by Philip Goddard

This introduction, which is based on the Author's own experience, gives a broader and more flexible view of The Work than in its usual presentations. It's meant to be read in conjunction with Byron Katie's original presentations of it.

Tremendous benefits would come through mental health workers at all levels taking this up. Then, counselling sessions using it, usually alongside training the clients in using various other methods given on this site, could replace most of the unhelpful and indeed seriously harmful psychiatric diagnoses and treatments that are currently given.

If you feel that you could never forgive a particular abusive parent, think again! With The Work forgiveness - or indeed, even better, recognition that there's nothing after all that ever needed forgiving - could speedily happen with no effort, and more of a 'joyful vibrancy' would emerge as all the old painful emotions dissipate and a rational, level-headed view of that relationship predominates.

It works dramatically for people who imagine that their lives can hardly get any better - yet at the opposite pole even the biggest and seemingly most intractable relationship issues and traumas can in some cases be speedily resolved, or at least a significant and extremely helpful step be made in that direction.

The Work is a powerful method for emotional clearance, self-actualization / self-realization and sorting out your life - even though the Author came to recognise also some important practical limitations and constraints on its usefulness.

It's best that if possible you BOOKMARK it but do NOT print it, for the simple reason that most of these pages are frequently updated and so any printed copy is likely soon to be out of date, and also in a printed copy you wouldn't be able to click on the many explanatory hyperlinks.

This page's contents are Copyright. All rights reserved. This page's contents are. All rights reserved. NOT place copies of its contents on other websites. If you find it posted on any site other than www.clarity-of-being.org , please You are welcome to link to this page, but please doplace copies of its contents on other websites. If you find it posted on any site other than, please report the fact to me . Many thanks.



Important! In order to properly understand the contents of this and many other pages on this site it's necessary to carefully read Exit 'Spirituality' - Enter Clear-Mindedness, which provides essential background information.

If you understand, things are as they are.

If you don't understand, things are as they are.

If you believe that things are, or should be, one way or another,

you have not yet understood.

Preface - Constraints upon what The Work can do

Initially, when I took up The Work, it seemed to be the answer to my dreams - a simple and direct means of speedily clearing all one's emotional and karmic issues* and thus to move speedily to optimal self-actualization. However, over the months of intensive use of The Work, I had doubts arising. How was it that although initially it had seemed that with The Work I was clearing out whole issues at a stroke, I then found that the garbage, which kept attacking me, was able still to use those same issues in its attacks on me, as though I hadn't cleared them at all?

Also, I found that in some circumstances the garbage actually exploited my use of The Work, to make it effectively part of the build-up mechanism of a very serious crisis event of severe attacks on me. So, increasingly I was coming to think that there had to be some better way, at least for me and other people with similar situations.

* Actually it's best emphasized here that that was my own personal interpretation of what The Work could do. I didn't get the impression that anyone else was making that exact claim for it, although to me it was implicit in what was more generally being claimed for the method. It was certainly being put forward as a tremendous life improvement method, which could resolve all personal issues that were based on particular beliefs or judgments that one was carrying.

Also, I have a very different understanding nowadays (2016) of the true nature of karma, and it's clear to me that most types of karma can't be addressed through use of The Work - for the simple reason that they're weakenings and distortions of one's non-physical aspects that have been caused by all manner of environmental impingements upon oneself, and aren't related to stresses or beliefs that one is carrying. However, upon fully understanding the true nature of 'karma' you'd also understand that it's not a helpful concept in the first place, and is best left out of the consideration when you're formulating or using your own collection of methods for clearing out your issues. If you have an effective comprehensive genuine self-actualization process running, that would be progressively clearing what could be called karmas anyway, without needing one to think of anything as a 'karma'.

In 2007, about a year after my taking up The Work, I came to understand what one very big problem was. Yes, within certain constraints The Work is indeed able to clear out ALL one's own emotional issues extremely efficiently and speedily. However, the vast majority of people who would use The Work would, unbeknown to themselves, have some parasitic 'lost' souls attached to them at a relatively deep aspect of consciousness, and the usually considerable load of stored traumas carried by those parasitic souls would be experienced pretty well as though they belonged to the person who they were attached to.

Indeed, in many cases even more importantly (i.e., in the 'wrong' way!), at least many of those people would also have 'active' connections to the primary archetypes, which can fairly be collectively described as "a seethingly virulent cesspit of pooled distorted human experience", and are loaded to the eyeballs (plus more!) with emotional trauma energy.

It does appear to be possible for the person to heal those traumas of the attached 'lost' souls, but that tends to be a very big load of material to heal, and healing that's nothing like as speedy or efficient as healing one's own material. And in the case of the archetypes, I have no indications (yet!) of means to 'heal' or dissolve those.

Therefore inquiry sessions on particular issues or thoughts or beliefs relating to major issues are liable to need repeating a fair number of times over quite a long period in order to reduce them, and the element coming from the archetypes effectively couldn't be healed* - and few people indeed would be enthusiastic about keeping on doing the same inquiry sessions again and again well-nigh indefinitely!

* - Except that I've come up with experimental means to reduce the harmful impact upon one of their connections to the primary archetypes so, there is a way, it appears, which should work at least to a point. Please see Understanding Archetypes - and Clearing Ourselves of Them.



Also, even without the issue of attached 'lost' souls and the archetype connections, very few people actually have the motivation and dogged willpower to use The Work for more than a little 'dabbling' to address some immediately pressing issue such as a difficult relationship.

Vanishingly few people would be motivated to sit down for a session every day for months and perhaps years on end, working systematically through inquiry on all their beliefs, judgments and stressful thoughts, taking themselves progressively towards optimal self-actualization. Indeed, even I myself was coming to find it tedious as a daily practice after the first month or so - though that was not my primary reason for ceasing to use it.

I thus came to the conclusion that, despite the great simplicity and ease of The Work, and the immediate great benefits of its inquiry process, few people who try it actually use it in a thoroughgoing and effective way that would reap such spectacular results as some people, including myself, seemed to at least potentially gain from it.

Similarly, much the same could be said of any one of the other most simple and powerful emotional clearance methods. People could then claim in despair (or quite often in a perverse sort of triumph!) that The Work (or other method) doesn't work for them - really because they were never fully using it in the first place. With a small number of exceptions, people generally have at least a certain resistance against really effectively addressing and resolving their emotional issues, even though in many cases on the intellectual level they want to do so.

Why is this? Are people really fundamentally so perverse?

No, not at all. There are actually two main sabotaging factors of which I'm aware:

The rigid patterns that are a part of the manifestation of particular emotional issues tend to direct people to avoid facing and resolving those issues, and thus motivate a person to sabotage attempts to clear them. Such sabotage is easily achieved with The Work, through repeated failure to write down and put to inquiry the real key thoughts underlying the particular issues (while less important thoughts may be worked upon), or/and simply not being rigorous and thorough in the inquiry process. To give an idea about the latter, let's consider that when I myself put a real key thought to inquiry, the inquiry process on that one thought commonly took me about 15 minutes, perhaps sometimes 20, with much pondering and some basic visualization.

It appears that ALL of us have some degree of interference from the garbage , whether or not we recognise or accept such a scenario as being 'real'. This may manifest as (actually illusory) entities such as demons or 'astral entities', or indeed any sort of higher being or presence, indeed including 'Jesus' or 'God' - and has an agenda of power and control and, as I intimate much further below, will fight strenuously to put people off using The Work (or any similarly powerful emotional clearance method), and, if it can't turn the person away from the method it would certainly seek to control the person in some way to make their use of the method ineffective. I experienced this myself, though in my case I was very strong willed and persisted in carrying out my sessions very effectively despite strong pressures from the garbage - well, for some months, until the garbage took up a particular way of hijacking my sessions to make them a very troublesome part of the build-up of major garbage attack crisis events.

