Grandma Guru Comforts Your Ego

I like Byron Katies game "The Work" (although, like many, she denies being “awakened”). It seeks to throw the ego into a tailspin simply by thought switching and muddying up egoic concepts. This is fairly simple, straightforward, cognitive restructuring or reframing. We merely hone in on the concept that we suffer through by asking four questions:

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
   
3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

After you get a grip on what concept you’re suffering through, you then simply reframe the concept in the reverse and Katie refers to this as the “turnaround.” For example “he should understand me” becomes “he shouldn’t understand me.” (actually any reverse will do in order for the game to continue, even “I should understand me”).

Byron Katie’s “The Work” has few terms or “awakening concepts” and thus relatively few rules. However, there must always be rules to the game... else, who would take the game seriously.

Katie is seeking to reduce personal suffering by redefining how your ego has come to understand suffering (which, of course, is also a game). She states, “The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues what is.”

“The Work doesn't say what anyone should or shouldn't do. We simply ask: What is the effect of arguing with reality? How does it feel? This Work explores the cause and effect of attaching to painful thoughts, and in that investigation we find our freedom. To simply say that we shouldn't argue with reality is just to add another story, another philosophy or religion. It hasn't ever worked.”

I like what Katie advocates since she is pointing to the ego’s need to be right and defend this righteousness (although Katies doesn’t specify an “ego” she simply calls it “mind.”)

However, I kept wondering why so many seem to consider this program as facilitating “awakening,” since all I could spot was simply another form, albeit lofty and poetic, of cognitive therapy. She does report in one of her brochures that

“Katie’s insight is consistent with leading edge research in cognitive psychology, and The Work has been compared to the Socratic dialogue, Buddhist teachings, and 12-step programs.”

Wow! Katie's a Socratic Buddhist psychologist. Yet, alas, here is the interesting rule in this game:

“I've been using the turnarounds whenever I make judgments, and somehow it doesn't do anything but make me depressed and confused. What's going on?

Katie response: "To simply turn thoughts around keeps the process intellectual and is of little value. The invitation is to go beyond the intellect. The questions are like probes that dive into the mind, bringing deeper knowledge to the surface. Ask the questions first, and then wait. Once the answers have risen, then do the turnarounds. The surface mind and the deeper mind (I call it the heart) meet, and the turnarounds feel like true discoveries.”

Katie’s “practice” consists of intellectual introspection, however, the intellect must eventually be negated as the means of performing this introspection, since she teaches that you need to “go beyond the intellect.”

Here we have the mystical component that must exist in all awakening games. Understanding must come from the egoic intellect, but then there is the demand that the intellect cancel itself by going beyond itself. The ego must essentially nullify itself.

Katie states that the intellectual process alone is of little value, so one must go beyond the intellect. Once again, egoic intellect is of little value in the game of awakening, although it’s needed to get you in the door.

If you finally do transcend your intellect you may wish to become a certified facilitator. To acquire that lofty title you must attend a certification training at “The School for the Work” (currently reduced to $4,245 from $4,995). If you choose not to attend the School, you could simply seek out a certified facilitator, who is “available to give you the pure experience of The Work."

Seems like all “awakening games” must have their priesthood or trained ego’s to proselytize the rules of the game. Byron Katie’s game is quite revolutionary, since she markets her rules to the common man/woman and thus, eschews the typical “enlightened master” paradigm with small groups of followers (however, her teaching model is similar to others in that the revered masters sits atop the raised platform while the adoring students in the audience sit at her feet).

Her marketing strategy is excellent as she’s enlisted many other postmodern masters to endorse her game, like Wayne Dyer, Lama Surya Dass and, of course, how far could you go without a good word from the master’s master, Eckhart Tolle.

This is called "The Awakening Mafia"

It’s interesting that Katie, like Eckhart Tolle, required a “dark night of the soul” in order to rise up from the personal fire of psychological hell. However, they seek to help you avoid that pit, through specified practices.

These ‘ego-enabling’ practices may actually do a disservice because, if ‘bottoming-out’ is the rule of the game, the practices obstruct you from entering the rings of fire for yourself.

In fact, the practices merely serve to keep your ego warm and comfy, while you avoid the real ‘work” that comes from recognizing that not only are the “painful thoughts” or concepts not real.....

....none of your concepts are "real."

But who's gonna teach that!


Image by Martina Hoffman - "The Muse of Conscious Awakening"

Other Byron Katie Probes:

Byron Katie & Janaki
Byron Katie's School for the Work
Guruphiliac