PNTV: Loving What Is by Byron Katie (#38)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we're going to do a great book, Loving what Is by Byron Katie. She rocks. We've got this book, my six page PDF philosopher's note on it, where I've got maybe 12, 15 of my favorite big ideas. This book is packed with big ideas. Byron Katie's extraordinary. It's based on her work, which is actually called the work, which is based on four questions. We're actually not going to go into them in this TV episode. We've got 10 minutes. I'll leave that for the note and for the book. But the book has just so many other great big ideas. I want to talk about those that I think we can translate into our lives immediately, right now and save the work for the book and for the note. The big idea with Byron Katie's work is we need to love what is. It's probably why she named her book Loving what Is. And we need to stop arguing with reality. And she says, I realize that it's insane to argue with reality. Whenever I argue with reality, she says, I lose, but only 100% of the time. I just love that I lose, but only 100% of the time. She says trying to make reality different than it is is trying to like make. Is trying like trying to make a cat bark just doesn't make any sense. Now when I actually taught that in a class I was teaching in Bali, someone sent me a YouTube clip of a cat barking, but it was almost a bark. But you get the idea. We don't want to argue with reality. If something is happening in our life, the most healthy thing we can do is to embrace that. To love what is it is what it is. And to say that it should be something other than what it is is literally insane. And she talks about that again and again in the book. And it's the root of our suffering. So as you know, we always have a choice as to how we can respond, respond to whatever it is that's happening in our lives. And again, her work and the four questions are all about that. It's a really powerful tool to help us gain more clarity. So here are some other big ideas that can help us on that front. In that regard, she says, you need to figure out whose business you're in. And she says, I can only see three different people's business. You can be in yours. God's like your business, my business, God's business, or somebody else's business. Right now if I'm in God's business, then I'm complaining about earthquakes or floods or other natural disasters, death. These things happen. That's God's business. To complain about those things is like getting into God's business. You just got to let God do her his thing right now you could also be in someone else's business saying that someone else should behave a certain way or say certain things. Well, that's not a very smart idea. We don't want to be in someone else's business. The only business we want to be in is our own. Isn't that a cool idea? So take an inventory and see whose business you're in. Are you in your business? Were you realizing the only thing you have control over is your response to God's business, other people's business? Or are you spending a lot of your time in God's business or other people's business? Because if you're spending a lot of time in other people's business and God's business, we can almost assure you and others that you're going to be suffering because things aren't always going to go your way. People are not always going to do what you want them to do, and God's not always going to behave the way you want God to behave. That's just how it is. So look at that and see whose business you're in. She's also got a great idea here of compassionate alarm clocks. Anytime we're stressed, anytime that life is giving us something that we're interpreting in a way that gives us stress rather than lament that and suffer our suffering, we can look at our suffering as. Or our stressful thoughts as compassionate alarm clocks. Isn't that cool? Compassionate alarm clocks that are buzzing and waking us up to the work that we still have to do. That this particular issue in our response to it is basically revealing to us where we have some unresolved issues. Compassionate alarm clocks. Big idea. So if you're suffering, can you see that it's just an alarm clock that's asking you to wake up to life into a higher level being a more conscious way of living. Really big idea. So this is one of my favorite big ideas. Need to take a drink of water from the clean canteen. I'm a little excited. So one of my favorite big ideas out of all 1000 from these hundred notes is the next one, Lint on a projector's lens. So Katie, as she's affectionately known, she tells a story that our consciousness is dictating Our world, right? And one of the ways she brings the point home is to imagine this. Imagine you're at a movie theater and you're watching a movie on a big screen. And imagine it's a movie projector lens that's projecting the movie onto the screen, right? Now, let's imagine that on the lens of the projector that's projecting the movie onto the screen, there's a little bit of lint, right? So that little bit of lint on the lens and as it's projected, shows up as a squiggly, weird mark, a big one on the screen. So we're sitting there, we're trying to watch the movie, right? But there's this lint that's projecting itself as this annoying mark blemish on the screen. Now, a lot of times what we would do is we'd get up and we'd try to rub off the squiggly thing on the screen, and we'd rub it, and we'd rub it, and we'd rub it. We try to change the screen right? Now, doing that without realizing the fact that it's the lint that needs to be cleaned off the lens. If we want to get that off the screen, we've got to change the lens, right? Katie says that's the same exact thing that happens in our lives. Our consciousness is the projector's lens that projects onto the outside world. So if we're seeing something on the movie screen of our life, of the outside world, what we want to do usually is rub people so that they change. We want to rub the movie screen. We want to change people's behaviors. We want to change God's behaviors and actions. We want to change things outside of us that we don't like. And we fail to see that it's our consciousness that is what is in need of cleaning, right? All we've got to do is clean off the lint on our own consciousness, and the world's just fine. Isn't that cool? The screen is blank. The world is blank. What we need to focus on is our own projector's lens, our own consciousness. I just love that idea. Isn't that awesome? So when you see things in the outside world on the movie screen of life that are annoying you, and you might have some that are happening in your life right now, see if you can pause and say, wow, I wonder if it's because of how I'm perceiving the situation. Guess what? It always will be. You can count on that. No matter how annoying someone May be you always have a choice as to how you're going to respond. You can view them as a compassionate alarm clock, right, Giving you a wake up call. You need to either leave the relationship, transform the relationship, transform yourself in some way to transform the relationship. There's always something that we can do when we're in our business. Really big idea. She says that every story that we tell has a theme and it involves the word should. Things should be different. This shouldn't be happening. This shouldn't be happening. Should, should, should, should, should we should on ourselves, as Tony Robbins would say. So we want to change the theme of our dominant life stories. One way to do that is to quit opposing what's happening and let it be. What is happening is what we love to have happening. That's when we know we've reached a transcendent state and we're going to be happy from that state. She says, I think if I think that someone else is creating my problems, I'm insane, quote, unquote. So if you think that someone else is causing your problems, according to Byron Katie, you are insane. There you go. So take back control, clean your own lens, you'll be alright. She also has a great quote. She says, the greatest stock market you can invest in is yourself. The greatest stock market you can invest in is yourself. Too often, again, we're looking outside of ourselves. Invest in yourself with your time and your energy and your money and your resources. Really, really do the work on yourself and you're going to see transformation in every aspect of your life. Abundance in every sense, in relationships, material abundance, your own consciousness and happiness, etc. Really big idea. She's got another big idea. Doing the dishes. Life never gives us more than we can handle. And there's only one thing we need to worry about at a time. Really big idea. So what's the next thing you need to worry about when you're stressed out? Just do the dishes. Do the next thing that's in front of you. Big idea. We can talk about this forever. Byron. Katie rocks. Check out the book. Check out the note. Hope you dug it. Share more with you soon.

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