Getting More out of Question Four: Imagine

Question Four of The Work of Byron Katie is “Who would you be without that thought?” Many of us have believed our stressful thoughts for so long, we have no idea of what it would look like to live without it.

Here are some ways to go more deeply into Question Four.

1. Travel back in time, mentally, to the way you were prior to the thought. It might be infancy, or early childhood. Or it might be as recent as last week.

Who were you, then?
How did you see yourself?
How did you treat yourself?
How did you treat others differently; particularly, if you are working with a Judge-Your-Neighbor worksheet, how did you treat the person you are inquiring about?


2. Use your imagination.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." —Albert Einstein.

I love to use the imagination when I answer these questions, because it gives me a break from the "I know" mind...which is the mind that says "Yeah, but..." or, "It won't work," or "I've already tried that."

If you can imagine it, then you are it. How else would you know?

So...using the power of your imagination, which may provide an accurate picture is who we are without a story...

How would you treat people differently, in the same situation?
How would you live your life differently?
If you arrived from the planet Mongo and had no preconceived notions of live on earth, how would you view this person/situation?
How do you feel physically with the thought? How would your body feel without it? How did it feel prior to it?

3. Lose the label.

If you wish to be free of whatever is painful in your past, you may want to ask yourself this interesting question:

"If this person were not who you say she is, how would you feel about her now?"

An example: “My brother molested me when I was a child" could be a fact; and not something to condone, ever. And if you are with your family and continue to treat him today as someone who hurt, or hurts you, how does this serve you? Short of never visiting your family, what can you do?

If you did not see him, today, as your perpetrator, how would you react to him the way he is today, and the way you are today?

Your co-worker took credit for your hard work. Today, she is your supervisor. You choose to stay in your job because you like the work you're doing, the benefits, the paycheck, your job security. And, you resent her. Who would you be without this thought that she took credit for your work? If you were meeting her today for the first time, and she were not the thief you say she is, how would you feel about her now that she has the job you wanted?



©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Focus on Facilitation: The Subtle Seasoning of Sub-questions

At the School for The Work, facilitators-in-training are not introduced to sub-questions (questions that deepen the experience of answering the basic four questions) until about midway through the nine days. Especially as new facilitators, we're encouraged to trust in the "basic four," and to use sub-questions when the client needs a little help in reaching within themselves.

Sub-questions are also extremely useful when self-facilitating our own beliefs in writing. You can see these on the One-Belief-at-a-Time worksheet, available for download here.

The following sub-questions are additions to and variations of the ones that Katie and others have provided over the years. Experienced facilitators may find them useful, particularly with "difficult" clients. I also like to ask them of myself; try them first with your own written work, and see how they feel to you.

I love the elegant simplicity of the four questions. Do not use these, or any sub-questions, if they seem to complicate the process for you or your client. The idea is not "whoever uses the most sub-questions wins." Eventually, as a facilitator, you will have an instinct about when to use sub-questions, and which ones to use. I encourage you not to over-salt the Work soup: add sparingly, to taste, only when appropriate. Listen deeply to your clients and notice when you want to manipulate their answers...or impress them with your vast knowledge of Work tricks (speaking from experience).

Questions One and Two:
*(Thanks to Celeste Gabriele for this one) "Before we begin, I invite you to answer these questions as if you've never done The Work before." (Not a sub-question, but a great way to prepare one's mind and hold the space for an honest and clean investigation.)


Question Three:
*What assumptions are you making when you believe this thought?
*What are you avoiding when you believe this thought? ("What are you avoiding?" is a question my former therapist used to ask me, cheekily, when I was being entertaining during our sessions...bless his heart!)
*How has it served you to believe this thought? And how is that working for you now? (Thanks for the inspiration, Dr. Phil!)

Question Four:
*For self-judgments: If you were meeting yourself for the first time, how would you see yourself without this belief? Look at yourself without a story, as if looking at someone about whom you have no prior knowledge or history.
*If this person where not who you say s/he is, how would you respond to her/him now? (In other words, there is no prior "evidence" with these person, there are no labels or diagnoses; there's just a human being in front of you.)
*Who were you prior to this thought? Go back to a time before the belief ever occurred to you.
*Without the thought, do you feel more peaceful? If not, can you identify what still feels stressful?

Turnaround
For the turnaround to the opposite (paraphrasing Katie): If this terrible person or thing, appearing in your life as it is, puts you on your perfect path to self-realization, would you still want it to be different? (This may also be used along with Question Two if the answer to Question One is "yes.")

If you have any "signature sub-question seasonings" in the spirit of The Work (in other words, without mixing modalities), feel free to share them in the "Manifestations of Mind" comments.


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

I Want Out!

Have you ever had the thought, "I want out!"—out of your job, your relationship, your neighborhood, your country, parenthood, your commitments, prison, the hospital, the laundromat, your family reunion, this life in the body, any place or situation where you feel trapped, obligated, dead-ended?

Do you really want to know the truth? Ready to take a trip? Let's do The Work! You may want to say your answers to the questions below out loud, or write them down if it helps you to hold your realizations (I've answered the first two the way I would if I believed my thought, and you might say "no" instead).

If having a facilitator helps you to answer the questions honestly, you can pretend I am in front of you or on the telephone with you, asking them.


"I want out!"

Is it true? Hell, yeah!

Can you absolutely know that it's true? Yes!

How do you react when you believe this thought, what happens?