However, having written this far, now it's time to tell you why I ceased using The Work. It was not because The Work was no good, but because in May 2007 I found something tremendously better, and once I was using that every day, although I was in principle still open to using The Work for the odd things that cropped up, my new methods were clearing my emotional material so powerfully and efficiently - yes, apparently including that of the exceptional load of 'lost' souls attached to me - that I simply had nothing come up for which an inquiry session would have been the most effective and efficient way of 'zapping' it!

For the most effective way forward, then, for self-actualization and clearance of all your emotional and karmic issues, see Healing and Self-Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way. In particular, for clearance of emotional issues I particularly recommend Self-Power Walking and the Grounding Point procedure, both of which are fully described in Some Potent Self-Actualization / Healing Practices. You may well find for yourself that those self-actualization methods effectively declare The Work redundant in your life, regardless of its being in itself an excellent method compared with, say, Re-evaluation Counselling or indeed spiritual healing when used for supposed clearance of beliefs and emotional issues.

I am, however, nowadays recommending ongoing regular use of The Work for an initial month or two for ANYone using my methods, as I explain near the end of this page, for it does have particular special benefits that appear to be pretty well unique to this method.

Introduction

In March 2006 I started using The Work, developed by Byron Katie, following a recommendation from a friend who, together with his wife, had been using it for some six months with, according to him, "spectacular" results for both of them. The Work is a powerful self-actualization system* for the clearance of all manner of personal issues and sorting out your life, using an inner inquiry procedure** based on a sequence of four fundamental questions and one or more turnarounds to apply to each belief, judgment or stress-laden thought that you carry.

* As already noted, that's my own particular description of it, but I haven't seen it described quite thus by Byron Katie or others - though in effect it's implied by Katie and others.

** Although this is indeed an inner inquiry procedure, in order to avoid confusion I shall refer to it as 'inquiry' rather than 'inner inquiry', because there's a very important quite different sort of inner inquiry procedure that I refer to widely on this site.

It's important to write each thought down before submitting it to inquiry, for this helps take the thought out of the clutches of the mind's defences. Subjecting the thought to the process of inquiry is then beautifully easy and unstressful and can achieve amazing results without the mind going into defence at all and obstructing or weakening the process.

The Work in a nutshell Write down a list of each belief, judgment and stressful thought relating to a person or an issue. For ongoing work it's most helpful to make out 'Judge xxxx' worksheets, where xxxx is any specific person or category of people (e.g., Jehovah's Witnesses, 'black' people, paedophiles, politicians, 'white' middle-class people, doctors, Social Democratic flower-arrangers, and so forth - whatever categories you have judgments upon). Then apply the four questions followed by the turnaround(s). It's important to ponder each question and look deep within yourself for answers to these. Otherwise the most superficial, logical part of the mind would give answers that commonly don't take you forward much. It's greatly helpful to think around each question and each answer you come up with, to gain insights into its relevance and meaning for you. The Facilitation Guide that you can download from Byron Katie's website gives you a non-exhaustive list of subsidiary questions that you can ponder for each of the main questions to assist you in the process. On the basis of my own working experience I recommend adding two questions to the beginning of the 'official' four, as follows: How did you come to have the thought originally?

It is best to avoid getting into analysis, but a quick review of likely origins of the thought helps to establish an awareness that it's just a belief and not a statement of reality. It doesn't matter if you can't quickly think of any origin.

Can you remember any life situations where that thought had particular significance?

Again, this is just a quick review, picking out a few key situations, much as you'd shortly be doing for the turnarounds for the thought. The significances may appear to be positive, negative or neutral. Is that true? -- The most that we can fully honestly say is that the statement appears to be true, so, a strictly correct answer is always 'no' or 'I don't know'. So, if you feel sure that the answer is 'yes', then you go to question 2; otherwise you skip that and go to question 3. Can you absolutely know that it's true? -- The true answer to this is always 'no', because we can't absolutely know anything. However, you don't have to give a 'no' answer; you simply do the best you can to be honest with yourself. With increasing experience you'd gain the insight to realize that only a 'no' answer would be correct or meaningful here. How do you react when you think that thought? -- Take time to consider how you feel, act and generally live your life while that thought is running. This is most effective if you briefly allow yourself to feel all the feelings associated with believing that thought, rather than just intellectually acknowledging the feelings. It's fine and indeed beneficial to allow some emotional release to occur - such as crying, laughter, trembling, an angry bellow... - but it's best not to spend much time on it; the aim here is simply to briefly get really into the feeling. Who would you be without that thought?* -- Again you take your time, considering how you'd feel, act and generally live your life - this time in the event of your being unable to think that thought. * You're not being asked to try to get rid of the thought - this is just for exploring a 'what if' scenario. And then you do the turnaround(s) upon the thought. For each turnaround you consider carefully its possible relevance in your life, and a few of your life situations, whether current or far past, where it would be particularly relevant. Please note that the aim isn't to indoctrinate yourself with any turnaround, but simply to examine what it could mean to you and in your life, whether true or untrue. You also consider for each turnaround whether it's as true as or truer than the original thought, and whether it itself is a belief that you'd been carrying. In the case of a turnaround that's untrue but is or could be a belief which to some extent you've been carrying, then it's a good idea to write it down and go through inquiry on it too. It's important not to take on a turnaround as a new belief. Any turnaround that is or could be a belief of yours is best written down and itself put to inquiry. Here is an example of getting turnarounds from a thought. "She should listen to me" becomes: "She shouldn't listen to me";

"She doesn't have to listen to me";

"I should listen to her";

"I should listen to me" - and even

"I should me to me" - and even

"I should me"! And similarly, "I need her love" becomes: "I don't need her love";

"She needs my love" (completely untrue and worth putting to inquiry, but prompting you to consider whether you're being all that loving towards her in imagining that you need her love);

"I need my love";

"I need me". N.B. I recommend a much more radical use of the 'turnarounds to myself' than is normally used; in fact I don't yet know of anyone going to such extremes as I was doing. However, it's powerful to do this, even though at first it may look bizarre to bring one's series of turnarounds eventually to things like "I should me me to me me"!

The Work, when used in a thoroughgoing and ongoing way, is a method of overriding importance for sorting out your life and opening it up - very much self-actualization rather than just 'self help'. For me personally it appeared to have rendered redundant all other emotional healing methods that I'd used up to that time.

The methods that I'd declared redundant include Re-evaluation Counselling, the original EFT and various sorts of spiritual healing including Reiki in 'enhanced' form and extra-powerful 'healing' (that actually proved to be very serious self harm!) with sacred geometry healing wands. The Work isn't just an improvement over any of these but a spectacular improvement - well, with the exception that some people get quite spectacular results with the EFT, but The Work is even easier and more direct.

The Work can be used by you on yourself or used by a counsellor ('facilitator') with a client. In the latter case it could be in the field of professional counselling but also, very rewardingly, carried out in peer co-counselling ('facilitation exchange') or group sessions. That would be much more effective than the real classic co-counselling method for emotional release - Re-evaluation Counselling.

Couples can have regular facilitation exchanges to make the process particularly enjoyable and do wonders for their relationship. In other words The Work can be used in a great range of situations, each of which has its own advantages (and of course its own disadvantages too!).

I learnt to use The Work, as anyone could, from reading Byron Katie's classic book Loving What Is , without need for the time commitment and expense of any workshops or groups - though there are workshops and various types of groups available for those who want them.

It's amazing how even big and seemingly intractable issues quickly unravel once you pick out the simple basic thoughts that had been underlying them - the only problem with the particular thoughts having been that you hadn't examined them to see if they were true, and you'd thus believed them. With The Work you don't try to get rid of thoughts but you simply examine them in a way that enables you to see what the reality behind them was and is, and thus to let go of your attachment to the particular thoughts - to 'un-believe' them, if you like.

The Work is The Work and not The Magic Wand...

The Work is prosaically but well named. Its results are spectacular compared with various other healing and self-actualization methods that I know, but you wouldn't get much self-actualization process, 'driven' by the clearance of major issues, without diligent and ongoing use of The Work.

