Why are people such sheep? Seriously? Why do people listen to anything with completely non-critical attention? Why do people just accept the slop that they are told -- and not have their own thoughts on it? When someone is in front of an auditorium of people saying stuff that is not true -- why are people acting like they are hearing wisdom?
Seriously! I sat in a large auditorium yesterday with a bunch of people listening to Byron Katie -- who is apparently having such success around the world that her books and CDs are being translated into many different languages and millions of people are doing "the Work" -- and it sort of makes me frightened for the state of the world (not that there is much about the state of the world that isn't frightening).
But, for example (and I stayed long enough to give you several examples before booking out of the insanity of that workshop): Katie brought up the following concept:
So, if you cut off your arm, and you think you are going to experience pain, then you feel pain and you go into panic. But if you could just pause and ask yourself, "Is it true?" about the pain, you would find that it's the anticipation of the pain that is causing the pain, even if it's only a second ahead into the future. If you could just keep asking yourself, "Is it true?", then you would be able to see that you don't have to suffer.
Okay, you're probably thinking that I'm exaggerating and that she didn't really say that or I misunderstood. No. She really said it. I really understood what she was getting at. And I understated it, rather than exaggerating it.
I sat there in my seat thinking that these people are acting like what she's saying is TRUE! You know what? Some things hurt!!! I'm sure (absolutely, positively) that if someone cuts off their arm, it will hurt! NOT because of the thought that it would hurt -- but because of the reality of that exact moment -- it hurts when skin is cut, bones are crushed, nerves are damaged. Yes, there is an element of shock that diminishes some of the pain -- but it still hurts, for sure. We are human beings! We have pain receptors AND pleasure receptors! Physically and emotionally! Katie acts like if we could just get a grip on our thinking that we could be happy all of the time and never suffer, physically or emotionally. Well ... bullshit! That is just crazy bullshit.
There's a real irony here in that she asks you to question everything, "Is it true? Can you know that it's true?", etc. -- but the thing is that the one thing that should be really questioned is: is this process true? Is "the Work" true? Because, NO, it isn't! Denying your actual physical experience and emotional experience, denying your perceptions in favor of an emotional and mental lobotomy so that you can be happily disconnected from anything that might cause you discomfort or pain or any human emotion or feeling other than happiness and peace -- is insane. There are things that we shouldn't be comfortable with. Discomfort and pain are signals. It is to our detriment to ignore them.
There was a woman Katie worked with who has a daughter who has lots of serious medical problems and the woman felt saddened by that and stressed out about it. Which is a totally sane, normal, and healthy way to feel. When people you love are hurt and/or suffer, it is good to empathize with them, to care about them, to show your love and compassion. This mother is going through a lot with her child -- this mother needs to cry her tears, to lean on her friends, to talk about her fears and her pain. Yes, perhaps to question her thoughts to see if she is creating more of a problem in her mind than actually exists -- but no, don't deny what is actually happening in front of her -- and don't deny what she is feeling! If she is feeling sad, then HONOR that! What she does NOT need to do is to make herself wrong for how she feels -- or to do "the Work" and brainwash herself into feeling happily disconnected from whether her daughter lives or dies or suffers or has a happy childhood.
If that's the price of "peace" and "happiness" -- to be so unattached from reality that you simply don't care about anything or anybody, but just live in this fog that you choose to call reality -- well, then you can keep it. I want no part of it.
To add injury to insult, the implication was also made that we cause 100% of whatever happens in our lives by our thoughts 100% of the time. So, this young mother whose child has been gravely ill and could become so again -- she's getting the message from these lunatics that if her daughter does get ill again, it is her fault for worrying and being stressed and the fears and thoughts she has had -- and projected onto her daughter and caused her daughter to have! There is no room made for the possibility that life just happens and sometimes it is shit that comes up and there's nothing you can do about it but feel it, deal with it, grieve it, whatever you need to do to get past it. And if this little girl gets ill again and suffers more, maybe even doesn't make it -- her Mom's been given instructions to detach from all of that emotionally -- and to just enjoy each moment she has with her child. Why would you want to waste her last moments in misery and fear?
Well, hello? Why would you want to deny your experience, her experience, your feelings, her feelings? Why would you want to be anything but fully present to all of it? Why wouldn't you let your child see you cry and know that you deeply love her and would do anything to help her get well? Why wouldn't you let your child cry in your arms at the unfairness of fate? Why wouldn't you feel everything and allow those feelings to move through you and for you to fully experience the joy, pain, elation, tragedy, everything of the experience of being human?
She talks about a guy holding a gun to her stomach and her thought was, I hope he doesn't do that to himself. WHAT?!? No. Nobody's thought is that in that situation. I don't believe it. But okay, even if I did believe it -- let's go there. Do you think so little of yourself and the value of your life that you don't care if someone takes it from you? Do you care so little about your friends and the people who love you that you don't even consider how they would feel if you were murdered? You can recognize that the person holding the gun must be in some considerable pain and desperate to be doing this -- but come on! Compassion starts with compassion for the SELF! You can't bypass that step.
