Byron Katie Quotes

Suffering over things that have happened to us is nothing more than an argument with the past.

Ultimately, I am all I can know.

I am entirely motivated without anger. The truth sets us free, and freedom acts.

When you question what you believe, you leave the world, really, and what the world believes. It puts you in a very interesting position.

Would you rather be right or free?

The world is nothing but my perception of it. I see only through myself. I hear only through the filter of my story.

The moment it begins to question itself, the mind becomes so clear that it starts working with itself rather than with the body's identification.

I think our children are afraid to die because we're afraid to die.

When a thought hurts, that’s the signal that it isn’t true.

I used to sleep on the floor next to the bed, because I believed that I didn't even deserve a bed to sleep in. And then, one morning, a cockroach crawled onto my leg. I looked at it, and suddenly I awoke from a kind of hypnotic trance in which I had been all my life.

Place only your kindest thoughts on everything you experience today. Meet yourself.

Peace doesn't require two people; it requires only one. It has to be you. The problem begins and ends there.

You can never make yourself believe that you're loveable, however hard you try, because when the chips are down what you really believe rises to the surface of the mind to replace what you want to believe.

It's not the darkness that people fear; it's what they imagine into the darkness.

Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do.

The world isn't what I've believed it to be, and I am not what I believed me to be, and neither is anyone.

Realizing that people should lie when they do makes me a little more open-minded, a little more tolerant, when my child or my partner lies.

When you say or do anything to please, get, keep, influence, or control anyone or anything, fear is the cause and pain is the result.

Thinking that what you want equals what's best for you is a dead end.

There is no story that is you or that leads to you. Every story leads away from you.

A lover of what is looks forward to everything: life, death, disease, loss, earthquakes, bombs, anything the mind might be tempted to call 'bad.' Life will bring us everything we need, to show us what we haven't undone yet. Nothing outside ourselves can make us suffer. Except for our unquestioned thoughts, every place is paradise.

Without our stories, we are not only able to act clearly and fearlessly, we are also a friend, a listener. We are people living happy lives. We are appreciation and gratitude that have become as natural as breath itself. Happiness is the natural state for someone who knows that there's nothing to know and that we already have everything we need, right here now.

When you run in fear, it's square into the wall.

When you realize that suffering and discomfort are the call to inquiry, you may actually begin to look forward to uncomfortable feelings. You may even experience them as friends coming to show you what you have not yet investigated thoroughly enough.

It's for each of us to look at what we really do believe - what our belief system really consists of.

That's what every uncomfortable feeling is for-that's what pain is for, what money is for, what everything in the world is for: your self-realization.

You don't have to feel bad to act kindly. Love doesn't stand by, it moves with the speed of clarity.

There is no security for those who seek it outside of themselves.

Judge your neighbor, write it down. Ask four questions, turn it around.

I saw that we're all doing the best we can. This is how a lifetime of humility begins.

I was clinically depressed. I was paranoid. I was agoraphobic. I would have days at a time of not being able to even bathe or brush my teeth.

I do whatever I can to serve peace. My job is the end of suffering.

Once we begin to question our thoughts, our partners-alive, dead or divorced-are always our greatest teachers. There's no mistake about the person you're with; he or she is the perfect teacher for you, whether or not the relationship works out, and once you enter inquiry, you come to see that clearly.

God, as I use the word, is another name for what is. I always know God's intention: It's exactly what is in every moment.

All I have is all I need and all I need is all I have in this moment.

Everyone is a mirror image of yourself-your own thinking coming back to you.

We don't attach to people or to things; we attach to uninvestigated concepts that we believe to be true in the moment.

When you're comfortable and secure, it's not enough. The mind doesn't stop there because it has to continue to focus itself as this body, so it moves to pleasure. And pleasure really is a non-existent thing. When we're experiencing pleasure, we're trying to hold onto it as it leaves, so it really isn't pleasure. Pleasure is pain because we're grasping.

When you're operating on uninvestigated theories of what's going on and you aren't even aware of it, you're in what I call "the dream." Often the dream becomes troubling; sometimes it even turns into a nightmare. At times like these, you may want to test the truth of your theories by doing The Work on them. The Work always leaves you with less of your uncomfortable story. Who would you be without it? How much of your world is made up of unexamined stories? You'll never know until you inquire.

You can’t change what you haven’t realized yet. Once you realize what you were asleep to, the change happens on its own.

The greatest stock market you can invest in is yourself. Finding this truth is better than finding a gold mine.

The whole planet is waiting for someone to do it first

If people are living their lives for security and comfort and pleasure, then mind's every waking moment will be plotting those things. That's how it stays identified - as a body, as a you.

It's just a constant thing when the mind starts to wake up to itself.

The apparent craziness of the world, like everything else, is a gift that we can use to set our minds free.

Bottom line is, if someone says something about me and it upsets me, it's true.

Everyone wants peace, inside and outside, and we would all have it if we knew how. Now we know how. It begins with you.

Reality doesn't wait for your opinion, vote, or permission, sweetheart. It just keeps being what it is and doing what it does.