There's a huge number of people around who want a quick fix for their particular issues of which they're aware. People suffering from depression usually want a method that will be figuratively a magic wand, taking away their problems more or less instantly, with more or less no work for them to do to achieve that end. In fact, for true self-healing and self-actualization to occur each person does have to take responsibility for himself and commit himself to a certain amount of ongoing work, no matter what method he uses.

People who aren't willing to take that sort of personal responsibility and commit themselves to ongoing personal 'process' work can't get much out of The Work, not because of anything lacking in The Work but simply because they're unwilling to use it.

You could have the fastest and most powerful car in the world, but it would drive at precisely 0 km/h unless you actually inserted and turned the ignition key and then drove the car. Similarly The Work will bring you forwards only to the extent that you actually use it.

If, out of your feelings of depression or/and lack of a sense of self-responsibility, you just hear or read about The Work and have a half-hearted quick stab at it and then conclude that it doesn't work for you, that's like getting into that super-fast car and being so convinced that it wouldn't work for you that you nervously drive the thing for a few metres in first gear at little more than walking pace and then pack it in and reject the car, claiming that it doesn't really work for you.

The challenge to you, then, if you're wanting a quick fix for your issues, is to commit yourself instead to ongoing work, preferably with daily inquiry sessions, and taking on board the truth that you're fully using The Work when you've integrated its inquiry process into your life permanently. For starters I'd recommend putting to inquiry such thoughts as "I need a quick fix / instant cure for my problem(s) / issue(s)"; otherwise such a belief could well be your biggest obstacle to ever resolving your issues in this lifetime by any method.

End-gaining is an obstacle

Similarly it can be unhelpful to try using The Work with the specific intention to resolve a particular issue rather than to bring about overall improvement in your life. True, putting any thoughts at all to inquiry is beneficial, and it's fine and often helpful to be aware of particular issues that you want to clear, but the end-gaining approach that seeks a specific result in a specified time frame would be relatively ineffective, for when you're in such end-gaining mode you're not really opening yourself to reality and are allowing yourself to be driven by underlying thoughts which themselves are unexamined stressful ones that are prime candidates for putting to inquiry. That end-gaining approach presupposes that other issues are less important or indeed unimportant or even nonexistent.

In fact only through inquiry can you find your truth about this. If you have an end-gaining attitude to The Work, then it's worth asking yourself questions such as "Is it true, that I have no other issues that are important enough to put to inquiry?", "Is it true, that when I've resolved that issue there will be no point in my putting anything else to inquiry?" and "Is it true, that it will be more helpful to me to use The Work just for this specific issue rather than to use it for overall improvement in my life?", and to take those thoughts through the inquiry process.

So, even with specific issues that you want to resolve quickly, The Work is most effective - at least in the early stages of your use of it - when used in a broad, open-ended and ongoing manner, putting to inquiry all judgments, beliefs and stress-laden thoughts, and with an open mind about specific outcomes and their timing. That way you get surprised again and again at all manner of improvements in your life in aspects and areas where you didn't even realize that such change could occur.

There's another important reason for the advisability of working on a broad front. If you restrict yourself to working on a specific issue you're not allowing for the interconnectedness of your various emotional issues, both major and minor. That way, you'd be denying yourself many important 'handles' on that one issue which would be found when working on the multitude of thoughts that come up in everyday life.

In any case, by working methodically through an ongoing series of 'judge my neighbour' worksheets for people who bug or have bugged you (more about that below), you'd be addressing your most pressing issues anyway. Indeed some of the most effective 'handles' on the issue that you so eagerly want to resolve may be ones that would only turn up serendipitously while you're apparently working on entirely different material. I've had this happen for myself, so I speak from experience.

Strategies for making The Work not work (!)

This note, written in December 2006, is based on my accumulating observations of people and their interactions with The Work. In my great enthusiasm for a self-actualization method that had been working apparently so spectacularly for myself I'd assumed that large numbers of other people would jump for the opportunity to speedily clear their emotional issues and thus be able to live lives of enlightenment , peace and happiness. Not so, however!

It's amazing, the resistance that nearly everyone has towards any real possibility of their speedy self liberation - even most of the people who claim to be dying for just that! People generally remain addicted to their established ways, even if they know really that there's a much better way for them.

In my experience, one fairly common response of people to being introduced to The Work is in the nature of "Yes, that makes perfect sense to me. In fact it's really what I've been doing for myself for quite a few years now - except of course I didn't call it The Work or 'inquiry'. So, there's no need for me to take up The Work because I'm actually already doing it."

How do I know that such people have been kidding themselves? --Simple! After however many years they claimed to have been doing it, they still have major emotional issues and are far from enlightenment ! True, they may well have been helping themselves a bit by doing a certain level of inquiry on the odd very stressful thoughts - but they hadn't been applying themselves in the rigorous and systematic way to inquiry that at least theoretically could actually have liberated them quickly from all their emotional issues and, in some cases, put them on the doorstep of enlightenment.

Also, they'd most likely be carrying much material that belongs to attached parasitic lost souls and not to themselves, and which is much slower and more difficult to clear (and not to mention the effects of any connections to primary archetypes that they may have). However, what I observe is that the particular individuals show no sign that they're really seeking to clear anything of significance. So, it's not simply a matter of their beavering away in an ongoing manner at their issues and simply finding them slow to clear, but rather, it's clear that they have no concept of a real systematic approach to clearing their issues - or indeed of clearing their issues at all!

Likewise, I still personally know only one person apart from myself, who's had results from The Work that could be described as 'spectacular'*. Reason? All the other people have minimized the effectiveness of The Work by not being methodical and regular in their inquiry sessions, conveniently omitting to put to inquiry many of the very thoughts that most needed to be put to inquiry! Talk of beating about the bush!

* To be fully correct, I did know one other person who seemed to be more dedicated than most in his approach to The Work and might possibly have been in the same league. However, I can't know how he's getting on unless / until I eventually get the odd progress report from him. Some years have passed now, however, without any further news from him, so I've no great expectations there.

A common means to get minimum benefit from The Work is to restrict one's inquiry to particular thoughts that come up at times of stress, such as in a difficult relationship, and neglect systematic processing of 'Judge xxxx' worksheets, or just to 'do' one particularly bothersome issue and nothing else. That's fine of course as far as it goes, but doesn't then represent much of a speedy process of overall clearance of one's issues.

After about nine months of using The Work I'd got to the situation of my just putting the occasional stressful thoughts to inquiry as they came up, but that was only because I'd already used The Work well, with a daily hour of inquiry, working through a whole succession of "Judge xxxx" worksheets (occasionally branching out briefly to work on specific issues), and with that consistent diligence of doing my inquiry work I experienced dramatic improvements.

However, over the months, repeatedly using this procedure did become tedious for me, with an element of boredom creeping in - quite apart from, as already noted, the issue of the garbage hijacking my inquiry sessions after a few months, and thereby causing me very major trouble. So actually in those circumstances it made very good practical sense to limit the extent that I used inquiry sessions, and indeed to be on the lookout for alternative methods to use.

Even now I'm theoretically still poised to write out a worksheet on any particular person or people who may bug me in any way - but in practice that's extremely unlikely to happen because I now have simpler and more effective and efficient ways of achieving that. My inquiry work was initially kept on a broad front despite my being aware of certain pressing issues, and it was this consistent and systematic way of working on a broad front that brought me through so quickly.

ANYONE else could achieve likewise if they'd truly do likewise. Therein lies the catch and my big challenge to you.

My own big leap forward with The Work

After just a few weeks with daily sessions of inner inquiry using The Work I was already feeling dramatically different. I found that a great deal of change occurred in me too through my reading Byron Katie's other classic book, I Need Your Love - Is That True?. I was feeling what I interpreted as love* much more strongly, particularly for myself, this giving all my life experience a radiant and very stable happiness which was steadily increasing.

* I word it like that because I recognise nowadays in hindsight that what I was interpreting as feelings of love were still to a fair extent the normal sort of distortion of one's feelings that the garbage intrudes upon one in order to keep one pointed and focused well away from one's real experience of love, which is something quite different, even though, at least in my case, there was love in my life experiences all right. What people almost universally interpret as 'love' feelings are, first and foremost, particular aspects of certain painful emotions, particularly grief- and loneliness-related.

