Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2789 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Erica Jong
‘...a revolutionary way to live your life. The question is: are we brave enough to accept it?’

Time Magazine
‘...a pragmatic and simple way of getting people to take responsibility for their own problems.’

Synopsis
The Work began on a February morning in 1986, when Byron Katie woke up on the floor of a halfway house, at a complete dead end in her life, and began to laugh. She had woken up without any concept of who, where, or what she was. She awoke to the fundamental, luminous state of being that is without any separation, that experiences itself as pure love. Like great spiritual masters from many traditions, she knew she had reached the end of confusion and suffering. That was the moment she burst into laughter. Determined to give people a way to discover for themselves what she had realized, Katie developed a simple method of self-enquiry that she called The Work, a life-transforming system for discarding the stories we tell ourselves, which are the source of suffering, and replacing them with the truth ("what is") and a life of total joy. She began teaching The Work wherever she was invited - at first in small, informal gatherings and eventually to packed workshops around the world. The Work consists of only four simple questions that you can apply to any problem. It is so easy and practical - but also profound in its application.

Customer Reviews

Loving What Is - Byron Katie
I whole heartedly agree with the previous reviewers..this book too has profoundly changed my life ! I have read quite a few self help books but Katie I have found is the only one so far that puts things in a real simple and down to earth manner. Not some airy fairy spiritual thing...the only way really for people to gain clarity over their seemingly negative ways is to discover the truth for themselves and this she does so brilliantly. I found The Power Of Now life transforming, this goes even beyond that..for those who still don't quite "get it" with the likes of Tolle, Dwyer, Virtue and so many others, including Law of Attraction books, they should definately give this book a go. I am also in the process of ordering her other books. She is truly a gift to the world and also the way in which she interacts with people, on their level, from prisoners to Chief Execs...amazing...BUY THIS BOOK !

A thoroughly irritating book designed for emotional illiterates
I became so irritated with this book that I felt like throwing it at the cat, which I would never do, because I love the cat. The conversations in it were with people who were quite unbelievably immature and emotionally illiterate and Katie patronises them horribly by constantly calling them "sweetheart" , when what they needed, to my mind, was a sharp kick up the backside. It is glaringly obvious that it is just stupid to create problems for oneself by failing to relate sympathetically to other people when there are real problems out there over which we have no control, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, epidemics and sudden death from accident or disease. My reactions to the book were Yuck - get a brain! and why are some Americans so simplistic?

transformational
I was a bit puzzled by this book at first - I thought the four questions were too simple. But by the time I reached the end of the book I had got it - a profound change occurs almost without you realising. Byron Katie's work is really a radical form of cognitvie therapy which makes you aware that almost all of our 'problems' and the negativity we feel is caused by our thoughts. I came across this book through a recommendation from Eckhart Tolle, and have come across other great books through him, such as Steve Taylor's The Fall The Fall:the Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of a New Era: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of a New Era