Byron Katie quotes:

Placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience; taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them

Spare yourself from seeking love, approval, or appreciation-from anyone. And watch what happens in reality, just for fun.

Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do.

The world is perfect. As you question your mind, this becomes more and more obvious. Mind changes, and as a result, the world changes. A clear mind heals everything that needs to be healed. It can never be fooled into believing that there is one speck out of order.

I used to sleep on the floor next to the bed, because I believed that I didn't even deserve a bed to sleep in. And then, one morning, a cockroach crawled onto my leg. I looked at it, and suddenly I awoke from a kind of hypnotic trance in which I had been all my life.

It's not your job to like me - it's mine

When we believe in our thoughts, when we tell ourselves a story, we suffer. 'My husband doesn't respect me.' 'I should be thinner.' Those are stories. When there's no story, there's no suffering.

There's no way that a clear mind can live an unhappy life.

Stress is an alarm clock that lets you know you're attached to something not true for you.

Happiness is a clear mind. A clear and sane mind knows how to live, how to work, what emails to send, what phone calls to make, and what to do do to create what it wants without fear.

Everyone is a mirror image of yourself-your own thinking coming back to you.

One morning, in February 1986, out of nowhere, I experienced a realization. In an instant, I discovered that when I believed my stressful thoughts, I suffered, but when I questioned them, I didn't suffer.

Everyone in your life is a figment of your imagination--ev en you.

When I was in my early forties, I slept with a loaded gun under my bed. I'd become severely depressed in my thirties, and for almost a decade I spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and thoughts of suicide.

I suffered from severe depression for over a decade. My condition deteriorated steadily. I was suicidal.

It is easy to be swept away by some overwhelming feeling, so it's helpful to remember that any stressful feeling is like a compassionate alarm clock that says, "You're caught in the dream."

If I had a prayer, it would be this: "God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen."

Mind changes, and as a result, the world changes. A clear mind heals everything that needs to be healed.

A teacher of fear can't bring peace on earth. We have been trying to do it that way for thousands of years. The person who turns inner violence around, the person who finds peace inside and lives it, is the one who teaches what true peace is. We are waiting for just one teacher. You're the one.

Without our stories, we are not only able to act clearly and fearlessly, we are also a friend, a listener. We are people living happy lives. We are appreciation and gratitude that have become as natural as breath itself. Happiness is the natural state for someone who knows that there's nothing to know and that we already have everything we need, right here now.

If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark.

When your mind opens, the whole world falls into place.

The world is nothing but my perception of it. I see only through myself. I hear only through the filter of my story.

Never be fooled into believing that there is one speck out of order.

It only takes one clear person to have a good relationship.

Just keep coming home to yourself, you are the one who you've been waiting for.

I don't let go of concepts -I meet them with understanding. Then they let go of me.

No one has ever been able to control his thinking, although people may tell the story of how they have. I don't let go of my thoughts-I meet them with understanding. Then they let go of me.

Fear has only two causes: the thought of losing what you have or the thought of not getting what you want.

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. A belief is a thought that we've been attaching to, often for years.

The only difference between heaven and hell is believing a thought.

If your happiness depends on your children being happy, that makes them your hostages. So stay out of their business, stop using them for your happiness, and be your own happiness. And that way you are the teacher for your children: someone who knows how to live a happy life.

It's good that it hurts. Pain is the signal that you're confused, that you're in a lie.

I realized that it's insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose-but only 100% of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It's blowing!

I use the word inquiry as synonymous with The Work...Inquiry is a way to end confusion and to experience internal peace, even in a world of apparent chaos. Above all else, inquiry is about realizing that all the answers we ever need are always available inside us.

Lack of understanding is always painful.

Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you.

Your nature is truth, and when you oppose it, you don't feel like yourself. Stress never feels as natural as peace does.

Do you want to meet the love of your life? Look in the mirror.