Love in itself doesn't have a 'feeling' in the way that people generally mean, and is indeed not really an emotion at all but simply an intrinsic aspect of our underlying (and one could say, perfect) natural state, by which all our life experience has a basic or fundamental joyfulness about it and we delight in everything (and everyone) we experience, and so you are thoughtful and considerate towards other people and indeed every aspect of your surroundings. I write more about love and what people call love in Love Is Not What Nearly All People Believe. So, I was clearly making steps forward, which were a 'big leap forward' compared with what I'd been getting from other methods previously - but they were actually small fry as compared with what I'd be achieving much more easily the following year by other means.

In cases where The Work is working well for you, you dispense with the whole concept of having stored hurts and traumas needing healing work to clear them. The stressful feelings that arise from time to time need no longer be seen as trauma manifestations, but simply as friendly pointers to unexamined thoughts inviting you to put them to inquiry in order to open up your life and bring you the joyful vibrancy that progressively emerges during an ongoing self-actualization, and, at some point, enlightenment (or deepen your self-actualization if already enlightened). The very term 'self-healing' can be replaced with 'self-actualization', and 'trauma' or 'hurt' with 'a little bit of inquiry to do'. Used well, The Work brings ease, lightness and fun into your self-actualization process, and into your life generally. However, in such cases the problem can be that hidden major issues belonging to attached lost souls or sourced from 'active' connections to primary archetypes don't get noticed and thus don't get addressed - so you can end up thinking you've cleared virtually everything that needed clearing, while actually still having a fair bit of work that needs doing - and really needs to be done by a different method or combination of methods, such as those that I present in Healing and Self-Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way.

Soon after taking up The Work in mid-2006 I spent some 10 to 15 minutes on inquiry on the basic thoughts that underlay what at that time I understood to be very major past life emotional traumas of mine, and seemed to get very considerable improvements almost immediately in the way I was experiencing life. In fact at that time I still had a fairly distorted understanding of the nature of the emotional issues that I was carrying, thanks to the misinformation that I was receiving in my channelling, but now I understand the particular traumas to have been real past life ones but not my own.

My current understanding is that those traumas in part belonged instead to parasitic lost souls attached to me, and the major part would have been from the actually much bigger pool of trauma energy in the primary archetypes to which I was connected, so that actually there was no way I could completely clear such issues in one session or even a few of them - which explains why the garbage continued to be able to launch very severe and disruptive attacks upon me (the primary ammunition used in such attacks being the feelings and 'energy' of emotional traumas that one is carrying, including those of any attached lost souls plus all that comes in from the primary archetypes to which one is connected).

Initially, my 'guidance' (actually the garbage posing as a higher source), gave me the impression that I'd almost completely cleared those issues, but the reality became increasingly evident as very severe garbage attacks came to me a matter of months later, and it became very apparent that the garbage was manipulating my feelings so that it was not possible in the short term to tell if I'd cleared anything at all.

Having said that, though, in retrospect I do recognise that genuine improvements did come to me even from my doing inquiry on basic beliefs underlying the particularly major emotional traumas that I was carrying but actually didn't belong to me. However, what clearance occurred then was only at a superficial level, leaving a very great amount of work still to do before I could be sufficiently clear of those issues for the garbage to be no longer able to use them in attacks on me.

Basically, I'd nowadays counsel anyone carrying obvious past life traumas or/and primary archetype connections (and actually that's a high proportion of people who would choose to use The Work, whether or not they recognise that they're carrying such traumas), to bypass The Work and go to the other methods that I present in Healing and Self-Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way, for that would be a much more effective way of getting clear of all the garbage that one is carrying, regardless of whether it's genuinely one's one.

Having said that, though, looking again at my own experience in using The Work, I think there's actually a strong case even for the aforementioned category of people to spend some initial time using this method - for a reason that might surprise you. One absolutely great thing about doing a bit of inquiry using The Work, provided that you carry it out rigorously and with full understanding of what you're doing, is that it's a very effective training in understanding and observing something of the true nature of 'What Is'. That's an extremely important aspect of a genuine self-actualization process.

One of the beauties of The Work is that it doesn't depend even in the slightest degree upon a specific theory or understanding of reality, and it has no 'spirituality' angle or baggage to it. All you do is use inquiry to see how each of your thoughts matches reality as you observe it. Thus you find very precisely what's really and deeply true for you, and there's nothing that you have to accept from anyone else apart from just learning to use inquiry.

Getting started in The Work

Judge your neighbour!

As I've already remarked, you can learn all the basics from Byron Katie's book Loving What Is. The normal way to get started actually using The Work is through making out a succession of 'Judge Your Neighbour' worksheets. You can download printed worksheet templates and facilitation guide sheets (i.e., guide for the inquiry process) from Byron Katie's website.

To fill in a worksheet, what you do is write down all your uncensored judgments and negative opinions and shoulds and shouldn'ts - however mean, petty and unreasonable - about a particular person who in some way bugs or has been bugging you. It's best to keep each statement short, breaking up longer thoughts into a series of short statements that you can subject to inquiry individually. You then subject each of those written-down thoughts to inquiry.

Taking your time about this (pondering on each question), you work thus through worksheets for any- and everyone who bugs or has bugged you, giving priority to those who've bugged you the most. Very likely, as you progress with this work some people will cease bugging you before you ever get to doing a worksheet on them.

For full effect, the written-down judgments and other thoughts generally need to be in the present tense. In other words, for the purpose of inquiry you imagine that you're at whatever time in your life that the particular thought was most relevant (or when it originated, if you know that). That would still be true if it were, say, a judgment upon a parent who died when you were tiny.

Imagine you're still tiny and judge that parent from that perspective. Similarly for thoughts and beliefs that appear to you at least possibly to have been taken up in a previous lifetime. There are some exceptions, however, such as the self recriminatory thought "I shouldn't have done that", which is very much worth putting to inquiry in addition to its present-tense equivalent.

It's not so helpful to try the judging exercise upon yourself, at least in the early stages of using The Work, because your mind can do tricks to avoid the most important issues from being addressed. The smart thing about going into judgment upon somebody else who bugs you is that we are all effectively mirrors to each other. If somebody bugs you in some way, then that's because that person is reflecting something about you that is, perhaps unawarely, bugging you. The aim here isn't to get into criticizing yourself in a negative way, but to examine your thoughts and see how they do or don't tally with reality.

In the case of written-down statements that don't include the self-deception words "should", "shouldn't" or "need", it's greatly helpful to additionally write down and put to inquiry versions of the statements rephrased to contain one of those words. Thus "He doesn't listen to me" produces also "He should listen to me" and "I need him to listen to me". Each of those three will work a bit differently when put to inquiry, and so for the most effective working all three would be processed separately.

I describe "should", "shouldn't" or "need" as 'self-deception' words, because they're generally used for the purpose of arguing or struggling against reality. In reality, nothing should or shouldn't anything. Things simply are as they are, or 'whatever is' is. You use the words "should" or "shouldn't" when you're causing yourself (and others) stress by being in conflict with reality, wanting reality to be other than how it is. Similarly with the notion of need. Real need is simply to do with cause and effect.

In other words, abc would be needed if xyz is to happen or to come about. So, a person's basic needs (i.e., for survival) would make a short list indeed, unless you're going into great detail about the constituents of air, water, food and so on. Most of what we perceive as needs, however, are self-deceptions, because we believe that we can't, or at least can't for long, be without the supposedly needed object, person or event - and really all that really tells us is that the person has a craving for something non-essential to their survival.

I got the impression that Byron Katie was making out that little or nothing matters beyond meeting our basic survival needs. If that really was what she was meaning, then I'd regard that as simplistic and lacking in understanding of why we incarnate in the first place - which is hardly surprising considering her apparent strong alignment with much of the essence of Buddhism.