Some questions you may wish to answer:

Can you know what's best for your path in the long run?
Can you know more than God/Reality?
Where do you feel it in your body when you hold this belief?
What pictures come to mind?
How do you treat people when you think the thought, "I want out"?
How do you treat yourself, how do you live your life? What's the self-talk? Do you turn to addictions: comfort foods, the gym, drugs, oversleeping, alcohol, video games, TV, the telephone, shopping, trashy novels, self-mutilation?
Who and what are you avoiding when you believe the thought, "I want out"?
Who are you attacking mentally, and how do you do that?
Where do you feel it in your body when you think and believe the thought, "I want out"?
When did the thought first occur to you; go back to that time and place, and re-experience it.
Whose business are you in, mentally, when you believe this thought...yours, theirs, God's/Reality's business?
Where does your mind travel when you hold this belief; what thoughts of the past and future arise?
What terrible thing do you fear would happen if you no longer believed you wanted out?
Why do you hold this belief, what does it bring you, how does it serve? Is it a motivator? Is it protecting you? Does it give you a sense of control? How's that working for you?

Who would you be without this thought? (Please don't answer blithely, "I would be love, I would be peace, I would be freedom." Ugh! Instead, feel it; get a picture of yourself, in the same situation, or with the same people, and notice how you would live life—how you may already have lived life—without this thought. How would you feel, physically and mentally? What would you do differently?)

Turn the thought around. (To the opposite, and to "my thinking" if it works for you.) Is the turnaround as true or truer? Give three specific, genuine examples from your life for each turnaround.

Go deeper. If the universe is friendly, why is it a good thing that you are not "out" but "in?"


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Loving the Questions

When Byron Katie suggests we not do inquiry with a motive to resolve a problem, or to feel better, she may be saying the same thing as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke did regarding writing:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 35

No session of The Work goes to waste, in my experience. Epiphanies happen in amazing places, and in their own time: during your 100th worksheet on your wife, six months later in the bathtub, while you're sitting with the next belief after you felt unresolved working with the first one.


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Hot Tub Facilitation: Tips for Facilitators and Coaches

Last summer, I asked someone new to The Work to facilitate me in a hotel hot tub.

She and I were alone in the Jacuzzi and while we were soaking, she introduced herself. Seeing an opening, the woman began pouring out her heart to me. She was in town to help her college-age daughter, a violent young woman who had recently dropped out of school, started hanging out with criminals and was now addicted to chrystal meth. The daughter was living with the woman's elderly parents, stealing belongings and money from them and possibly from other peoples' homes. The young woman had already threatened to kill her mother and had broken into her computer and stolen her credit card passwords; that's why her mother had moved into the hotel.

My new friend was deathly afraid her child would do something permanently self-destructive, go to prison or get herself killed. She was also a cancer patient and certain that the situation with her daughter was making her sicker.

I told her I had something that had helped me and that might help her to stay sane while dealing with her daughter. She was anxious to hear about it. As I described The Work, she nodded a lot and said she was already enlightened to what I was saying. I said that was wonderful...and since I happened to have Byron Katie's "little book" with me, would she ask me the four questions on a one-liner of mine? She was delighted to be of service. I was delighted too; I got to work on a "sticky one."

The woman was impressed by the process of The Work...so we worked a bit on how she wanted her daughter to change. She shed some tears over her turnarounds: "I want me to change." (Especially with regards to my daughter; not to be an enabler, not to be afraid.) "I want my thinking to change" — the thinking that made her ill and unable to properly help her daughter or herself. My friend took the booklet back to her room and expressed interest in Byron Katie's "Addictions" CD, which I promised to send her. Later that day she called me; she had read the little book and felt that God had sent her an angel.

I figured if having someone in a hot tub facilitate me so effectively moved The Work, taking on the client's role would be a wonderful way to involve newcomers at workshops also...as well as on the DoTheWork NetWork hotline. At an introductory program I gave at a bookstore the following September, instead of first asking for a volunteer to do The Work, I requested that someone facilitate me. It was a wonderful way both to level the field and to model the process of "client." People eagerly volunteered to be facilitated after that. This has worked so well that I have been the "client" at the start of every workshop ever since.

Coincidentally, not long afterwards, Hotline volunteers were asked to invite "newbies" to facilitate us. I had that opportunity recently with someone who is very new to The Work and who has a very quick mind. (My sister!) She didn't have a one-liner handy because her mind was filled with issues about so many things: her family, the cult she had just left, her finances. She began to tell her stories and when I requested we do The Work on one of them, she only wanted to work on herself because "I know it's all about me."

I asked the client if she would ask me the four questions first; she agreed. I worked on the one-liner “She is shallow." In this way, she saw the value of "judging your neighbor."

After some probing, we found a one-liner for the client to work on: “My sister tries to take over my life,” which we navigated rockily! She still wanted to tell her stories and to defend and "yeahbut." However, at the end of the session she said she could see that the work was valuable and that it would serve her.

The client sent me an email later that day to let me know she appreciated the opportunity both to facilitate The Work and to answer the questions. She was off to buy a copy of Loving What Is and to delve more deeply into the process.

When a new client has the opportunity to be the facilitator right away, there are multiple benefits. The client gets to observe the power of The Work when there is willingness to go deeply and find the truth. As questioners and listeners, clients quickly discover The Work's simplicity: four simple questions and a turnaround. At the same time, the facilitator is seen as someone like them, not as some "grand inquisitor" who knows something the client doesn't know. This levels the field.

How does this benefit you, the facilitator? You get a more receptive client...and a golden opportunity to do The Work yourself!


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.