“A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering.“
A thought is something you think.
A belief is a thought you keep on thinking.
A belief system is a multitude of beliefs that interconnect with each other and provide each other strength.
As we have seen in the explanation on the five step cycle of creation; how our thoughts influence our reality, it is of vital importance to be able to transform our thoughts, beliefs and belief systems that no longer serve us.
A great tool for this is The Work from Byron Katie. She has developed a very clear and simple technique that allows people to investigate, turn around and transform their stressful thoughts. She calls this process The Work and she explains the process in depth on her website for free.
“Until you question what you believe, you remain the innocent cause of your own suffering.”
Even though Byron Katie might look like a sweet old lady and probably is, don’t be fooled by her appearance. She goes into the heavy stuff and dives deep with this when it is needed also. She is absolutely fearless when it comes to investigating bad feeling thoughts. And so should we all be.
In this playlist she explains the process in detail. On her website you can download a lot of tools for free to start doing the work yourself. I can personally recommend the – One Belief At a Time Worksheet – she offers there. It’s a simple way to get started with this great method of self inquiry.
Here an example of her doing The Work with somebody on a very common stressful subject; Money!
Other than what you are thinking and believing, are you ok?
She has written several books about The Work that can help a person understand and apply the process better.
So far I have not found a clearer, simpler or better working tool that enables people to investigate, turn around and transform their own bad feeling thoughts, beliefs and beliefs systems.
It can take some time to get used to the process but like everything you get better at it with practice and once people see for themselves how they can learn from, and transform their own stressful thoughts there is in a sense nothing to hold them back any longer. If you are able and confident with this method of self inquiry you can really start changing how you experience your reality in a drastic way for the better.
“Don’t believe everything you think.”
“A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. ”
“As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there” as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you’re suffering in paradise.”
“Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to change the world so that they can be happy. This hasn’t ever worked, because it approaches the problem backward. What The Work gives us is a way to change the projector—mind—rather than the projected. It’s like when there’s a piece of lint on a projector’s lens. We think there’s a flaw on the screen, and we try to change this person and that person, whomever the flaw appears on next. But it’s futile to try to change the projected images. Once we realize where the lint is, we can clear the lens itself. This is the end of suffering, and the beginning of a little joy in paradise.”
“The Work doesn’t help anyone; it’s your answers that help you.”
Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded (and uninvestigated) thoughts.
With this method that enables people to investigate, turn around and transform their (stressful) thoughts, beliefs and beliefs systems, combined with an understanding of how their thoughts influence their reality through the 5 step cycle of creation, people can really empower themselves.
Whenever something is “wrong” or “off” in the way how you experience physical reality, whenever you want to blame another person for how you feel and act, you can start looking for the stressful thought and do the work on it. Doing The Work has brought me one step closer to inner peace with every stressful thought I investigated. And I am confident it can do the same for other people.
This method gives a person a very precise description of a path they can walk towards inner peace, if they so choose to. And that path can lead right up to enlightenment: Losing the Moon; Byron Katie dialogues on Non-Duality, Truth and Other Illusions.
Yes, it hurts. And yet all suffering comes from unquestioned thinking and is pure imagination. Feel it? Unquestioned thinking hurts; reality doesn’t.