Even when you've cleared yourself of the self-deceptive sense of need, you'd still have 'secondary' needs - that is, needs for this or that if you're to do particular things that make proper sense of your life. For example, it's very healthy and helpful towards one's self-actualization process to get out hiking in the wilds, so you'd 'need' suitable clothing and gear for you to do that safely and effectively - and in turn you'd presumably need some money in order to pay for it.

Similarly, I 'need' donations from visitors to this site to help ensure that I don't run out of sufficient money to have a computer and websites any longer to benefit others. But that's simply a rational recognition of conditions that need to be met for you to live the sort of joyfully beneficial life that self-actualization enables, and isn't a 'sense of need', i.e., a craving. Or at least, if any craving is felt, then indeed the sense of need would need (sic) to be put to inquiry in order to free oneself of it!

All the rest of our sense of need is fighting against reality and causing ourselves untold stress and suffering. So, all thoughts that can be expressed with a "should", "shouldn't" or "I need..." (the latter with the exceptions just mentioned) are inherently untrue.

It's important, when writing down thoughts for inquiry, not to be 'reasonable' or 'accurate'. For example, you may well be aware that it's only on occasions that your partner fails to listen to you or shouts at you. However, the unadulterated stressful thought relating to that would be simply, "he doesn't listen to me" or "he shouts at me", and those are the most effective type of statement when put to inquiry. The moment you make those statements more 'reasonable', such as "he often doesn't listen to me", you're greatly reducing the effectiveness of the inquiry process.

I'd rather not do this...

You may well feel a certain defensive feeling - even overt fear - about certain thoughts or issues being put to inquiry. Or you may strongly feel that you're right in a particular view that you're holding, so it should not be put to inquiry. In fact all such feelings are the most wonderful friends because they're your messengers that are telling you that those particular thoughts are especially important ones to put to inquiry - including those ones that you feel convinced are 'right' and should not be put to inquiry.

I found repeatedly, as do others, that when I go ahead and put to inquiry those very thoughts about which I was feeling a resistance or defensive fear, I experienced a great relief when it came to the turnaround(s), and often even broke out into laughter as I saw once again that what had seemed to be such a problem area had really been based in a completely innocent misunderstanding, which I could now embrace with love and a new level of happiness.

What a tremendous relief, then, as you discover again and again that there's nothing after all within yourself that you'd ever needed to defend or hide, and that you can thus become totally free, open and honest!

N.B. It's not good or effective use of The Work to 'cherry pick' thoughts to submit to inquiry on the basis of whether you feel you want to examine them or not. That way you'd inevitably avoid putting to inquiry the very thoughts and beliefs that you most need to put to inquiry, and you'd be remaining untrue to yourself - in denial of your deepest truth. If you feel you don't want to put a particular thought or belief to inquiry, then that's one best written down at once and put to inquiry as soon as possible.

Everyday use of inquiry

For my first few months of using The Work I took about an hour daily to carry out formal inquiry, working through a succession of 'Judge xxxx' worksheets. Actually I found the layout of the printed worksheets quite awkward and simply used one as a prompt for my writing down my judgments and stress-laden thoughts on a blank sheet.

In my own experience, when a particular trauma or stressful feeling (such as fear or loneliness) grabbed my attention this could be worked upon directly by seeking out the most basic thoughts underlying the feeling. Never mind how complex or unusual the experiences involved (what Byron Katie refers to as one's story), the underlying thoughts that require putting to inquiry tend to be ones that virtually everybody has. For example, all manner of relationship issues, however 'heavy', complex or unusual, have as their basis unexamined thoughts in the nature of "I need that person's [or people's] love". We subject to inquiry those underlying concepts, and leave the complexities of the story out of it. So simple!

One of the many wonderful things about using The Work, even when you're just starting, is that upsets and apparently hurtful words from anyone can now be recognised as friends. When somebody has 'hurt' you, what's actually happened is that the person has been doing their job as a mirror for you and put you in touch with an unexamined thought that YOU then have been using to go hurting YOURSELF.

Actually it's worth qualifying that, because, although it's true, I don't mean to give the impression that the other person was necessarily behaving in a responsible manner after all in doing or saying whatever has caused you hurt.

The point here is that, however thoughtless, inconsiderate or indeed downright malicious the words and behaviour of the other person may have seemed to be, basically that person simply did as (s)he did (that person's particular problems are his/her own business to do something about - not yours), and the challenge and opportunity for you is to clear the stressful thoughts and feelings that have come up for you in response to the situation. You can thus easily bring yourself to the point of being not significantly hurt when the other person behaves similarly to you on another occasion - or indeed other people behave similarly towards you.

Just think about that. Here's an example. You feel hurt because a friend has remarked out of the blue that you're a bit selfish. Your friend said that to you just once, but how many times did you then go on repeating that to yourself? If you hadn't been doing so you would have gained no sense of hurt from what your friend said*. So, in truth, who hurt you? YOU did! Your friend did you a favour in pointing out to you something of yours that you needed to put to inquiry.

* A typical sort of experience of that happening would be when a person says to you "You really are a bit selfish, you know...", and the thought comes up in your mindspace, something like "Really? Me being selfish? [you do a very quick 'double take' on yourself] ...Yah, no, I see what's going on there. She's struggling with some issue and is lashing out a little because I'm not willing to keep giving myself away in a way that would comfort her but would be an unreasonable burden upon me, and would only entrench her in her issue anyway. That's her problem; she needs to get sorting herself out, not seeking comfort from me or anyone else!..."

- and the thought then rapidly drops from your mind because there are other, more interesting and enjoyable things to focus on.

True, what your friend said then may well have reflected an issue that he himself would best address, BUT, whose business is that - yours or his? - If you think it's your business, then try putting that belief to inquiry too!

So, the simple answer to each such situation is to write down and put to inquiry as soon as possible the thought(s) underlying that hurt. That not only transforms the hurt into a positive experience in itself, but it more generally advances your self-actualization so that you're more open and happy and less likely to feel hurt in the future.

The reality is that you CANNOT workably go putting other people to rights when they seem to be acting in adverse ways towards you, but you CAN put yourself to rights so that you're at least largely immune to being hurt or upset by their words and behaviour, and your life overall remains untainted by adverse responses of yours to their behaviour.

Inquiry in action - an example of my working on myself

I include here an instructive example of my working on myself, and will probably add one or two more examples. I show here how the inquiry process can be followed through a chain of related thoughts. Working in this way, you can sometimes temporarily branch off from a Judge xxxx worksheet to address and, at least theoretically, resolve a whole issue.

The written-down thought was "I need friends to agree with me".

Question 1: Is it true?

No, because I have extremely few true needs and that's not one of them. In fact true needs aren't stressful thoughts and the above thought definitely is, for it's a sort of craving that seeks to be comforted. (Because of the 'no' answer I skip Question 2 and go to Question 3.)

Question 3: How do I react when I think that thought?

I feel weak, powerless and lonely, craving for friends to comfort me in that situation. I feel hurt and betrayed when friends don't agree or particularly when they openly disagree with me. I feel trapped and held back in my life because I'm feeling beholden upon my friends for agreement and approval in order to feel comfortable and strong. I doubt myself and feel in constant inner stress. Actually the thought and my responses to it are mostly in the past, so I'm taking my strongest and most irrational attachment and responses to that thought from earlier times in my life, and in my mind I review them in the present tense, as if I'd placed myself back in those times.

Question 4: Who would I be if I could never think that thought again?

I'd feel free and have self confidence. I'd be able to act and change things in my life according to my good sense without waiting upon friends to agree with me. I'd be able to listen to disagreeing communications from friends and take on board any useful information therein. I'd enjoy the company of my friends regardless of whether they agreed with me on particular points. I'd feel much more 'connected' and in harmony.

