Going to Work Naked: My Journey to Byron Katie (2)
Borked Pseudo Mailed
Going to Work Naked: My Journey to Byron Katie
Carol L. Skolnick
I hated this.
I shelved the book again.One day the beautiful woman on the book cover beckoned to me once more, and I read. And read. And reread.
Katie's philosophy was difficult for me to process; and her seemingly simple brand of self-inquiry, which she calls The Work, was something I was sure I could never do.
A rhyme describes the workings of The Work in a nutshell:
Judge your neighbor, write it down,
Ask four questions, turn it around.
It's like this: thoughts come and go, and in and of themselves they are innocent and powerless. It's the feelings we attach to them that create pain and suffering, because we haven't investigated our thoughts; we automatically assume that whatever passes through the mind is the truth.
If this attachment results in pain, Katie says, we're living a lie, battling with reality, at war with “What Is.” The Work is a process of investigation in which we meet our thoughts with understanding, leading to the realization of what is true for us in the moment.
To begin inquiry into an uncomfortable feeling, Katie suggests writing down uncensored judgments about others, because judging ourselves hasn't worked yet.
Although we've been taught not to judge, it's what we do all the time.
Then, for each judgment you make and each desire you have regarding the other person's behavior, you ask yourself:
1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
For instance, if your statement is, “I am disappointed with my wife because she doesn't pay enough attention to me,” you'd ask yourself, “My wife should pay more attention to me, is it true? What is the reality of it, does she? Can I really know that she ought to pay more attention to me, that it is for my highest good?”
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
Example: ‘When I believe that my wife should pay more attention to me and she doesn't, I feel lonely, hurt, and abandoned, and I treat her with resentment.’
4. Who would you be without this thought?
Next, you re-direct each thought you've written down to broaden your perspective of reality, finding as many “turnarounds” as apply.
So, “I am disappointed with my wife because she doesn't pay enough attention to me,” becomes “I am not disappointed with my wife because she does pay enough attention to me,” or “I am
disappointed with myself because I don't pay enough attention to my wife,” or ‘I am disappointed with myself because I don't pay enough attention to me.”
Deceptively simple. Too simple for this brain. I didn't get it, and was sure that I could never deal with placing all responsibility for every human interaction on myself.
And yet, I found myself inexplicably drawn not simply to the process, but also to Katie herself...not because of what she had become, but because of who she had been.
At the end of the biography, painful details about Katie's life – details the author had not wanted to write but was instructed by Katie herself to reveal – were displayed in gory detail: about how angry, depressed, and scared Katie was. About how she smoked and drank too much and over-ate, abused painkillers and swore like a sailor; how she neglected her children; and how, in the final years before what she called the “Great Undoing,” she couldn't get out of bed or bathe for weeks at a time. How she had been an exceptionally beautiful woman who ballooned to an unkempt, unhealthy 200-pound, out-of-control rage-aholic.
With a few details changed, the author could have been describing my late mother.
And, to a lesser extent, but enough to hit home – me.