Stress
Stress cannot exist in the mind of someone who is truly in love with the present reality. It will take constant practise of The Work by Byron Katie to make sure that you do not lose that awareness but once you do – you’ll know joy. All stress and suffering come from believing our stressful thoughts. Stressful thoughts and stress-inducing thoughts will inevitably enter your mind but if you believe everyone without questioning it, you’ll suffer, and this is the same for every human being according to the written meditations of The Work. When we believe a stressful thought, suffering is sure to follow.
You cannot stop stressful thoughts, only question them
Byron Katie’s The Work does not believe that you’ll suddenly stop thoughts or completely empty your mind. It’s actually impossible to do that. Letting go of a stressful thought is impossible because you didn’t create it in the first place, that’s how thoughts work, they just appear. How could you possibly let go of what you have no control over? That is the essence of stress in people of all ages, wanting to control what cannot be controlled. You need to question the thought and it will suddenly let go of you. Self-inquiry will pick apart the meaning of it and once it no longer means what you thought it meant, it melts away. Your suffering ends and the world changes because what the mind projected has changed. Everything you THOUGHT you are, isn’t true, and all you are left with is what you already are, which is all we could ever want.
Stress is a collection of assumptions, concepts, beliefs taken from your thoughts. All you need to do is take the first step towards taking on The Work, and it requires that you deeply meditate on them, and let what arises from within change not only life in your world itself. You will come face to face with how you see life and experience the joy of what all really is.
How The Work’s practises can help you deal with stressful thoughts forever
The Work is a simple, you will take any stressful thought that causes suffering like “he/she is mean to me”. You question it and you use it through a written meditation that uses the four questions of The Work. Whatever answer, be still, be very aware of it, and then gently move to the next question and wait for your answers to appear.
Eventually, whenever a stressful thought arises, your mind will automatically begin the process of questioning everything that comes with it, and the thought will unravel. Inquiry will become alive in you as the natural, wordless response of awareness to any untrue thoughts that arise, until the point where such thoughts don’t even arise, and the mind is completely at peace. The fourth question of Byron Katie’s The Work (“Who would you be without that thought?”) will be the natural conclusion every time you are faced with a stressful situation. Your mind will naturally experience a stressful situation without the thought that is creating the stress in the first place.
What is Byron Katie’s The Work?
The Work is a meditative process, which includes taking a moment of stillness to get in touch with yourself and a fuller experience of life. It is an inquiry into us to identify the thought that you’re thinking and believing in an actual situation in the past or your future that you may fear or dread. It won’t be easy, and it will take courage to question our thinking, thoughts, and believing, to see our part, and look at ourselves from a different perspective. The Work will allow everyone to wake up to our true reality of our nature.
“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.”
— Byron Katie