The Turnarounds

I don't need friends to agree with me I need friends not to agree with me (as distinct from actually disagreeing with me - in other words, for them simply not to involve or engage any opinions of theirs with my own outlook, words or actions, and so not to go reinforcing my own errors) I need friends to disagree with me (when my thinking is faulty, i.e., based on unexamined thoughts that I'd do well to put to inquiry) I don't need friends (which of course points straightaway to a need (sic) to put to inquiry 'I need friends'! Indeed, as you become more advanced in your self-actualization you progressively cease to crave for company, and consequently enjoy a sensible amount of real solitude, particularly out in the wilds, and have no need at all for a category of people who you're in various ways attached to and call 'friends'. Instead you enjoy and get the best out of all your passing contacts and encounters with people during everyday life. Like that you're more open and free, and have a lot more genuinely worthwhile life experience with other people instead of being imprisoned by your attachment to a particular group of 'friends'.)

I need me to agree with me That is, I 'need' all aspects of my awareness to be in a state of harmonious integration, so that there's no conflict / 'disagreement' between different levels or aspects of my awareness - such as between my deeper aspects and my more superficial aspects ('ordinary mind').

A related thought that I wrote down while doing the above inquiry was " I need friends to make me feel comfortable / good ".

Question 1: Is it true?

No. Again, I may feel that I want this but I don't need it.

Question 3: How do I react when I think that thought?

I feel uncomfortable, weak and needy. I feel that I'm lacking something, and I need friends to help cover up that lack. I feel out of harmony with myself. I either seek out friends to try and get that comfort or (usually) I feel isolated and apparently needing a sort of support that I'm not getting. I often can't enjoy the company of friends because they don't always make me feel comfortable / good.

Question 4: Who would I be if I could never think that thought again?

I'd feel in harmony with myself and have trust in my ability to feel good and comfortable without waiting upon others for this. I'd then enjoy the company of friends without the stress of expecting them to be my comforters.

The Turnarounds

I don't need friends to make me feel comfortable / good I need friends to make me uncomfortable or feel bad (i.e., to draw my attention to thoughts of mine that I'd do well to put to inquiry) I don't need friends (Again! The previous notes for this one apply here.) I need me to make me feel comfortable / good This has two possible meanings for me: I need me (rather than anyone else) to make me feel comfortable / good; I need me to make me feel comfortable / good (emphasis on being made comfortable / good).

Arising from the latter inquiry was " I need to feel comfortable / good ".

Question 1: Is it true?

No. Again, I may want this but I don't need it.

Question 3: How do I react when I think that thought?

I feel uncomfortable and in disharmony, for I know inwardly that in wanting to be comfortable I'm really wanting to cover up various issues that would be better faced and resolved.

Question 4: Who would I be if I could never think that thought again?

I'd face all my issues fearlessly and resolve them, and by doing so I'd progressively find the real peace, comfort and happiness of being in harmony with myself and indeed reality.

The Turnarounds

I don't need to feel comfortable / good I need to feel uncomfortable / bad (i.e., to draw my attention to thoughts of mine that I'd do well to put to inquiry) I need me I often add this turnaround for "I need..." statements. When I'm thinking "I need xxxx", I'm placing part of my awareness out there, away from myself, in my attachment to xxxx. So, by embracing the turnaround "I need me", I'm opening myself to the reality that all my apparent needs apart from a few real physical needs are actually properly met by myself. In embracing this reality, I'm bringing back to myself that part of my awareness that had been 'out there', attached to xxxx, and consequently I feel altogether more 'present' with myself, more whole and more happy.

Spontaneous inquiry

I noticed that after some weeks of my using ongoing formal inquiry sessions, increasingly the inquiry process appeared to be occurring spontaneously upon various beliefs and stressful thoughts that arose in the mind. I assume that this would tend to get happening likewise for other people who use The Work in such a regular and ongoing manner. Sometimes I was aware of a thought and a very quick inquiry process proceeding upon it in the background, but I was also noticing sometimes a thought just beginning to emerge and at once a wonderful sense of release and new clarity occurring as that thought became re-evaluated and disappeared without my even knowing what the particular thought had been.

Actually it could be a bit misleading to talk of this as 'spontaneous inquiry', because I'm fairly sure that the deeper levels of one's consciousness wouldn't be bothering to go through the formal set of questions that have been laid down by Byron Katie. I assume that what had been happening for me was that my regular use of formal inquiry had made it much easier for my own innate re-evaluation processes to kick in whenever a particular stress-laden thought arose. But anyway, whatever the exact details of what was going on, it looked like a pointer to a very beneficial effect of regular ongoing use of The Work, whoever is using it.

Actually, in retrospect from 2018, I've considerable doubts as to whether any noticed bouts of 'spontaneous inquiry' were really anything particularly helpful. I rather think that it's a parallel to lying in bed sleeplessly, trying to work something out in your mind, when the real need is just to take your conscious 'mind' right off it and leave the subconscious thought processes and associated re-evaluation to work things out while you get much-needed sleep.

Also, I'm sure that at that time, back in 2005, I was operating in a quite seriously weakly-grounded state, and so, particularly in my desperation to get clear of my 'astral beings' (i.e., garbage ) interferences and attacks, I was overdoing my use of The Work, using it, one could say, rather obsessively, so of course bits of inquiry would go chuntering on in my mindspace during everyday life, rather like 'earworms', when actually it was just part of an unbalance that would have been hindering various areas of my mental function while doing my best to attend to other things. How much easier things would have been for me back then if I'd understood then even half of what I understand now!

Write it down!

Never mind that a lot of 'spontaneous inquiry' and re-evaluation of thoughts may start happening as noted above, according to Byron Katie it's still best to write down your thoughts for inquiry whenever possible, however experienced you are with The Work. Apparently by doing this you outwit various mental habits that can otherwise make the inquiry process less effective.

However, in my own experience what appeared to be some of my most powerful inquiry sessions* occurred when I was getting on with some physical task and was unable to write the particular thoughts down at that time. To ensure that I got everything possible from those sessions I later wrote the thoughts down and then repeated the inquiry upon them.

* I've worded that carefully, however, because it's quite possible, and would fit neatly into a pattern all too familiar to me, that what had appeared to be particularly powerful sessions may have been made to feel that way by certain interferences from the garbage . As in healing work generally, what seems impressively powerful at the time does tend not to be so in real terms, and typically has been made to seem so by the garbage in order to lure one away from doing the most effective healing actions.

Flexible use of inquiry

I find that the inquiry process works most efficiently if I don't remain tied to just working ritualistically through the list of judgments on the worksheet that I'm currently processing, and instead on occasion I follow logical pathways of inquiry and association. Let's take a few examples of how I was able to maximize the power of the inquiry process.

Example 1.

On my worksheet for judging a particular radio news presenter whose interviewing style greatly irritated me, one of the statements was "He's a little person full of his own importance". The turnarounds that I got from this were "He's not a little person full of his own importance", "He's a big person without self importance" and "I'm a little person full of my own importance".

I realized that it was the latter statement that had special significance for me. This didn't mean that I'm fundamentally a little person full of my own importance, but rather, that throughout my adult life it had been an underlying thought that I'd been carrying and which had made me feel uptight, resentful and rivalrous about anyone else's apparent self importance pattern. This had then made me feel and act at those times like a 'little person full of his own importance'. So, I thought of a number of occasions where that thought had been relevant and had caused me to feel or even act uptight and rivalrous about particular people's self importance and approval-seeking patterns.

Then I wrote down on a 'Miscellaneous' worksheet the statement "I'm a little person full of my own importance" and then put that to inquiry. The important turnaround I got this time was "I'm a big person without self importance"*. That's in reality the truth not only about me but also about every person when unexamined thoughts aren't causing them to act otherwise. I looked again at situations involving particular people at different times in my life, including the aforementioned news presenter, in the light of my new understanding of what had been going on for me and what similar things would have been going on for them.

* Actually for some people this would need clarifying, in that by 'self importance' I meant inflating your self image and posturing with it to assert oneself over other people. Thus that particular turnaround was not pointing into any self effacement or denial-of-self trip.

Example 2.