I'll tell you what. If the price of inner peace is choosing to believe that reality is an illusion and that the illusion of unending happiness and peace is reality -- then forget it, I want nothing to do with that. But I don't believe that is true at all. I don't believe that inner peace is a one-shot deal, you suddenly find it and live in a state of bliss. I don't find Katie to be sane or authentic at all. She completely negates every normal human experience, emotion and feeling. She says that she's "happy all of the time" because everything is a constant miracle to her.
Personally, I think that when she was practically psychotic, sleeping on the floor next to her bed because she didn't feel worthy enough to sleep in a bed -- and slept with a shotgun and entertained ideas of shooting the postman for the crime of touching her house to put mail in the slot -- that she must have been either doing some major hallucinogenic drugs or that she was seriously mentally ill. And then, when the cockroach crawled across her foot as she slept on the floor, and woke her up, and she laughed and was suddenly enlightened? Either the residual effects of the drugs ... or she's still seriously mentally ill in a different form. Either way, I don't know why people are following her. I find that really scary. I mean, yes. There is the tiniest bit of truth in her teachings. Yes, we could examine where our thoughts create stories that take us further into emotions and feelings like anger. However, don't people notice when she slips from this little bit of wisdom into full-blown insanity?!? HELLO?!? It's not her fault that she's mentally ill. But what the hell are people doing believing the insane things she says? Yes, she's funny. She'd be a great comedienne on tour. A barrel of laughs. But she is NOT a spiritual leader and she is NOT a person imparting wisdom into the world. She's a disturbingly detached person who would more appropriately be in a mental institution than on a platform speaking to people. The guy who introduced her was practically gushing out his "guarantee that she will CHANGE you and CHANGE your life!" WHAT?!?! NO!!!
Her big thing is "loving what is" -- but you don't actually love what is -- you love what you change it into in your mind. You don't love your anger or your hurt feelings or anything that is real. You don't love the sensations and the things you feel, physically or emotionally -- not unless they fit into the beauty of the world you are creating in your mind. So, when a guy holds a gun in your stomach, you can't help but notice the beautiful moon and the soft breeze -- and you don't notice the fear or adrenaline that would surely be rushing through any sane person. I'm not explaining this as well as I want -- but loving what is -- that includes loving everything, not picking and choosing what to love and what to call "reality". And also, she says that if something exists, then it is meant to be. Like, how do I know that your arm was supposed to be cut off? Because it is cut off. Well, then using that same logic, how do I know that I'm supposed to be angry as hell? Because I AM angry as hell! Right? Only that isn't part of the deal. And then, extending that out into the world -- that if it exists, love it because that is what is supposed to be (we know that because it exists) -- so, one would love poverty, racism, sexism, disease, etc.? But don't love your anger that these things exist and don't try to change them? Why doesn't everyone immediately see how insane and convoluted this is?!?
I don't want to live in a world where people have decided that unconditional love is "helping someone to pack" when they decide to leave you, where people have realized that the only reason you "care" about people (like your children) is how comfortable their health and happiness make you and how uncomfortable their pain or disease make you -- so if you just understand that their well-being really has nothing to do with you, you can stop caring (!) and just keep living your bliss, where when someone is in pain, you can basically ignore it and be glad that it's not your turn to be in pain, and where you can just question everything so that instead of ever trusting what you perceive with your senses, your mind, your experience and reality -- you can just dismiss all of that and only trust what you choose to create with your mind, which is this bizarro utopia where you act like you're stoned and disconnected all of the time. No thanks.
I want to live in a world where people fight (in a positive way) for their own good and the good of others around them. I want to live in a world where people are full of compassion and empathy -- and when you see a person in pain, it hurts you too. It should hurt us too to see people, particularly people we love, in pain. I want to live in a world where people have heart connections and care about each other -- not because of how that person's life affects our life and comfort -- but because at this deep, ineffable level -- we sense that we are one, that we are connected, and that there is LOVE! If I'm dying, I want my loved ones to cry with me, to celebrate my life, to go on and be happy -- but certainly NOT to act like it means nothing to them that I'm dying. Death is NOT an illusion! Yes, it may be that this life is an illusion of sorts and we "die" into reality -- if that's how you want to look at it. However, the reality of this lifetime is, when people die, it hurts. You miss them. There is grieving to be done. I think it is just hurtful and insane to act like it's an illusion. You can be comforted by your spiritual beliefs, but YOU ARE STILL HUMAN.
I just don't understand how hundreds of people could sit in that auditorium and act like she was imparting wisdom. A crazy person is standing up there saying totally insane things -- and I'm looking around at people participating and nodding and I'm wondering -- WTF!?!? Why isn't anybody else acting like this is crazy? What is that poor young mother going to do if her child has a relapse? Thanks to Katie, she'll feel like it's her fault -- not the cruel twist of fate. She'll feel like she's failed "the Work" and like she'd also be wrong to be sad or worried. Her whole repertoire of human expression will be blocked unless she can break free of this insanity.
What Byron Katie seems to recommend is to stop being human -- to pretend that you're already dead. According to her, she woke up "in heaven." Well, for me, heaven can wait. I still have living to do.