So in some cases, "loving what is," means accepting the fact that someone else's behavior affects us a certain way and then asking for help from them and compassionately communicating our needs while not demanding or expecting the other person to meet them - as we understand our needs are ultimately our own responsibility and the other person may only be one strategy or source of meeting our needs. I don't like reading them, and most generally end up throwing the book out, or keeping it as a source of laughter material. That is, The Work can bring us home to our true nature, which is universal love, profound wisdom, and freedom from all suffering. The Work has been compared to the Socratic method and to Zen meditation, but Katie is not aligned with any religion or tradition. In this groundbreaking book, Katie helps you question everything you have been taught to do to gain love, approval, and appreciation and shows you how this questioning brings real love and puts you in charge of your own happiness.

Considering the fact that most of my reading and listening comes from local libraries, that is saying something. In this final exercise, you are asked to imagine yourself in the presence of that situation or relationship, free from that stressful thought. Byron Katie’s wisdom-filled words and Hans Wilhelm’s vivid, magical illustrations combine to make a book that can transform the lives of even very young children. The idea that "he shouldn't be dishonest" can be turned around to "I shouldn't be dishonest" and become a great opportunity to ponder my own personal commitment to honesty. I give this book five stars because I think that it is a profound idea that Byron Katie is introducing- especially for those who are tormented with the weight of worry about those people and circumstances around them that they feel as though they have some power to control.What may not be reasonable or sane is the various strategies we may be entrenched in trying to meet those needs.

Out of nowhere, like a cool breeze in a marketplace crowded with advice, comes Byron Katie and The Work. You will observe people work their way through a broad range of human problems, learning freedom through the very thoughts that had caused their suffering—thoughts such as “my husband betrayed me” or “my mother doesn’t love me enough. As a survivor of an abusive relationship, I cannot take any advice from someone who excuses another person's abusive behavior. Byron Katie invites you to discover the reality in your life, how you react to it, feel about it, then turn it around. And unless you think Mother Teresa's lifelong effort to serve others and relieve suffering is on par with Jeffrey Dahmer's lifelong path of sadism, death and destruction, then you too believe that some paths are inherently higher than others.And I don't believe a healthy, integrated and sane adult just resigns to accept whatever the other person is doing just because it's "not their business. To tell a victim that they need to admit they are guilty of some part of the abuse is incomprehensible to me. Drawing on her own experience of moving through suffering to freedom, Byron Katie developed 'The Work': a simple, four-step programme to help pinpoint the problems that are troubling you and how to tackle them effectively. This is where you turn a problem around and see if the problem is actually your fault or just in your head. As reports spread about the transformations they felt they were experiencing through The Work, she was invited to present it publicly elsewhere in California, then throughout the United States, and eventually in Europe and across the world.

There are indeed some great principles in this book, ones that I deeply resonate with and that have been a part of philosophies like Taoism and Buddhism for centuries. This took me awhile to figure out, as to why I wasn't jiving with her application of the basic premise of the book, which I agreed and agree with - that it's generally much more healthy to accept what is rather than resist or argue with it. There is a much more helpful understanding in realizing the needs which motivate our resistances and judgments are legitimate, human and reasonable. The notion of releasing the thought leads seamlessly to this fourth question, which offers the prospect of freedom from a thought grounded in fear or falsehood. If you continue to do The Work, you may discover that the questioning flows into every aspect of your life, effortlessly undoing the stressful thoughts that keep you from experiencing peace.

Loving What Is will show you step by step, through clear and vivid examples, exactly how to use this revolutionary process for yourself. It's also completely inappropriate to ask a woman to identify what "her part" was in the sexual abuse her stepfather committed on her when she was nine years old. My concern is for the danger of applying this technique to (an admittedly small number of) extreme cases, such as those who are victims of crime.