After you've been doing inquiry for a while, if you have the thought "She doesn't love me," you just get the immediate turnaround with a smile: "Oh, I'm not loving myself in this moment."

How do I know it was meant to happen this way? Because it did.

As you inquire into issues and turn judgments around, you come to see that every perceived problem appearing "out there" is really nothing more than a misperception within your own thinking.

The voice within is what I'm married to. All marriage is a metaphor for that marriage. My lover is the place inside me where an honest yes and no come from. That's my true partner. It's always there. And to tell you yes when my integrity says no is to divorce that partner.

When you think that someone or something other than yourself needs to change, you're mentally out of your business.

If our thinking is clear, how could work or money be the problem? Our thinking is all we need to change.

Nothing terrible has ever happened except in our thinking. Reality is always good, even in situations that seem like nightmares. The story we tell is the only nightmare that we have lived.

The nightmare always becomes laughter, once it's understood.

Pay close attention to the particular thoughts you use to deprive yourself of happiness.

all the advice you ever gave your partner is for you to hear

The person who finds peace inside and lives it, is the one who teaches what true peace is.

Everyone wants peace, inside and outside, and we would all have it if we knew how. Now we know how. It begins with you.

I've always been just me, but I was the last to know that it was all right.

I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.

The world is your perception of it. Inside and outside always match - they're reflections of each other. The world is a mirror image of your mind.

The only way I can be angry at you is when I have thought, said, or done something that is unkind in my own opinion.

That's what every uncomfortable feeling is for-that's what pain is for, what money is for, what everything in the world is for: your self-realization.

Self-realization is not complete until it lives in action.

It's not possible to have a problem without believing a prior thought. To notice this simple truth is the beginning of peace.

Thought the mind can justify itself faster than the speed of light, it can be stopped through the act of writing.

Our parents, our children, our spouses, and our friends will continue to press every button we have, until we realize what it is that we don't want to know about ourselves, yet. They will point us to our freedom every time.

When you realize that every stressful moment you experience is a gift that points you to your own freedom, life becomes very kind.

I have never experienced a stressful feeling that wasn't caused by attaching to an untrue thought. Behind every uncomfortable feeling, there's a thought that isn't true for us.

Rather than understand the original cause-a thought-we try to change the stressful feelings by looking outside ourselves.

I have discovered that in every language and every country I have visited, there are no new stories. They're all recycled. The same stressful thoughts arise in each mind one way or another, sooner or later.

Until we question our stressful thoughts, we remain victims of the images in our head.

There are no new stressful thoughts. They're all recycled.

You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer".

My experience is that the teachers we need most are the people we're living with right now.

To think that I know what's best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what's right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve problems for you.

What is perfect health? The unraveling of all imagined states of mind

The only thing you fear is the unreality that you yourself have invented.

Whatever it takes for you to find your freedom, that's what you've lived.

Do you know anyone who hasn't changed his mind? This door was a tree, then it will be firewood for someone, then it will return to air and earth. We're all like that, constantly changing. It's simply honest to report that you've changed your mind when you have. When you're afraid of what people will think if you speak honestly, that's where you become confused.

I haven't had a single thought for 26 years. I have only understanding. It's somewhat complicated to understand that. I've hardly ever spoken about it. You're in a state of total peace of mind. A kind of nirvana.

Our job is unconditional love. The job of everyone else in our life is to push our buttons.

I think that's the trick: wanting what I have.

Since the past is unreal and the future is unreal, all your thoughts are about nothing.

Every single human being is trying his best. We're all doing the best we can. But when we believe what we think, we have to live out those thoughts. When there's chaos in our heads, there's chaos in our lives. When there's hurt in our thinking, there's hurt in our lives. Love thy neighbor as thyself? I always have. When I hated me, I hated you. That's how it works. If I hate someone, I'm mistaking them for me, and solutions remain hidden.

Sometimes the concept you're questioning makes more sense to ask just the second one and not the first one.

Thinking that what you want equals what's best for you is a dead end.

