Loving What Is: Byron Katie and the Upside-Down Kingdom

When I am stressed out, discombobulated, cranky, and out of sorts, it's usually because I'm swimming upstream and fighting reality.  When I'm fighting reality (which some of us call "God's will"), I'm always miserable.  If I want to be reconciled to God/reality/everyone around me, I need to question and dispel the thoughts that are making me crazy and separating me from the experience of God's love.

I learned a wonderful tool to help me with this in a book called Loving What Is.  In it, author Byron Katie ("Katie" to her readers) teaches us how to undo the "stories" we tell ourselves about reality.  Most of us are so deeply attached to these stories (for instance, "my husband should appreciate me," "my kids should listen to me," "I need to be thin") that we have a hard time even recognizing how profoundly they keep us imprisoned.   Katie calls the process of gently probing these stories until we realize the truth behind them "The Work."

The Work consists of writing down your stressful thought, asking yourself four questions about it, and then writing out a turnaround, a statement that flips your stressful thought on its head and points you back to yourself.  It sounds paradoxical and bizarre, and that's precisely why it works: it sucks you right into the Upside-Down Kingdom.  You know, where the foolish shame the wise and the great serve the weak and the last come first.  Where you can't approach the altar until you've made things right with your brother and the workers who come last are paid the same, and where God himself shows up in the belly of an unwed teen, sleeps in a trough, hangs out with the most scorned sleaze, and washes his own followers' feet.

I am doing The Work this morning because I know that after I have cleared away the thoughts that stress me out, I will again experience existence as a state of grace.  If you're interested in giving it a try, pick up Loving What Is or download some free worksheets at Katie's site.  I also recommend this wonderful article on Katie that appeared in the 10th Anniversary edition of O Magazine.