I am posting my March 2007 Byron Katie interview, newly edited to be completely true to the original conversation and transcript. In print in the magazine Pure Inspiration and in the material previously posted online, the interview’s edit involved a significant back and forth between me and Stephen Mitchell, Katie’s husband and a renowned classical scholar,…
When someone I know is having a tough time — in the middle of one of those dark nights of the soul and having trouble getting through it — I almost always think of Byron Katie. I interviewed Katie soon after I moved to Asheville, North Carolina, between attending a publicity event — a talk…
Ray: When you describe your moment of realization—the cockroach moment—about not believing your thoughts, it sounds almost revelational. Do most people doing inquiry have revelations like that, or is it usually steady work in making the understandings become second nature? Katie: Steady work, and making the understandings become second nature—or first nature. People don’t need…
Ray: You say when people start to do The Work and ask whether their thoughts are true, it’s best to do it on paper. Why? Katie: Because the mind is tricky. If you don’t write down your stressful thought, the mind will slip and slide around it. The mind is very clever. It will start…
Ray: Some people may struggle to disengage the intellect. How do you undo thinking without thinking? Is inquiry not thought engaging itself or deconstructing another thought? Katie: Actually, it’s mind seeing through itself and understanding itself. I like to say that understanding is the power. The most important relationship is the mind’s relationship with itself.…
Ray: Katie, why is the turnaround so important in The Work? Is it because it shows us other possibilities than our own judgmental thoughts? Katie: Yes. It shows the mind what is as true or truer than the original thought. People usually find that the turnaround is as true or truer than the stressful thought…
Ray: What are some especially common stories and beliefs people realize they hold when they start doing The Work? Katie: When I say, “People shouldn’t lie—is it true? How many of you think that’s true?” everyone in a room of, let’s say, a thousand people will raise their hand. Then I say, “Do people lie?”…
Ray: Does questioning your stressful thoughts—the process of inquiry—better support joy than trying to think joyful thoughts? Katie: By questioning our stressful thoughts, we come to see that they’re not true. And if we see that our stressful thoughts aren’t true—if we have questioned them deeply and thoroughly enough—what does that leave? It leaves love.…
