and tried, through alcohol and sex and food credit cards, yet the stressful thoughts that cause anger and sadness keep appearing, however we try to erase them. Some people eventually try to erase these thoughts by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills or blowing their heads off with a gun. I can sympathize with them. I used to think that the only way out was for my body to die. I didn’t know that there’s another way. Love is the power, and we find love as the mind questions itself. The way out is the way in, and one way in is the four questions and turnaround. RALF: Do anger and sadness always come from believing our thoughts? KATIE: Always. And I have found that there are no new stressful thoughts; they’re all recycled. They’re no more individual than the same TV program that everyone watches. I have found that all over the world, in every language and culture, people suffer because they believe the same stressful thoughts: “My mother doesn’t love me,” “I’m not good enough,” “I’m too fat,” “My husband should understand me,” “My wife shouldn’t have left me,” “My children should pick up their socks.” If our feelings are painful, who wants them? I love my thoughts and feelings, they bring me to tears quite often, but these are tears of gratitude. And if I ever had a stressful thought, I have questioned my mind thoroughly enough so that I wouldn’t believe it. That thought, if it were to arise, wouldn’t cause stress, it would cause laughter. And I would never ask someone not to believe their thoughts. Not only would that not be kind, it isn’t possible for people not to believe what they believe. We believe what we believe until we question our thoughts. That’s the way of it. RALF: How can doing The Work change our stories and relieve our anger and resentment? KATIE: No one has ever been able to control his thinking, although people may tell the story of how they have. I don’t let go of my thoughts — I question them and meet them with understanding. Then they let go of me. Here’s an example. A couple of years ago, during one of my public events in New York, a distinguished-looking elderly businessman got up and said that he wanted to do The Work with me on his business partner. “I am angry with my partner,” this man began, “for calling me a troublemaker in front of our employees. He had no right to do that. He damaged my reputation. My partner should apologize.” I asked him, “Is it true?” (This is the first question in The Work.) He answered, “Yes, it’s true. He insulted me. Of course he should apologize.” He was sure of it.

Seite 2 / 4

But he was an intelligent man, and he really wanted to be free of his emotional pain. So when I asked him the second question of The Work—”Can you absolutely know that it’s true that your partner should apologize?”—he went inside himself and really looked at his statement. After a short silence, he said, “Well, I can’t really know where he’s coming from. I can’t know another person’s mind. He probably believes he’s right. So I’d have to answer no, I can’t absolutely know that he should apologize.” This answer seemed to loosen something inside him. A statement that he had thought was true didn’t appear so obviously true to him now. Then I asked him the third question—“How do you react when you believe that your partner should apologize to you?” He said, “I get angry. When he comes up with a good idea, I shoot it down. I criticize him behind his back. When I see him, I avoid him. When I go home, I take the resentment with me, and I complain to my wife.” So he began to see the cause-and-effect of it, the stress that results from believing a thought that might not even have anything to do with reality. Katie said, “What would you call someone who shoots down his partner’s good ideas and criticizes him behind his back?” He said, with a look of amazement, “Oh, my gosh. I am a troublemaker. He was right.” Next I asked the fourth question: “Who would you be without that thought? Who would you be, working with your partner, if you didn’t believe that he should apologize?” And the man said, very softly, “I would be his friend. I’d be working with him again, and our company would benefit from that. And I’d set a better example for everyone, and be a lot happier at home.” After these questions, I asked him to turn the thought around—to experience the thought’s opposites and see whether they might not be at least as appropriate. “I should apologize to him,” the man said. “Yes, I can see that. He may have insulted me in public—though I am not even sure of that now—but I can see that I have been mean to him in private.” Another turnaround was “I should apologize to myself.” “I should apologize to myself,” the man said, “because by believing my thought and becoming so angry, I cost myself money, and I cost myself a friend. So I owe myself an apology.” A third turnaround he found was “My partner should not apologize.” “Even if my partner was inappropriate or out of line in saying what he did, it seems arrogant now to believe that he should apologize. Maybe he didn’t intend to insult me, maybe he was just being honest, maybe he was really trying to be a good friend by pointing out a problem that was damaging the company. How could I really know that he owes me an apology?” All this happened in maybe five minutes during a dialogue that went on for forty minutes or so. By the end of it, this man seemed hugely relieved. He had moved from the position of great anger and upset to a position of more understanding for his partner, a little more humility, and a lot more skepticism about being in the right. When we change our perception, we change the world that we perceive. I often use the metaphor of the snake and the rope. The Work is like this: You’re walking in the desert and you see a rattlesnake, and you’re terrified of snakes. So you jump back, and your heart races, and you’re paralyzed with fear. Then you look more closely, and you see it’s just a rope. Now I invite you to stand over that rope for a thousand years and make yourself afraid of it. You can’t. It’s not possible. You’ve realized for yourself what is true—it’s a rope, not a snake—and now there’s no way it can frighten you, ever again. What we’re working with are the snakes in our mind, the stressful thoughts. When you believe your stressful thoughts, they’re like snakes in your mind. But when you question your thoughts, you see that they’re all ropes. Stressful thoughts do tend to come back again, but they can only cause stress when they are believed. When we don’t believe them, the thoughts can cause no stress. The next time this businessman had the thought “My partner should apologize,” he may have laughed out loud. The thought may have seemed that absurd.

