Free Your Mind

Through my search for deeper joy and harmony in my life, a friend of mine shared a link to a story that I felt compelled to share.

The article is titled "Can These Four Questions Change Your Life?" and was written by Caitlin Flanagan. In the summer of 2008, Caitlin was diagnosed with a metastic reoccurence of breast cancer and was struggling to abandon her emotional suffering  and dread and start living with some cheer. While on chemotherapy she logged onto Oprah.com from her laptop. It was there that she found a series of articles about Byron Katie. Find the article Here.

At the age of 43, Katie, as she is called, had had a life-changing realization about the importance of living in the reality of the present moment. All the suffering that goes on inside our minds, she told Oprah, is not reality. It's just a story we torture ourselves with.

Katie says:

"There is reality, and then there is the movie your mind projects about that reality. There is the dress, and there is the movie that tells you how you look in the dress. Your mind projects the movie that tells you that you're about to be fired or that you've ruined a friendship or that you have no sense of style.

..... Katie realized that we all have full permission to walk over to the movie projector and yank the plug from the wall. "There are two ways to live your life," she says. "One is stressed-out, the other is not. One hurts, one doesn't. Either way, you're living it. Look, if you're having a nightmare, don't you want to wake up? That's what I'm inviting people to do—wake up to reality."

Katie offers "a simple, completely replicable system for getting rid of the thoughts that make us suffer. "All war belongs on paper," she told Oprah, and then she explained how to go to battle: You write down each and every stressful thought, and then ask yourself four questions about it."

Is it true?

Can I absolutely know it's true?

How do I react when I believe this thought?

Who would I be without the thought?
Afterward, when you have completely wrestled the thought to the ground, you replace it with a "turnaround"—an opposite thought, one that is "as true or truer" and that doesn't cause you suffering. "

You can learn about Byron Katie by visiting http://www.thework.com/.

Aimee's Homework:
Dust off the old journal - and get to work.....