Product Description

This powerful book is a collection of 23 dialogues with Byron Katie that occurred throughout the United States and Europe.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #163125 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

About the Author
Byron Katie has been travelling around the world for many years teaching The Work directly to thousands of people. She is the author of Loving What Is and A Thousand Names for Joy.

Customer Reviews

Practical Enlightenment
This book is an excellent follow on from Byron Katie's earlier book- Loving What is and gives a series of in depth dialogues working through the process she discovered for dismantling the thoughts that can cause suffering. It certainly raises questions and is a useful tool for self-discovery. Probably not a good place to start if you are new to her work but a really good next step if you want more examples of how this powerful work can transform people's thinking. Reading this alongside Eckhart Tolle gives a practical approach to seeing through thought and discovering life without resistance. I don't know if I can fully accept her premise that ALL suffering is caused by thought but I can certainly see how applying the questions to my own thinking makes life easier, more joyful and less of a struggle. If you are on a journey of self inquiry then this book can really help with that.

Patronising nonsense
This is the first time, ever, I've been so incensed by a book to write a review of it online.

The format is simple - script style one-to-one conversations, each a chapter long, between BK and a series of individuals wrestling with troubling life experiences. No, I didn't read the whole book. No, I haven't read any of BK's other material. Yes, I do feel entitled to write a review.

The chapter that appalled me most was the one where a woman who has undergone cancer therapy (mastectomy and chemo, I think) is 'challenged' to stop having negative thoughts about her altered physical appearance or fear of the disease returning. Could be a good thing, you'd think, but instead BK's interrogation of this woman's reasoning was nothing short of hectoring. I suspected this woman was only agreeing quite readily with BK's cross-examination-style point-scoring so she'd be allowed to get out of this 'conversation' with her as quickly as possible.

It wasn't just the crude implementation of 'tough love' counselling strategies that made this such a pointless and excruciating read for me. No - there was something else: I found BK's whole underlying message that you need to free yourself from your 'story' - ie painful/negative emotions attached to memories of difficult life events - ridiculously patronising. Short of having a lobotomy, I don't see how a mature person can - or should - fast-track coming to terms with painful events in life. IMO, it takes time, and mixing a strategy of keeping busy with periods of introspection. To just be told, as if a child, that you're upset about something because you choose to be, is frankly, IMO, just a non-starter - the counselling equivalent of snake oil.