Sunday, May 8, 2011

From ‘Question your thinking, Change the world’ by Byron Katie


How do you react when you think you need people’s love? Do you become a slave for their approval? Do you live an inauthentic life because you cant bear the thought that they might disapprove of you? Do you try to figure out how they would like you to be, and then try to become that, like a chameleon?

In fact, you never really get their love. You turn into someone you aren’t, and then when they say “I love you,” you cant believe it, because they’re loving a façade. They’re loving someone who doesn’t even exist, the person you’re pretending to be. It’s difficult to seek other people’s love. It's deadly. In seeking it, you lose what is genuine. This is the prison we create for ourselves as we seek what we already have.



There’s no decision in death. People who know that there’s no hope are free. The decision is out of their hands. It has always been that way, but some people have to die bodily to find out. No wonder they smile on their deathbeds. Dying is everything hey were looking for in life. Their delusion of being in charge is over. When there’s no choice, there’s no fear. And in that, there is peace. They realize that they’re home and that they’ve never left.



Reality – the way that it is, exactly as it is, in every moment – is always kind. It's our story about reality that blurs our vision, obscures what’s true, and leads us to believe that there is injustice in the world. I sometimes say that you move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer. When you believe that any suffering is legitimate, you become the champion of suffering, the perpetuator of it in yourself. It’s insane to believe that suffering is cause by anything outside the mind. A clear mind doesn’t suffer. That’s not possible.



It’s our beliefs about death that scare us to death.



God is another name for reality, and I am a lover of what is. If I lose my grandchild or my daughter, I lose what wasn’t mine in the first place. It's a good thing. Either that or God is a sadist, and that’s not my experience. I don’t order God around. I don’t presume to know whether life or death is better for me or for anyone I love. How can I know that? All I know is that God is everything and God is good. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.



Ultimately you don’t have any control over your children. You don’t have any control over anything. When you think you should and you see that you don’t, the effect is depression.



Just follow your passion. Do what you love, inquire, and have a happy life while you’re doing it.



You’re the interpreter of everything, and if you’re chaotic, what you hear and see has to be chaos. Even if Jesus, even if the Buddha, were standing in front of you and speaking, you’d only hear confused words, because confusion would be the listener. You’d only hear what you thought he was saying, and you’d start arguing with him the first time your story was threatened.



It's not your job to like me – it's mine



The miracle of love comes to you in the presence of the uninterpreted moment. If you are mentally somewhere else, you miss real life.

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