SPIRITUAL ADVICE FOR A PRACTICAL LIFE
Byron Katie, her Work & Finding a Life that Matters
James Ishmael Ford
8 August 2004

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will.
William Butler Yates

Do you think you might be stressed? Does the school principle have your phone number on speed dial? Perhaps you stare at people through the prongs of your fork imagining them in jail? Do you find no one in your family has time to wait for microwave TV dinners? Do you have to check your kid’s day timer to determine if she can take out the trash? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, you are stressed.

Of course we can use a joke list like this because we all fit the bill. Life is, how shall we say, uncertain. Terrorism and economics and the current national election are major stressors. As are the questions of everyday life, including trying to be decent people while also dealing with illness, old age and the inevitability of death.

So, we come here to FUSN, to our First Unitarian Society, perhaps hoping to hear a good word or two, some advice on living healthy lives. As a self-selected crowd attracted to a Unitarian Universalist congregation we’ve set ourselves up to find that advice within the context of reasonableness, with minimal appeal to directions from on high and maximum probability that advice will be down to earth and practical.

Beyond that, our sources for insight can come from the Bible, or the traditions of the Sufis, or the mystics of Medieval Europe, or from a contemporary psychologist. If it makes sense and seems to work, we’ll consider it.

When we think about this inclination of ours perhaps we can then notice an underlying assumption, that wisdom and healthiness are natural, and arise within all human conditions. There is something in the metaphor of “waking up” which we find in so many of the world’s spiritual traditions that speaks to this underlying wisdom, this pervasive healthiness in the midst of the real and lived world. It isn’t beyond us, health and wisdom are as natural as breathing. We just need to notice it, we just need to wake from our distractions to find our true heritage.

Here I particularly find Byron Katie and what she calls her Work (that’s with a capital “w”) of potential use to us. Writer Carol Skolnick observes “(W)hat makes the Work of Byron Katie so radical is that it’s so simple, so un-mystical, so straightforward, so American.” I find what she has to offer particularly resonant with our contemporary liberal faith, which also could be described with Skolnick’s very same words.

I think a fair-minded observer would say our contemporary Unitarian Universalism fits broadly within the “nondual” or “monistic” spiritual category. That is most contemporary UUs seem to feel each individual is precious, indeed unique, and yet at the same time we arise out of a web of relationships. That image of the web speaks to the underlying assumption, intuition, feeling we’re all wrapped up together in some very real sense. We can work it out philosophically or theologically, and that has value. But for most of us it is a feeling, a sense, which we experience in small and great ways. If it is a natural part of who and what we are; then of course, it is something to discover, to find, to wake up to.

Skolnick says of Byron Katie, before her own waking up, “she never meditated, and had neither interest nor background in spirituality. Her ‘religion’ – or lifelong belief system – as she tells it, had been, ‘my children should pick up their socks.’” You don’t get more basic than that. Unless you have a direct experience of that underlying connection. Which, near as I can tell, in fact happens all the time. As a spiritual director I know as I push people on the subject it almost always turns out somewhere along the line nearly everyone can describe an experience of intimacy or oneness. The difference here is she experienced it big and then she thought hard about it and how it seemed to work for her.

I really like the way she starts. Byron Katie tells us not to believe anything she says. She claims quite simply she has worked out a system that allows each of us to test the truth of her assertions for ourselves, to allow us, as the ancient saying goes, to take a drink of water and to know for ourselves whether it’s cold or warm.

Her work is concerned with suffering. Not hurt. That is there are really two different issues. One has to do with our state of mind and what plays out because of our states of mind; while the other has to do with what actually is. I believe this is a serious distinction. Hurt happens. We get sick, we age, we die. There is war and famine. We live in a world that demands decisions and choices and actions. That is what is. But suffering, in Byron Katie’s use, is optional.

She tells us “the only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is.” She goes on to assert “When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.” Now this is a tricky assertion, particularly for people like us who have made a serious commitment to engaging the world. But, I think she puts her finger on the real issue, and I think it worth listening to her when she is challenged about the apparent passivity of her teachings, her call to start by accepting what is. She responds by asking why if we start by accepting what is, we think we’ll become passive? She asks “Which is more empowering? – ‘I wish I hadn’t lost my job’ or ‘I lost my job; what can I do now?’”

Katie believes there are three kinds of business: mine, yours and God’s. She defines God to mean “reality,” that which is beyond our control, yours or mine. And she suggests we most profitably put our attention to our business, to at least start by paying attention to my business. Now, personally I don’t think she pays quite enough attention to the interdependence of these three kinds of business, but we don’t need to go there today.