Many of the thoughts written down on my 'Judge My Father' worksheet related to his compulsively criticizing me and virtually never having an openly positive word to say to me about myself. Frequently, therefore, while I was applying inquiry to my judgments upon him I'd have a 'loaded' thought about myself or other people come up. Each time that happened I wrote the thought down on my 'Miscellaneous' worksheet and put that to inquiry before continuing on the 'Judge My Father' sheet.

Again, sometimes it was a turnaround of one of my judgments on my father that was a statement about me that I then wrote down on the 'Miscellaneous' sheet and put to inquiry. The same happened a lot with my worksheets for judging my mother and my brother. I was thus able to work on particular judgments as issues in their own right in many aspects of my life and resolve them (at least to a considerable extent) then and there.

There was one case, the details of which I don't remember at the moment, where I wrote down a turnaround statement about myself, put that to inquiry, and got out of that yet another turnaround that was an issue for me so that I put that too to inquiry, and one particular turnaround I got out of that had very strong application in many of my life experiences, especially when I was young.

Example 3.

When putting to inquiry a statement that the person xxxx should or should not do something or be a certain way, commonly I'd add an identical statement to the sheet for processing, with "people" and sometimes other named people substituted for xxxx. This ensured that I dealt with the particular issue with some thoroughness at that time, rather than having the same issue keeping cropping up for inquiry relating to different people over a longer timespan.

Getting the most out of the turnarounds

Here are a few tips based on my own experience.

As true as or truer...?

I strongly recommend that for EVERY turnaround that's a statement about you, you look at ALL grains of possible truth or relevance for you that it may contain, even if some of the turnarounds appear on the surface to be less true than the original thought or even quite nonsensical. I did this and got a LOT of mileage out of them this way. I found that often even a seemingly very untrue turnaround, upon a little reflection, could be found to apply to the odd experiences in my life, even if only in a symbolic way.

Less true or not true for me...?

You wrote down the thought "He keeps shouting at me", and got the turnaround "I keep shouting at him". Maybe you never physically shouted at him and this turnaround looks nonsensical, but in an important sense that turnaround is very likely true for you, for haven't you at times shouted at him in your mind? This is just one of the many ways that a superficially untrue turnaround may actually have some important truth for you. You may think of yourself as completely non-violent, yet how many people have you beaten up or been very harsh with in your mind?

Is this turnaround at least possibly a belief or stress-laden idea for me...?

If it is or may be so, great benefit will come through writing it down and going through inquiry on it.

That's definitely not true for me, so I can dismiss that one...?

But why dismiss it just because at that time you can't see truth in it? If you do that you're closing a door and taking on a belief again - "I haven't acted like this" or "I'm not like that". No, I myself found MUCH more liberation through acknowledging that there might be some truth in the turnaround even if I hadn't spotted it yet. In any case, that untrue statement could still be a belief that you've been carrying unawarely.

For example, in my own inquiry work, for the written-down thought "He shouldn't use psychoanalysis talk to try to justify himself and manipulate others", one of the turnarounds I got was "I shouldn't use psychoanalysis talk to try to justify myself and manipulate others". Now, I could have immediately discarded that turnaround on the grounds that I've never done that and therefore it's untrue. In fact the way I did look at it was this: In one sense it's at least as true as the original thought - I shouldn't do that because the reality is (apparently) that I don't.

Okay, apparently I haven't done that, but I may be carrying the thought "I shouldn't use psychoanalysis talk to try to justify myself and manipulate others" as a belief, and in that case it would be worth putting to inquiry. I consider the possibility that this belief may have affected me in some of my life situations and ponder to see if I can remember any in which it could have affected me. The point of using inquiry to dissolve that belief isn't because I really ought to behave in that problematical manner, but because every "should" or "shouldn't" belief is inherently stressful, because it's arguing against the nature of reality - that things are as they are. I don't need beliefs to prevent me from behaving in negative and stressful ways; love and clear-mindedness achieve that instead, and that's true for anyone else, as is revealed through inquiry.

Okay, apparently I haven't done exactly that, but have I at times been doing something a bit like that? For example, maybe when Re-Evaluation Counselling (RC) was very much at the centre of my life, did I at times use RC talk and jargon in that sort of way? I can remember other people doing so, but can't remember doing so myself. However, just possibly I did so just a bit on the odd occasion... Maybe on occasions I used some other sort of jargon or techno-waffle in a similar way...

But then again maybe I've done exactly that, but just don't remember it - there's no way that I could absolutely know that I haven't done that, at least slightly. Maybe I've had a pattern of unawareness that has hidden this little bit of reality from me. The aim here was in NO way to go caning myself about what I'd done or might have done, but simply to be as honest and clear as possible about what had really been happening, and to recognise truthfully what I really didn't know.

I found this opening up to the truth of my own Great Unknown to be a great liberation and act of self love.

The truth is that each of us doesn't absolutely know anything at all - except the innermost nature of experience, which is beyond concepts and can't be accurately described. Therefore, the more that we acknowledge that we really don't know, the more we're in harmony and alignment with reality.

"I've cleared that issue so I don't need to put any more thoughts about that to inquiry"

Many people seek to go into denial of their emotional issues at the first opportunity. You can never absolutely know that an issue has been cleared 100%, and so it's important that you continue to put to inquiry any beliefs, judgments or stress-laden thoughts, whatever they're about - and that includes the thought "I've cleared that issue so I don't need to put any more thoughts about that to inquiry".

However, what you will notice if you're regularly using The Work is that the number of thoughts presenting themselves for inquiry will greatly diminish over the weeks and months as your life transforms greatly for the better.

"I'm desperate with my problems - please help me!"

The Work, when well and consistently applied, can work spectacularly for people who have major and apparently intractable issues. However, a stumbling block is often a sort of addiction to one's suffering and feelings of helplessness - so that you feel desperate to be helped, not understanding that the most important thing is for you to learn to help yourself. No method will help you all that much if you're unwilling to get taking charge of your life and your self-healing process and are waiting upon others to 'help' you. Getting some help from others, balanced with also helping oneself is healthy and takes you forward, but just wanting to be helped all the time keeps you stuck in your rut.

In such a case, not much progress is likely to be made until such thoughts as "I need help" or "I can't cope with this on my own" are put to inquiry. It's not at all that you should not seek any assistance at all, as I say, but rather, that any assistance (such as sessions with a facilitator for The Work) is best sought as an adjunct to your managing your own self-healing process. Self-empowerment is the key - not constantly 'being helped', which is generally disempowering.

I therefore strongly recommend that care workers and counsellors who are using The Work with clients who want to be helped but aren't yet open to helping themselves put a priority on guiding their clients through inquiry on their helplessness, powerlessness and neediness beliefs as suggested in the previous paragraph.

Should I put positive beliefs to inquiry?

Of course there's no 'should' about anything, but this is an interesting point. When asked about that, Byron Katie scoffed at the idea of doing such a thing, while acknowledging that at least it would be harmless to do. However, I have a different 'take' on the situation - for the following reason.

As already noted, when you put a thought to inquiry you're not trying to get rid of the thought, but you're dissolving your attachment to it. As long as you're attached to a thought (i.e., you believe it) your awareness is constrained and you're out of harmony with reality and so are under stress from that disharmony. In the case of beliefs that appear to be 'positive' the same still holds true, even though the amount of stress that they're causing may appear to be very small and go unnoticed.

They still limit your awareness and your openness to change and to understanding yourself and other people and the Universe - and indeed obstruct any would-be self-actualization process.

Therefore it's definitely necessary to put any belief to inquiry, no matter whether it appears to be negative or positive. However, realistically, normally your 'negative' beliefs would have a higher priority for putting to inquiry, and so on the face of it, it would make sense for only the most 'clear' people to trouble to put supposedly positive beliefs to inquiry.

On the other hand, really what's perceived as a positive belief isn't so positive under the surface because it's involved with going into denial about something, and, by the very nature of belief, keeps you out of touch with 'What Is'. So actually, NO belief is really positive in any healthily meaningful way. Religion-based 'positive' beliefs are a particularly blatant example of this, and are in fact particularly high priority for putting to inquiry and dissolving.