Seite 3 / 4

RALF: Could you talk about how others act as "mirrors" for us, and how the traits or actions that make us angry in another may be triggering recognition of our own, similar deficits? KATIE: No trait or action can make us angry. We can only get angry if we believe an untrue thought that we project onto the other person. Doing The Work means taking total responsibility for our own happiness. Our thinking is all we need to change. It’s all we can change. This is very good news. We can wake ourselves up to what is true. Some people ask if The Work advocates passive acceptance of one’s relationship, however bad it is. I tell them that The Work doesn’t advocate anything. How can it? It’s just four questions and a turnaround! It’s sometimes hard for people to hear this. “If I love my partner just as he is,” they say, “doesn’t this mean accepting his flaws and staying with him? Why should I put up with him? What if he really is flawed?” This is an interesting question. Let’s take a look at some examples: “He’s so inconsiderate: he tracks mud into the house, he sits on my freshly made bed to tie his shoes in his dirty work pants, he doesn’t hear what I say because he’s focused on the football game.” “She snores.” “She doesn’t do it right.” “He threw the whites in the washing machine with the red socks and now the whites are forever pink.” “She stopped exercising and gained weight: just look at her in that tight dress!” “He’s heading out the door on the way to a job interview all dressed up and with dried egg in his beard.” Why do these things happen? It may not be clear at first. But if you take a minute, you’ll discover that they’re wonderful ways of bringing us closer together. Not if you’re passive, though. This is about your own empowerment, your ability to see things as they really are, through the eyes of love. When you do The Work on your partner, for example, you realize that all your problems are coming from you, because it’s your thoughts that are telling you who he is. If you see him as flawed in any way, you can be sure that you’ve found a place where you’re arguing with reality in that moment and are blind to yourself. (One way to find such places is to notice where you feel most righteous and justified in your attack.) Go back to the source; go to yourself. Let’s look at the husband with egg in his beard. You can see him in two ways. First, when you think he’s flawed: “Oh God, there he goes with egg in his beard! Hey, stop! You have egg in your beard! What a slob! I don’t know what you’re thinking of—wash it off! Hurry, you’re late! Here, let me do that, you’ve had your chance, can’t you do anything right? Why do I have to point these things out to you? They’ll never give you that job. You can be so frustrating—why did I even marry you? No, stop it, I don’t want to kiss you. Just leave, get out of here.” The other way is when you know that being flawed is simply not possible: “He’s going out the door with egg in his beard. That is so funny, he must be in a big rush, to have missed something so obvious. I’ll wipe the egg off for him as I notice a few of the reasons this happened for us, or at least for me. It happened so that I could see his beard in time to save the day, of course. So that we could laugh together as we imagine what the job interview could have looked like with egg in his beard. I get to wipe off the egg for him, and that is warm and dear and funny and intimate. I didn’t think I had time to kiss him goodbye and the dried egg made it possible. (Interesting how time opens up when you think there’s no time.) And I get the credit for his new job!”

Seite 4 / 4