- Hi, folks, it's us again.
Martha Beck, and-- - Hey.
Byron Katie. - The amazing.
And, we are here with chapter five of what has become
our little video series, "A Mind at Home With Itself",
which is named after Katie's new book,
which will take you to places you definitely want
to go, places like peace and relief,
and joy, and hope.
And we're reading out the quotes at the end of each chapter,
so that I can get Katie's up-close and personal
explanation of some of these things.
Again, if you think you know Katie's work,
this goes further than she's gone in books before.
And so some of it is,
it seems quite audacious
at first blush, especially if you don't know her work.
But let me read the quote at the end of chapter five,
and then let's talk about it, because again,
this is something that people would be, I think
in our culture, would be shocked by this.
Here it is. - I can't imagine
anyone watching our Facebooks, that would
be shocked at anything.
(laughing) - That's true.
We're shameless.
Oh, my God.
They're eating a panda today.
No, we're not, we would never.
(laughing)
This quote, at the end of this chapter says:
if you see anything in the world as unacceptable,
you can be certain that your mind is confused.
Whoo!
Let's watch the internet catch fire with that one.
If you see anything in the world as unacceptable,
you can be certain that you mind is confused.
That set me free,
but it was hard for me to digest.
- You know, it's almost as though our jobs on this planet
are to look around, find something unacceptable,
and then right that wrong.
What if, no matter what we,
what we saw or heard,
what if we understood it?
We understood that it is happening
for us, and not just,
let's say in, through my own point of view
and way of seeing it, it is happening for me,
for you, for the world,
and the universe,
that it's all working together for good.
For example, if, let's say
my husband, my beloved husband said
Katie, I'm going to leave you.
The old paradigm, I'd think oh, he's going to leave me.
I did something wrong.
Oh, what am I going to do?
Oh, oh, my God.
And my mind, you know, I would suffer.
But today, I understand what love is, I understand
that I understand what it is.
If he says Katie, I'm going to leave you,
my heart would just, would just,
you know it would just expand rather than contract,
as odd as it may sound, it would feel
like how can I support you?
How can I help you?
And are you leaving me for another woman?
And who is this woman?
I'd love to meet her.
I want to support her, to make you happy.
I want to support you to make, I want you to have
a good life.
Why? Because I know
what a good life is.
No one can cost me what a good life is, and
I want everyone to share that.
So why would someone take their time out to live with me,
if that isn't what would make them happy?
That would be me uncaringly
say no, live with me
or I'm going to suffer.
You know, it's all about me, me, me.
That's no kind of relationship.
So, that's what comes to mind,
to my mind when we look at the universe as friendly.
I invite you to question what you're believing
about the universe, and that leaves a friendly universe.
So you could say that a mind at home with itself
can only see out of that kind
of reality, and
that it's safe.
It's safe. - So there's this
stream of thought that goes through the human mind,
and I think that it has a lot to do with evolution,
that the mind, at the very base of the mind
is a part that evolved in reptiles and all reptiles
and higher, so-called higher animals have it.
And its job, it has one job and that is to keep us alive
by making us afraid.
So it's the fight, flight reflex.
And what it does in humans, and like, once I watched
a wildebeest getting chased by a lion, and it was terrified,
and then the lion got tired and gave up.
And the wildebeest stopped dead in its tracks
and started munching grass,
with the lion still right there.
It was not afraid because it couldn't hold a story
that the lion was gonna come after it again.
But in the human mind, what happens is the impulse
for fear goes out, and then
a very recently-developed part, the language cortex
says oh my God, I'm gonna hold a story
of the bad thing that happened, because
it could happen again.
And then we get this, the mind creates a story
that then re-frightens the lower levels
of the brain, which then create more fear
that goes into more story, and it's a circular process.
And that is just the way most people experience
the way life is.
When Katie's talking this way, I know that some people
say well that's just airy-fairy,
or she's not connected to reality.
Actually, my experience,
after following you for 20 years,
is that you're one of the few people I've ever met
who is connected to reality,
because whenever I've used your methods to question
my own fear, to get, because it makes me suffer
and I wanna get away from it.
It turns out that when I question the thought
and the thought lets me go, I land
in the universe you're talking about,
a friendly universe where everything, literally everything
is happening for you, not to you.
But that's so affronting to people who are suffering.
