Afraid of War?
Posted on Dec 29th, 2007
by 
Sandra
Sandra
I've often mentioned The Work of Byron Katie. Although many 'spiritual' teachers say 'nothing works' - in terms of techniques or methods to try and achieve awakening, I do believe there are some 'methods' which do, in fact, bring me to more awareness. Perhaps not full blown enlightenment (whatever that is) -- but to a deeper appreciation of and connection to this moment.
In terms of internal 'struggle' - thoughts and emotions of fear, anger, confusion, upset; and in terms of feeling involved or engaged in a situation ( a relationship, to something or someone) that is stuck or causing suffering, I do not know of a better or more simple approach than Byron Katie's. I 'did' the work ( a series of questions which you write down the answers) about 12 years ago and it radically shifted how I experienced 'reality' -- at that time my reality was feeling shitty in my relationship.
Although I have never gone to a workshop or really 'done' the work as fully as I did then, I feel as if the process is deep inside me, and whenever a situation arises which I feel myself being triggered by, the 'questions' and the 'turnarrounds' come easily, and my experience of 'what is' changes.
Yesterday I was meandering around the net and came across the following series of videos taken this year of Byron Katie in Israel. I found them absolutely gripping - I did not realise what an extraordinary speaker & communicator she is ( in the fullest widest sense of the word, i.e. listening) ; and also to see her actually do 'the work' in a such a context is very moving.
I know of so many teachers or meditative or healing 'methods' that sound good or seem to work in my nice comfortable life, but what about for people who live in war torn countries? Seems a bit iffy if I think about that.
But here Byron Katie is doing just that, and iffy it is not.
Byron Katie in Israel 2007-I'm afraid of war part 1
Byron Katie in Israel 2007-I'm afraid of war part 2
Byron Katie in Israel 2007-I'm afraid of war part 3
"People of the world don't look at themselves, and so they blame one another."
Mevlana Rumi
Mevlana Rumi
Access: Public
byron katie
August 2008 
Wow, Sandra, thank you for posting those videos. I've done the work too but had never seen her in action. Powerful!
Hello Sandra - If you go to here website, she has video of The Work in Israel with an inquiry ciricle of 1500 participants. Her work is amazing and I'm thrilled to see you posting her work.
She has a 9 day school in April and I'm thinking of attending, perhaps we can organize a Zaadz Group?
Rudyan.. love that you stopped by :-)
Darren - can you send me a link to the video/page? I took a look but couldn't find it…
My sense with the work is to keep sharing on this level – and spreading the 'word' — are you a faciliator of The Work? I'm sure there are many here on zaadz. In which case why not start a pod?
Love,
Sandra
Oh, I just found this:
Byron Katie in Israel 2007 - The Arab/Jew conflict
Happy New Years Eve Sandra,
I am not a faciliatatot of The Work, but am considering taking the 9 day course. I've attended a lecture and had the opportunity to meet Byron Katie one several years ago. She has an incredible peace/love which flows from her.
The pod idea would be fantastic. Glad you found the link on You Tube, and here is another link which provided the actual work sheets to begin to get a better understanding and simplicity of her program.
http://www.thework.com/thework.asp
Love & Gratitude,
Darren
Thank you Sandra! I recently started doing “The Work”, and I have found it so very helpful and revealing. These were great videos and helped with my work for today. Wonderful.
Deep Bow!
zb
Thanks for letting me know you posted these. I read Bryon Katie's book Loving What Is and she has something similar with a man from Germany who was reliving the war as a child over and over again for 40 or 50 years.
What struck me the most was the contrast between her discussions of “reality” here and the YouTube of John Lennon's Merry Christmas/War Is Over song that I posted on my blog. What I remember as I watched the images on mine is how unreal it all feels. It is just beyond my comprehension why we keep doing those things to each other. Its senseless and such a waste of humn potential and resources.
Then in true Katie fashion I find myself asking “Is it really True?” Perhaps the real point is not that war is atrocious but that the only “material” we each have to work with is our own reality and mind. It is amazing to feel the love that comes from Katie even as she's telling someone that their thoughts are unrealistic and their fears unfounded.
Oh yeah, I probably will carry with me for a long time the positive response of the one leg to the changes life forces upon us.
Deborah
Zennie, Deborah, thank you!