The main thing is her understanding of what thoughts are. Katie says “A thought is harmless unless we believe it.” The problem, she points out, isn’t in the thought, but in how we attach to it, how we believe it without investigating it thoroughly.

Her call is to take responsibility for our lives, to pull up our socks as well as pick them up. Ultimately this means seeing through our stories about ourselves and the world. We probably are meant to think in stories, certainly we seem to think by metaphor and analogy and stories follow soon after. The question is simply do we use the stories or let them use us? She tells a rather earthy story herself to illustrate the power of story.

“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.”

Let’s go back to stress. Byron Katie claims she has never experienced a stressful feeling that she couldn’t trace to her attachment to an untrue thought. I’ve done a little self-inquiry along this line, and you know, she may well be right. Certainly she’s generally right.

I suggest this mental housekeeping is exactly what we need to do if we want to be useful. The world is exactly as it is. And in one sense perfect as it is. And, as we see it clearly, in all its glorious complexity and simplicity, then our actions within that unclouded world become more natural, more in tune, and more likely to be useful than the adding of fuel to the flames that too often seems to follow our attempts to be useful when we’re caught up in our ideas about should and should not. As we look at our lives controlled by so-called terrorist threats, perhaps we can look at what that means. Who are these terrorists? Why are they doing what they do? And how do we respond to that underlying issue?

And this starting from a place of greater clarity extends to every aspect of our lives. When we begin with a little mental housekeeping, sorting out our thoughts about what is from what may be a more accurate picture of what is, our decisions don’t you think would be just a little smarter? So, as we look at this upcoming election, perhaps we can consider what we’re thinking and what that means. As we make decisions about school and work and relationships, perhaps we can look at our thoughts about these things, and what each actually means. Where are the thoughts? Where are the stories? How are they standing in the way of what might actually be useful.

Well, here Byron Katie as well as so many spiritual teachers who have walked similar paths says we need to take up a discipline. She calls hers, as I said, the Work, and it is a path of inquiry shaped by four steps and something she calls “turning it around.” Her admirers find it the universal solvent. I think that’s overstating the case. But her method does seem to be grounded in what my own spiritual journey finds to be true, and in my limited testing seems mostly to work.

She suggests a process, involving putting your thoughts to paper and working with it. Groups form to do this work. If you do a websearch on her name you can find websites that talk about this. She has two books in print. They’re worth looking at. One is Loving What Is, the other is the End of Suffering. For this sermon I draw mainly upon that first one. Here today, I just want to throw out her inquiry practice as something possibly of use. One of the many ways we can find to loosen the fetters of our hearts and minds, to make our lives a little more transparent and our actions healing rather than hurtful.

So, the first question: is it true? She gives a rather prosaic example in her first book Loving What Is. But it provides a good example. “I don’t like Paul because he doesn’t listen to me.” So, is it true that Paul doesn’t listen to me? Then she suggests, be still, notice, wait a bit.

Then, there’s that second question. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? “Can I really know that it’s true that Paul doesn’t listen to me?” Let that play out. And let it drop into the silence.

Next, ask How do you react when you think that thought? Examine how you react when you’re thinking Paul doesn’t listen. Perhaps you need to make lists to clarify this. Go to that stillness and notice how you react when you’re thinking Paul doesn’t listen.

Then, the fourth question: Who would you be without that thought? Imagine Paul not listening to you. Imagine you don’t have that thought that Paul doesn’t listen, or that he should be listening. What then? Again, let the silence happen. And notice what reveals itself out of this particular silence.

Then, there’s the turnaround. Perhaps it’s “I don’t like myself because I don’t listen to Paul.” Is that true or truer? Or, maybe the turnaround is “I don’t like myself because I don’t listen to myself.” She suggests the turnarounds are our “prescription for health, peace, and happiness.” She asks, perhaps not rhetorically, “Can you give yourself the medicine that you have been prescribing for others?”

Carol Skolnick observes, “Katie’s Work has none of the soothing balm of mysticism. (At least not in that sense of vague and misty…) It’s a surgical procedure that cuts to the core of reality; but that’s the kindest cut, letting us know for ourselves that we are always okay now – even in annoyance, anger, terror, or on our deathbed.” And, I think, it is one possibly very helpful way for us to clear away the noise, and allow us to see matters more clearly. And, in so doing, allowing our actions, our necessary actions to be genuinely helpful in this world of hurt.

Perhaps you’ll want to give it a try. Certainly in this world of hurt we need to find those tools that give us the perspective to do more good than harm. That, I suspect, is a major part of our work as Unitarian Universalists, certainly the basis that allows us to do the work of healing for ourselves and the world.

Amen.