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31. Homage To Katie

Certain things need to be said. There is living amongst us a bona fide angel and her name is Byron Katie (Mitchell). She co-authored (with her husband Stephen Mitchell) a book entitled, "Loving What Is", and she has been on the road with her insightful wisdom for roughly ten years.

As I've said elsewhere, "Loving What Is" is the most important book I have ever read (in about sixty-five years). Her foundation will send you a condensed pamphlet of the book free (from her website) and you can attend one of her open workshops gratis. Her book, pamphlets and appearances all teach anyone to analyze his own thinking.

She has discovered, demonstrates and explains a philosophical truth about "reality" and how little you know about it. This simple truth is enough, once grasped, to enable you to change and dramatically improve your entire life. Her insight, this truth, shows you how little you really know. Really means absolute, bet-your-life-on-it-certainty. And since there is no certainty here on Earth, what we know and deal with is probabilities.

More importantly, this truth reveals with absolute clarity what you do know. And what you do know is YOU. (You do not, and cannot, really know anything else but you.) What you know about yourself is what makes you happy (or not). That is, what makes you feel good, vibrantly alive, and engaged in "What Is", i.e., the world around you. And you can easily wind up, as she and many others have, "Loving" it.

All humans have, as part of their natural endowment, highly inventive imaginations. You can imagine just about anything. When you come upon something other than you, you make up a story. You fill in your idea of what is going on. Your story cannot be proved and it cannot be disproved. In philosophical/legal circles, your story is referred to as .technically moot.. Your story can be believed (as in all religious stories) but it cannot be proven either absolutely true or false. Your key question is, "Is it really true?"

So, Katie, in her book and seminars, continually raises the question: how would your life be if you didn.t believe anything? How would it be if you only saw what is in front of your face and acted accordingly without a story? Is that even possible? Would that result, if possible, in no action at all? Or would you, without a story, be living in the continual Now (and laughing most of the time)? [See Chap 23 & 36]

The most common story that folks invent when shown this truth about what they can know says, one way or another, that all their responsibility would vanish, they would lead a wildly sybaritic life, society would collapse and the world would come to an end. That's a helluva story. That story replaces your natural (and correct) decision making ability with, usually, someone else's story.

Some other very popular stories that I've believed (and fought over and cried over) are, "I'm A Father", "I'm A Husband", "I'm An Artist" and "I'm A Teacher". The stories are capitalized because they are Roles and came with directions and mandates and perquisites and entitlements. Shakespeare said it best: "All the world's a stage. And all the men and women merely players." So, instead of simply doing my best from moment to moment and enjoying myself, I made a Role for each belief.

What's the difference between believing a story, any story, and simply seeing and acting on what is? Believing instructs you to see what you see in a certain way. You must, if you believe, see and do things in a certain light and feel a certain way about them. For instance, if you believe in a judgmental god (like Kali or Zeus or X) then you can story-tell a scraped elbow as a punishment from this deity. You could also story-tell yourself, and others, that your scrape is a testament to your courage or, perhaps, not worth noticing. The story you put on a scraped elbow is just that, a story. What actually happened was one of science's laws at work: two objects, your elbow and the sidewalk, cannot occupy the same place at the same time and your elbow loses. That's what is. When you strip away the stories you are left with what is and that is physics and nothing more. The fact, as I've demonstrated elsewhere (See Chap 1), that the physics, and everything else, are inextricably part of God can (and should) be a source of considerable joy to you.

Your own emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant, are a better way than believing in stories to evaluate events in your life. The pleasant emotions tell you that (probably) all's well and the unpleasant ones tell you that (probably) it isn.t. We have many names for our emotions. I believe L.R. Hubbard catalogued about sixty distinct emotions: 12 pleasant and 48 unpleasant. But it doesn.t matter how many names we put on them because they all have something in common. You can feel them. All the pleasant ones make you feel good and all the unpleasant ones make you feel bad.

With that in mind you can do what you want, whatever that is, and can construct, with simple trial-and-error, a satisfying life out of your emotions (and, hopefully, one that helps others). And you can use all the unpleasant emotions to steer you away from what is causing those emotions. If you keep honestly evaluating what you are doing you will be steered correctly. Simple. "Living life is simple, it's the stories that make it difficult." (Katie)

Do I still have stories? Of course I do and I enjoy them immensely. I particularly like the one about me being a philosopher. Ho, ho, ho! What I'm actually doing is enjoying myself and the story is just something on top. I put a "philosophical cherry" on top of this delicious cake I'm eating. Thanks Katie.

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