As a follow-up to my last post about (possibly) being insane, I thought I’d talk about the questions that return some semblance of sanity to my life on a daily basis.
I remember when the book Loving What Is by Byron Katie came out. My coworker at the bookstore where I worked at the time, a fellow classics major, scoffed loudly at what he took to be its thesis — that if you didn’t like an unpleasant fact you could dispense with it by calling its truth into question. He had no patience for such nonsense. I thought it was a little subtler than that, and perhaps closer to the Eastern idea that we perceive the world through a veil of illusion, colored by our limited prejudices, but I kept my mouth shut. I believed he was smarter than I was.
It wasn’t until years later that, in the midst of deep personal suffering, I listened to the introductory CD a well-meaning friend of my former roommate had given me. Hearing a young man whose family disapproved of him (familiar territory, for me) going through Katie’s questions made me stop in my tracks. The next participant, who was ready to give her noncommittal boyfriend an ultimatum, had me weeping openly by the end of her inquiry. Somehow the shift in perception that Katie facilitated made everyone see their own folly as well as experience more directly the love that existed within themselves, both toward their own misguided, suffering selves, and toward the loved ones they had been blaming for their pain.
It was a revelation.
What Katie does is have you vent your grievances on paper: “I am saddened and angered by X because he or she does/is/thinks Y…” and then go on to say what you would like the other person (or in the case of self-criticism, yourself) to do/be/think differently. She then takes each statement’s underlying assumptions one by one and deconstructs them thus:
- Is it true?
- Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
- How do you feel when you think that thought?
- Who would you be without that thought?
Then she has you “turn it around,” which can mean either switching the pronouns, adding a negative or opposing term to negate the statement, or making the statement about oneself only (also, when criticizing oneself, substituting “my thoughts about” for “I” or “my”).
For example: I could say, “I am saddened and angered by my mother because she judges me and wants to control what I believe.”
The assumption is “my mother shouldn’t judge me.”
Is it true? Unquestionably true?
Maybe it would be nicer for me, but what’s actually happening? She’s a born-again Christian. And a parent. It’s practically her function to judge. (Actually, it’s an explicit part of the modern evangelical job description. Check the website.) She’s going to do it whether I want her to or not. As Katie says, “When you argue with reality, you lose — but only one hundred percent of the time.”
And how do I feel when I think “she shouldn’t judge me?”
Resentful, resistant, not wanting to have anything to do with her or the rest of my family. Bitter. Angry.
Who would I be without that thought?
It takes a minute to imagine, to pretend I’m constitutionally incapable of thinking “my mother shouldn’t judge me.” It brings me into the present, rather than into the disappointments of the past or anxieties about the future. It helps me see my mother as she is, without the filter of anger or aversion or fear. Suddenly I’m no longer trying to control her. She will do whatever she does; it’s not up to me. I can simply relax and stop obsessing about it. I’m free to be however I want to be. If I blurt out “holy shit!” in front of her for some reason, well, she may frown, but the world won’t come to an end.
Then comes the turnaround.
My mother should judge me.
I shouldn’t judge my mother.
I shouldn’t judge me.
The second speaks most powerfully to me at the moment, because as any good Freudian psychologist will point out, what bothers me most in you is usually something I’m unconsciously doing myself.
Now I can turn around my beginning statement to read “I am saddened and angered by me because I judge my mother and want to control what she believes.” In demanding that she not judge me, I’m doing just that to her! Bwahahaha!
It’s empowering to actually take responsibility for your own part in the difficulty.
(A note about the self-criticism turnaround and how it works: say your statement is “I hate my fat butt.” One turnaround would be “I hate my thoughts about my butt.” Or maybe even “I hate my fat thoughts about my butt!”)
Questions Katie often asks, in workshops, of parents who want their daughter to choose a different career, or spouses whose partner has strayed, or people who otherwise have some pain around the actions and choices of loved ones, are: Do you love them? Do you want them to be happy? Do you get to dictate what makes them happy? This often proves to be a radical reality check, and gets people back in touch with what it means to love.
Believing that Jesus is the One Way is what makes my mother happy. Would I really want to take that away from her? Can I honestly know what’s best for her?
As I may have mentioned last time, I spend a lot of time wishing things were different. Byron Katie’s method has helped me, many times, to shift, and to reconcile with the Way Things Are. So I feel a little less insane, and a lot more generous.
Now if I could just do something about my butt. 
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