Byron Katie
One morning, in February 1986, out of nowhere, I experienced a realization. In an instant, I discovered that when I believed my stressful thoughts, I suffered, but when I questioned them, I didn't suffer.Collection: Morning
I used to sleep on the floor next to the bed, because I believed that I didn't even deserve a bed to sleep in. And then, one morning, a cockroach crawled onto my leg. I looked at it, and suddenly I awoke from a kind of hypnotic trance in which I had been all my life.Collection: Morning
I haven't had a single thought for 26 years. I have only understanding. It's somewhat complicated to understand that. I've hardly ever spoken about it. You're in a state of total peace of mind. A kind of nirvana.Collection: Peace
When we believe in our thoughts, when we tell ourselves a story, we suffer. 'My husband doesn't respect me.' 'I should be thinner.' Those are stories. When there's no story, there's no suffering.Collection: Respect
When I was in my early forties, I slept with a loaded gun under my bed. I'd become severely depressed in my thirties, and for almost a decade I spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and thoughts of suicide.
I suffered from severe depression for over a decade. My condition deteriorated steadily. I was suicidal.
Suffering over things that have happened to us is nothing more than an argument with the past.Collection: Inspirational
Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do.Collection: Life
It's not the problem that causes our suffering; it's our thinking about the problem.Collection: Thinking
We are never really in control. We just think we are when things happen to be going our way.Collection: Thinking
It's not your job to like me - it's mineCollection: Inspiring
People try so hard to let go of their negative behaviors and thoughts, and it doesn't work, or it works only for a short time. I didn't let go of my negative thoughts; I questioned them, and then they let go of me, and so did my addictions and depression.Collection: Letting Go
Until the mind is open, the heart stays closed. The open mind is the key to the open heart.Collection: Heart
Our job is unconditional love. The job of everyone else in our life is to push our buttons.Collection: Love
We do not mature through age. We mature in awareness.Collection: Age
The whole world is simply my story, projected back to me on the screen of my own perception. All of it.Collection: Perception
Fear has only two causes: the thought of losing what you have or the thought of not getting what you want.Collection: Fear
Stress is an alarm clock that lets you know you're attached to something not true for you.Collection: Positive
You can't have an up without a down. You can't have a left without a right. This is duality. If you have a problem, you must already have the solution. The question is, do you really want the solution, or do you want to perpetuate the problem?Collection: Life
Pay close attention to the particular thoughts you use to deprive yourself of happiness.Collection: Attention
Since the past is unreal and the future is unreal, all your thoughts are about nothing.Collection: Past
When you believe that your problem is caused by someone or something else, you become your own victim.Collection: Inspirational
I stopped waiting for the world to give me what I wanted; I started giving it to myself.Collection: Giving
I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. 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.Collection: Spiritual
I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment.Collection: Believe
It's quite an amazing experience to see the same life with and without the thought. We come to see how crazy a thought can make us when we believe it.Collection: Crazy
Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you.Collection: New Beginnings
If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life have you. It does anyway. You’re just telling yourself the story of how it doesn’t.Collection: Real
If you think the cause of your problem is 'out there,' you'll try to solve it from the outside. Take the shortcut: solve it from within.Collection: Thinking
It's not what happens in life that bothers us. It's what we're believing about it that bothers us.Collection: Believe
The Work reveals that what you think shouldn't have happened should have happened. It should 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.Collection: Change
When the creative mind is unleashed and understands its true nature, it's unlimited. There's nothing you cannot do.Collection: Creative
When you question what you believe, you leave the world, really, and what the world believes. It puts you in a very interesting position.Collection: Believe
When a thought appears such as "Do the dishes" and you don't do them, notice how an internal war breaks out... The stress and weariness you feel are really mental combat fatigue.Collection: War
Clarity moves much more efficiently than violence or stress.Collection: Stress
Insanity is arguing with reality.Collection: Reality
I like to say understanding is the power.Collection: Understanding
Love is who we are without our stories.Collection: Love
Once the mind is met with understanding, it can always find its way home.Collection: Home
You are what exists before all stories.Collection: Stories
No one can give you freedom but you.Collection: Giving
What's happening in the world is a natural course of events.Collection: World
Joy is a natural way of being.Collection: Joy
The world isn't what I've believed it to be, and I am not what I believed me to be, and neither is anyone.Collection: World
I've heard people say that they cling to their painful thoughts because they're afraid that without them they wouldn't be activists for peace. "If I feel peaceful," they say, "why would I bother taking action at all?"Collection: Peace
Stress never feels as natural as peace doesCollection: Stress
The only and dearest relationship is the mind's relationship with itself.Collection: Mind
The ability to understand the cause of your own suffering gives you the ability to understand ours.Collection: Giving
I have an expression I say a lot: I'm in a hurry. There's suffering on this planet that is so easy to break through if the mind is open to doing so.Collection: Expression
The perfect world is created when the mind is free to see it.Collection: Perfect