Although as I said I have 'done' the work, I have found watching several videos of Katie's interactions over the last days have affected me deeply. After watching the ones in my blog, my beloved and I seemed to go immediately into a deeper state of presence, and we started doing 'the work' with each other – with no plan to or suggestion from either of us, it just happened spontaneously. It was/is wonderful.
And yes, that positive response to the one leg is truly extraordinary, isn't it. I watched the interaction with a man who wanted his cancer to stop growing – such an amazing moment when Katie asks him why he might NOT want the cancer to stop growing - all the positive things that come from this state of being.
And there was the one about, well I can't remember what the one was but something to do with losing all your money, your house, sitting out on the pavement… and thinking what 'good' is there in this situation… I went 'huh?', not being able to come up with anything.. but she found many, eg all those things you don't have to take care of anymore!! (or words to that effect).
I am often stunned, Deb, about the things we do to each other – and what I love about The Work is that it gives me a very real and immediate way to attempt to take care of the 'war' and violence in the world.
I've sometimes felt so 'helpless' to do anything in a larger sense, but if I remind myself that I can do something about the violence within me.. and that this has a palpable effect on my experience of the world and possibly on others, then I don't feel so helpless, in fact it makes so much sense to me.
I've mentioned elsewhere how I have a fair bit of personal experience of people 'doing good' in the world in quite large arenas but coming home and beating their children or being dishonest or judgemental etc, and how this seemed so weird. These experiences possibly encouraged me to stay away from 'politics' or more public activities of 'helping' others, and why I turned to teachers and teachings and experiences that supported me to see where I was behaving dishonestly/violently etc. I'm still on this path, and still feel that in the end it is the only one - whether or not I choose to act in a larger arena.
Love,
Sandra
Just wanted to point everyone to Beata's blog and the comments there - about ho'oponopono, a healing approach that is in essence very similar to The Work.
Sandra,
I failed to mention how amazing the photo of the kitten is. That one will stay with me awhile.
BTW I have only done “The Work” as she teaches it, once or twice when I was first reading about it. However, I have done it many times more casually since. It is as though there are times that something is bothering me and I just automatically say to myself now “Is that really true?” Recently, when my son was fussing, I asked him repeatedly “Is that really true?” and he could not say that it was and quite quickly for him, calmed down.
As you note, it is very empowering to learn that [a] you can do something about those things that bother you and [b] it does not have to be anything “large” or “public” but rather that the MOST effective work that you can do is actually inside of yourself ,or more accurately within your own thought processes.
As a result, you become not only very accepting and allowing of other people's paths, realizing that your very intervention, even with the best of intentions, may not be for their highest good, but can even come to realize that whatever you think you see in them is, in reality, something that you need to address within your own self and then, the miracle occurs, you no longer need to see it at all. In that process, they no longer need to be that.
War is the same, just on a larger scale.
Deborah
Hey Sandra,
What a wonderful post !!
I asked a friend one time, what's wrong with you ? She told me what she was worried about and I told her , You are worrying about something that has not happened. I told her if I am going to think about anything that is not happening right now, it will be something that I want to happen not something I do not want to happen. There was a man, a simple man, KINDA like myself , and he said, if so then so, if not so then not so.:-) I think if one would just erace what is not simple then one would be simple. :-) That's my story.
Byron Katie, I have never met but I think we have a great deal in common.
Your friend,Don
Yes, Don, I think you and Katie do have a lot in common. I loved what you wrote here. It's so simple, isn't it ? ( maybe not easy, but then, maybe it is!)
Love,
Sandra
That video really rocks. It makes me love Byron Katie like a snuggly kitten, except even more. I adore her with all of me. Just the way she moved, like liquid love. And her voice. I can hear it now. Grace.
The one thing that strikes me most about the work is that every time I look at myself I see my story. Everything is a story, except the now, which as she says so wonderfully in the vid. is pure grace. There is nothing but perfection and our stories about how screwed up everything is. If I can just learn to live in the moment, and see my stories for the fiction they are, then all that is left is the grace of God.
Yer ol' pal Tom
Oh Tom, lovely to see you here. I loved what you wrote.
May I take a liberty?
If I can just learn to live in the moment, and see my stories for the fiction they are, then all that is left is the grace of God.
Do you know that this is true? (I'm reading the sentence again…doing the work on it myself)
Do I absolutely know that this is true?
