PROFILE - Byron Katie, Author 
What makes you unhappy isn't true 
San Francisco Chronicle
June 30, 2002 

by Alix Madrigal 

When seekers came to the house of then-fledgling home-grown American guru Byron Katie after her 1986 spiritual awakening, they would bow and murmur the traditional Sanskrit blessing "Namaste." That means "the divine in me honors the divine in you."

Katie thought they were saying "No mistake." 

"I thought they were all so wise," she says with a smile. 

Recently in the Bay Area to promote her new book, Loving What Is (Harmony; 258 pages; $24), Katie says she doesn't recognize mistakes. She believes everything is just the way it should be. She also doesn't go in for unhappiness and fervently believes that she has the key for eliminating pain: four easy steps she can teach anyone. They are outlined in her new book. 

She says you simply recognize that everything that has been making you unhappy is untrue, just a construct of a confused mind. Hardly a new or revolutionary concept, but what takes Buddhists years of sitting to achieve, Katie claims she can teach in under an hour. 

It boils down to telling people to take responsibility for their lives, to stop pointing the finger at others for not making them happy. Beyond that, she says, it's about finding love underneath anger and pain. 

Katie has spent the last 20 years traveling around the world demonstrating her work to any group willing to rent a hall. People say that when they work with Katie, realization 
dawns and their perceived problems seem to melt away. "I can't believe it's so simple," said a woman quoted in Loving What Is, Katie's first book, written with her husband, translator Stephen Mitchell. The woman was depressed because her 1-year-old cried when he saw people. "I tell him to be happy. I'm telling him not to be who he is... and I feel like a failure as a mom," she said. "Without that thought, I would be peaceful and clear." 

Katie and Mitchell, who live in Sedona, Ariz., are both 59, but there are moments when they exchange glances, or his hand brushes her hair and she touches his arm, when it's easy to forget that she's a mature spiritual teacher and he is the translator of the spiritual classics the Tao Te Ching and the Bhagavad Gita.

They met a year and a half ago when Mitchell's agent arranged a meeting between them in Marin. "I felt," Mitchell says, "a stronger version of what I felt when I looked into my old Zen master's eyes. I was deeply moved and astonished at the openness of heart I saw there." 

Katie's life wasn't always so sweet. Once upon a time, she possessed all the accoutrements of the good life -- a husband, three healthy children, a beautiful house in Barstow, a thriving career selling real estate and plenty of money. But none of it made her happy. She woke up every morning full of irrational and overpowering rage and despair -- and a desire to die. 
Then, Katie says, one morning she got up from the floor on which she was sleeping -- she didn't feel she deserved the bed -- laughing. "I had no problems," she says. "And there was nothing I could do to make a problem." As her habitual thoughts drifted through her mind, she would realize, "that's not true," and break into laughter. They were, she says, "the same thoughts that led me into a deep depression that lasted over a decade." 

Was this a classic spiritual awakening? Katie demurs. 

"I know what hurts and what doesn't," she says. "I'm that enlightened. That's as enlightened as I want to get." 

When Katie got up from that floor, she noticed that many of her painful thoughts -- which she calls "unidentified flying objects" -- not only caused her stress, but when held up to the light were not true. Everything changed for her -- her relationship with her children and husband improved dramatically. 

Though they lived separate lives, he in Barstow and she on the road, they stayed married until she met Mitchell. 

Along with a new outlook on life, Katie got up off the floor with the four questions that comprise what she calls "The Work." "Is it true?" "Can you absolutely know that it's true?" "How do you react when you think that thought?" "Who would you be without the thought?" 

The idea, she says, is to turn it all around. So "I don't like my husband because he doesn't appreciate me" becomes "I don't like myself because I don't appreciate my husband," and "I don't like myself because I don't appreciate myself." The point isn't to prove your guilt, but to show how innocent we all are. 

The book includes dialogues with people undergoing epiphanies, and the taped version ($30 from www.thework.org) includes dialogues from Katie's appearances. 

"You tell someone about this Work, and they say, 'Ho hum, four questions,' " she says. "But it isn't that. It's an experience, a profound personal experience."