- As we say, I remember,
and there was no way out of that,
until I just had a moment of clarity
that just showed me clearly that what I'm thinking
and the believing, and believing
is the cause of all suffering, the cause of everything
created in my world,
and it left me responsible
to adjust my mind, through inquiry,
on any time I wasn't seeing
a beautiful world,
then you know, I was believing something
that was not true, for me, in particular.
But you know, if someone is, let's say
someone says I'm going to slap you,
and this fight or flight thing,
we defend ourselves, and we think
that's natural, but if someone said Katie,
I'm going to slap you, it's like
if I don't, it's like they haven't slapped me yet,
so where's the problem? (laughing)
And I'm going to slap you.
Well where's the problem?
Right here, right now, no one's slapping me, I'm fine.
I'm fine.
So now their hand is where, it's that close.
It hasn't hit me yet.
Am I fine?
Other than what I'm thinking and believing,
am I fine?
- Expecting the pain, yeah. - Yeah.
So then when they slap me,
why does it hurt?
I'm remembering.
So I've gone from perceiving
the future of what's going to happen.
I frighten me, and I haven't even been hit yet.
And then they slap me, it lasts a nanosecond,
and then I remember it, so the pain continues.
And so, this is where fight or flight comes from,
as we understand, as I understand now the human race,
and more people than I'm aware
of, are passing
inquiry on these four questions,
and turnarounds on, because
it ends suffering in everyone who will just
get still enough to meditate in those four questions.
- We just question the endless storytelling
that's based on fear, and upon questioning,
it falls apart.
We even tell stories on the news about how wild animals
live in constant fear of starvation or predators.
I used to believe that, and then I started living
among wild animals, and realized, without story,
without the human mind, they live in that bliss.
- Yeah, we have to, what we are afraid
of, we project on to animals,
we project onto other humans.
And if someone says they're going to slap me,
it doesn't mean that I'm not going to do everything
I can to prevent it.
And in my world, I'd want to prevent it
because I don't want the other person to suffer the guilt.
We can't hit someone or hurt someone,
in word or deed, without feeling that guilt
within us, and that it's how the ego,
that's its trick to stay identified,
to have a self.
It's a false self, but it's doing
whatever it can to exist,
even though that's an impossibility.
Mind cannot exist, you can't take it out and touch it,
or feel it, or see it.
It's an illusion.
- I remember, I asked you once:
what would the world be like
if like 10% of people were in your state of mind?
Had questioned their thoughts
until they'd come out of fear.
And I thought you were gonna say
oh everyone would sit around in bliss,
because I know you do that.
You know, left in a chair by yourself,
you immediately just are in, well you're always
in that state of-- - Well we can say
I'm really comfortable. - You're really comfortable.
- There's nothing real,
it's only imagination that could take that
bliss, that comfort, that joy--
- Even when you-- - From me.
- Even when you had Fuchs' dystrophy and were going blind,
it doesn't, even when the body was experiencing
what bodies experience,
without mind, without a mind generating lies
and being believed, you're in comfort.
So I thought you'd say yeah, everybody would just sit
around, and instead, I said what if everybody
were in this realized mind?
"A Mind at Home With Itself".
And you said: oh, people would start
acting against injustice.
People would start acting against crime, against corruption.
I was so surprised.
- Well you know,
as I recall, it was, or it felt
more like we would all
be doing what we can
to make this a better world,
because we're not fearing
what we believe that would cost us to do that.
So we're afraid of losing what we have,
like comfort, security, pleasure,
if I go too far to help another human being,
it can cause me something.
Well what if we were aware
that we didn't need that
kind of protection, and we really knew
that the universe is friendly,
and there's nothing to stop us from doing good
basically, Martha, there's no,
'cause only fear would stop us.
- And then you run to make the world even better.
So if you see the, anything in the world
is unacceptable, you can be certain
that your mind is confused.
And if you can un-confuse it, bring it home
to yourself, what will happen
is that you will begin to change all the things
that cause suffering.
It is not a state of dumb acceptance,
it's this vibrant, beautiful,
active love in action. - Yes.
And in a way, teaching
directly out of we live our, how we live our lives
as opposed to how we just talk about it.
- As Gandhi said, be the change
you wish to see in the world.
Read all about it here, you guys.
Thanks again, see you soon.
- Bye-bye.