I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours and God's. Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our business. When I think, "You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself," I am in your business. When I'm worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God's business. If I am mentally in your business or in God's business, the effect is separation.

I like to say it was born out of laughter.

Peace doesn't require two people; it requires only one. It has to be you. The problem begins and ends there.

People try so hard to let go of their negative behaviors and thoughts, and it doesn't work, or it works only for a short time. I didn't let go of my negative thoughts; I questioned them, and then they let go of me, and so did my addictions and depression.

It's not the problem that causes our suffering; it's our thinking about the problem.

The ultimate and dearest - and, again, only - relationship we have is the relationship we have with our thoughts.

That's the purpose of stress. It's a friend. It's an alarm clock, built in to let you know that it's time to do The Work.

The whole world is simply my story, projected back to me on the screen of my own perception. All of it.

Every mind deserves to be free.

I like to say understanding is the power.

Happiness is the natural state for someone who knows that there's nothing to know.

I stopped waiting for the world to give me what I wanted; I started giving it to myself.

It's for each of us to look at what we really do believe - what our belief system really consists of.

If your beliefs are stressful and you question them, you come to see that they aren't true - whereas prior to questioning, you absolutely believe them. How can you live in joy when you're believing thoughts that bring on sadness, frustration, anger, alienation, and loneliness?

If something happens to your son, your thoughts about not having him in your life is what your terror is. It's not about his life.

There's never a mistake in the universe. So if your partner is angry, good. If there are things about him that you consider flaws, good, because these flaws are your own, you're projecting them, and you can write them down, inquire, and set yourself free. People go to India to find a guru, but you don't have to: you're living with one. Your partner will give you everything you need for your own freedom.

I think our children are afraid to die because we're afraid to die.

It's not what happens in life that bothers us. It's what we're believing about it that bothers us.

We say to others only what we need to hear

The most important relationship is the mind's relationship with itself. In other words, the ultimate - and, really, the only - relationship you have is the relationship with your own thoughts.

War that I have anywhere in my life should stop.

I love not rushing the process. Mind doesn't shift until it does, and when it does shift, it's right on time, not one second too late or too soon. People are like seeds waiting to sprout. We can't be pushed ahead of our own understanding.

I live in a state of grace, where I don't have to know.

My mother became a believer, and then I became a believer. But when I was 43 years old, I began to think for myself, somehow, by fluke and by grace. And I thought, "Oh, my. I was so mistaken." The world isn't what I believed it to be. I am not what I believed me to be, and neither is anyone.

Until the mind is open, the heart stays closed. The open mind is the key to the open heart.

When your son is healthy and happy, you're healthy and happy. And when your son is not healthy, let's say you're unhappy.

When you realize that suffering and discomfort are the call to inquiry, you may actually begin to look forward to uncomfortable feelings. You may even experience them as friends coming to show you what you have not yet investigated thoroughly enough.

I am entirely motivated without anger. The truth sets us free, and freedom acts.

If you are an enemy to your own mind, other people have to become enemies too, sooner or later. Until you understand, until you can love the thoughts that appear in your mind, then you can love the rest of us. You work with the projector -the mind - not the projected world. I can't really love you until I question the mind that thinks it sees you outside itself . . .

Nothing outside you can ever give you what you're looking for.

Your most intimate relationship is the one you have with your thoughts.

If you question your thoughts about when your son is not healthy, you come to see that you're the only one you're worried about. It's like without him, you're not happy - so it's all about your happiness. You want him to live for you - for your happiness.

When you question what you believe, you leave the world, really, and what the world believes. It puts you in a very interesting position.

No-one can disappoint you, only your thoughts about them can

If I'm okay with dying, my son is at least as enlightened as that. If I'm okay with my cancer, my son is at least as enlightened as I am.

It's quite an amazing experience to see the same life with and without the thought. We come to see how crazy a thought can make us when we believe it.

The best way of leading people is to let them find their own way.