No.
Who am I without this thought, that If I can just learn to live in the moment, and see my stories for the fiction they are, then all that is left is the grace of God?
Freer. Less pressure. I don't feel so 'wrong' or judgmental that I'm not living in the moment.
Do I know that I'm 'not living in the moment'?
No..
And what about the stories, do I absolutely know that my stories are fiction?
I want to say yes…
Do I absolutely know that they are fiction?
Um, no.
Who would I be without this thought, that my stories are fiction?
Well, also freer… I can see that the opposite has the same answer - ie. “my stories are real” I also cannot say I absolutely know is the truth.
….I'm left with less to think about, just here. Watching the sun peeking out of the window. Living my life. Not judging it as true or not true, present or not present…
ah…
powerful…
Well pshaw, Sandra. I'm glad Brian found that powerful, since it struck me as weak. From what you say it leads me to think that knowing as a category is totally defunct. Do the work then do the work on the work then do the work on the work on the work. Etcetera ad infinitum. I'm a lover of thoughts, as you know. Who would I be without my thoughts, all of them? Do they even make people that way?
Freedom from thoughts and knowing. Oh yay. I could become a skylarking vegetable. I do realize that knowing can be a hindrance to growth, but to not know anything at all, or be without all thought?
I suppose if one were totally in the moment, there would be no time for thoughts of any kind, since now is such an instant it's almost outside of time. Oh heck, it just seems like a big quagmire. I think I'd rather stick with realizing my stories are not reality. And remembering Byron's intimation that nothing exists in the present but pure grace of God.
Maybe I'm just not getting something….freedom is not my main goal, understanding is. What's the point in being free? Is there such a thing?
Who would you be without the thought that freedom is something to be desired?
Your confused buddy,
Tom
…hope this doesn't discourage you from taking liberties in the future. You can take as many liberties with me as you want, even when it makes me kinda grumpy.
Hey Tom.. (and I think Brian was probably commenting on the blog, not on my comment). for me it's not about not having thoughts, absolutely not. It's about believing them - especially the ones that cause stress and anxiety. I have discovered that if I believe virtually any of my thoughts it creates anxiety. (Now I could do 'the work' on that statement too, and no, it's not true… to 'believe' it would only cause anxiety…..). So what we are getting to here is simply presence. Presence is not 'thoughtless', but holding onto a thought or an 'image' separates this from the present moment. In a way I would say that yes, knowing as a category is defunct. To hold onto 'knowing', to believe you are right about anything seems to me what creates so much war, violence etc.
And it's not about not thinking – perhaps it's simply a different way of being, where the thoughts arise naturally, just like flowers, to be enjoyed, to be taken notice of (that's a hot stove, don't put your hand on it), but not to be identified with.
Sending love, and a little quote from J. Krishnamurti…
”. . it is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily life, how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbor, your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods–you have nothing but images.
The images create the space between you and what you observe and in that space there is conflict, so what we are going to find out now together is whether it is possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves but in ourselves, the space which divides people in all their relationships.
Now the very attention you give to a problem is the energy that solves that problem. When you give your complete attention–I mean with everything in you–there is no observer at all. There is only the state of attention which is total energy, and that total energy is the highest form of intelligence. Naturally that state of mind must be completely silent and that silence, that stillness, comes when there is total attention, not disciplined stillness. That total silence in which there is neither the observer nor the thing observed is the highest form of a religious mind. But what takes place in that state cannot be put into words because what is said in words is not the fact. To find out for yourself you have to go through it.” – J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, pp. 92-93
Words are so screwy. It's the main problem with religion, they confuse the words for the thing. In the beginning was not The Word. No way. The word came second. First you have to have something to describe before you even need a word. And a word is a pale shadow.
I love that you stuck to your guns on not knowing. And of course you are right. I avoid people who know stuff like the plague. They found something they like and now are trying to foist it off on me as the One Truth for All Eternity. Gee, thanks.
Knowing is only a word, after all, and there are a million kinds of it. Some knowing is good, such as knowing the words of Krishnamurti, who is such a beautiful balm to the soul. Or knowing how to write a sonnet. Or knowing how to cleanse one's bottom after taking a righteous dump. So knowing as a catagory can never be defunct, just knowing what is good for other people.
I know, I know,
Tom