You could never lose anything truly positive by putting an apparently positive belief to inquiry; you'd simply become still more in touch with reality and therefore still happier and more at peace.

When an issue won't clear

I'm not referring here to people simply not using The Work properly - an issue I've already commented on - but the non-clearance of an issue for an experienced and skilled user.

Almost certainly, the problem would be that the issue isn't that of the person at all and actually belongs to one or more attached parasitic 'lost' souls or is sourced from one or more of the primary archetypes connected to the person, and the answer is actually remarkably simple - skip The Work, at least for that, and use the more effective methodology given in Healing and Self-Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way and Some Potent Self-Actualization / Healing Practices (use the Grounding Point procedure described in the latter page).

The Work in mental healthcare

Having had some stays in a psychiatric hospital owing to severe attacks from the garbage , and having also for a short while during those troublesome times experimentally been in support groups for people with various 'mental health' issues, I've learnt first hand something of the pervasive lack of understanding and true healing that currently characterizes the mental healthcare services of my country (the UK).

The whole system fails to recognise the simple fact that the vast majority of difficult personal issues that are presented and usually diagnosed with unhelpful medical labels can actually be fully resolved by enabling the release of the underlying emotional issues or traumas and enabling people to build up the strength of all the weak parts of their non-physical aspects.

Also, because of the tenaciously held materialist-reductionist belief system, the mental healthcare services generally refuse to recognise the broader aspects of reality in which lie the original causes of virtually everyone's 'mental health' issues (apart from physical brain damage or deformity) and consequently apply the totally inappropriate 'medical model' to them.

Psychiatry as we know it, and the mental health services quite generally, therefore, are an intrinsic failure in terms of true healing and full resolution of problems. The practitioners in these fields, despite their best intentions, are limited to applying symptom suppression (particularly drugs and ECT) to try to hide people's problems. That's not healing at all. (Please see How All Psychiatrists Could Begin Genuinely to Help Their Clients.)

The truth is that the vast majority of 'mental health' issues, including even various supposed personality disorders, are in essence NOT medical issues and theoretically can be helped through ongoing use of The Work.

However, because people have free choice and the vast majority of people are currently at least to some degree addicted to their suffering and their helplessness and neediness patterns, most people wouldn't be willing or mentally oriented to use The Work nor indeed any self-empowerment method at all. On the other hand, if The Work came into use widely in the mental healthcare services, the change of emphasis would very likely start to rub off on some of those who initially didn't want to help themselves and were wanting to continue being 'patients' with supposedly medical problems.

I'd thus particularly encourage mental health workers to take up The Work themselves, using it on themselves, and then to start applying it wherever possible in their professional work, so both improving their own lives and empowering their clients to take charge of their lives and stop being 'patients' or indeed even clients.

It's most important that such mental health workers use The Work (or indeed any other healing / life improvement method) on themselves consistently in their everyday lives if they're going to attempt to assist other people with that method. This is because an important part of their effectiveness in their assisting and inspiring others to use The Work or indeed any life improvement method rests in their being good role models through using it on themselves and being dedicated to positive change in their own lives.

If they seek to assist clients to use The Work, or merely use The Work's methods in counselling, without regularly using it on themselves, then they're perpetuating the disempowering "I'm okay and you're not okay" relationship (indeed, lie), and that would be much less effective.

I particularly want to have mental healthcare workers of all levels alongside service users in workshops, for our work together could then at last start eroding the pernicious divide between the supposedly mentally ill and the supposedly mentally well. With The Work we find ourselves ALL embarked on a process of self-actualization and we leave behind psychiatry and the very concept of mental illness.

It's important, however, to recognise that, as I've already indicated, there are distinct limits to what one can reasonably expect The Work to achieve - and so it's important that mental healthcare workers take up the methodology that I give in Healing and Self-Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way and Some Potent Self-Actualization / Healing Practices, regardless of whether they take up The Work. Mental health services could be considerably transformed by their taking on Grounding Point and Self-Power Walking, as well as The Work, even if no other self-actualization methods were used.

To get the ball rolling I'm willing on demand to run workshops on using these methods, particularly for mental health workers in my area (Exeter, UK) - especially The Work, Self-Power Walking, Feedback-Loop Zapper and Grounding Point.

Postscript - A perfect companion to The Work: the Alexander Technique

Whereas The Work is 'all in the mind', and the physical improvements that it brings are indirect, the Alexander Technique (AT) is primarily focused on the body, although it's actually basically a mental discipline. When used in a very thoroughgoing manner it can theoretically be a full self-actualization method too, and it certainly took me some way in that direction as well as sorting out physical issues relating to alignment and tension - in particular my clapped-out and troublesome spine.

The AT is a mental discipline in which you progressively undo your lifelong accumulation of habits of body misuse. That's the official core of it, but actually it's a process of becoming more self-aware in all your everyday experiences, observing more clearly your habitual tendencies or patterns so that you have the option to interrupt them and move and act in freer, more flexible ways than before, letting those old patterns dissolve.

Later note - What a hassle! - BUT...

As already noted, in mid 2007 I took up methods that effectively made The Work redundant for me, never mind how good it is in relation to what had been available to me before those methods had been developed. However, on reading through all the above on this page, my immediate gut response is "Phew! What a bloody hassle!".

This account of The Work would at least enable people to see how much easier and simpler and indeed more powerful it is to use the Self-Power Walking, Feedback-Loop Zapper and Grounding Point methods, especially when these are combined with use of Regular Core Practices. One thing especially great about those methods is that no particular mental acuity is required to use them (though some degree of that is required for Grounding Point, but there's much less complexity about the procedure).

The Work can't work effectively at all for the vast majority of people, who lack the sort of mental clarity that would enable them to be sufficiently focused to make major gains from those particular two methods (even though many people could no doubt make welcome limited gains with them).

Also, a combination of Self-Power Walking, Grounding Point and Regular Core Practices is much more effective in progressively healing and presumably eventually clearing out any parasitic lost souls or indeed other attached 'entities', which may well be the true owners of a significant proportion of the emotional issues that you're carrying - and any connections to primary archetypes that you may have can be progressively dissolved / inactivated by use of Archetype Zapper (please see Understanding Archetypes - and Clearing Ourselves of Them).

Having said that, however, it's now necessary for me to point to another side of the matter. For some years I'd actually been putting forward a rather unbalanced view of The Work in this note, which I now aim to rectify. The point is that one thing The Work can achieve brilliantly when used in addition to what you'd get from my other methods mentioned above is enabling you to get a really clear understanding of what's really going on for you when you experience unhelpful negative or stressful feelings or attitudes towards people, situations or indeed yourself or life in general - and how to turn those actually pattern responses around, into rational, constructive, unstressful (and indeed un-stressing) responses, so getting you increasingly understanding and focused upon 'What Is'.

For this reason, what I now recommend for ANYone who intends to use my self-actualization methodology is that they include ongoing regular use of The Work for an initial month or two, alongside any other methods of mine that are relevant to them and their particular situation. In most cases that would be enough to train them to the point that they have much healthier responses to everyday situations and also can understand much better what illusory realities they need to zap using Grounding Point when particular issues or garbage attacks do come to their attention for dissolution.

Also, as noted further above, The Work is very suitable to be used by counsellors and therapists for guiding clients through addressing specific issues, where the people involved have no special motivation towards genuine comprehensive self-actualization. They'd thus be used in the context of more limited life improvement than the full self-actualization that I nowadays promote, and that's why I'm not involving myself in that way.

I've no doubt, though, that far more practitioners and indeed 'mental health' workers would be able to become reasonably effective at 'facilitation' sessions and training clients to use The Work than those who could currently get their heads (and of course their motivation) around taking on my full self-actualization methodology for introducing into professional counselling and of course the 'mental health' services.

Awarely guiding clients through using it for their own issues would still be an immense improvement over the harmful abomination that the psychiatry / 'mental health' mindset and 'medical model' methodology is, and would be an excellent stepping-stone towards introducing over time more of the methods given on this site, as enumerated further above.