Four Questions to Inner Peace

By Jeffrey Ressner

Two chairs face each other on a stage, separated by a table filled with sunflowers, candles and a box of tissues to catch any tears. In one chair sits a member of the audience; in the other, Byron Katie, 58, a divorced grandmother with white hair and sparkling blue eyes. In sessions of her popular self-awareness program, called simply the Work, the charismatic Katie acts as a combination mystical guide, wisecracking therapist and knowing parent.

To whatever is upsetting a person--"My husband doesn't understand me," for example--Katie poses four questions: Is your problem true? Can you really know it's true? Can you find a peaceful reason to believe it? Who would you be without it? Then, through a technique she calls the turnaround, Katie coaxes the person to look inside rather than outside for the solution. "He should understand me," for example, may become, "I should understand him and myself." A woman at this evening's session gripes that her sister is holier than thou but discovers that she is doing the same thing. Subjective judgments are vigorously challenged, seen as personal "projections" or "stories." While the Work proceeds, two young women clutch each other for comfort; another fellow gets up and kneels like a puppy at Katie's side as she strokes his long hair.

Despite such New Age trappings (and the sappy folk music on the p.a. system), Katie's approach, with elements that recall Zen meditation, Socratic inquiry and Alcoholics Anonymous' 12-step program, offers a pragmatic and simple way of getting people to take responsibility for their own problems. Says Katie: "It's a way to cut through everything. It puts responsibility back on the person looking for their answers, not the world's answers."

A former real estate broker and the mother of three, Katie developed the Work 14 years ago, after suffering from depression, alcoholism and eating disorders. While lying on the floor of a halfway-house attic, she suddenly achieved a sense of "clarity," realizing her troubles stemmed from relating "outward" to the world. She began holding informal sessions at her Mojave Desert home, and word spread of her teachings. Supported by donations and sales of audiotapes and videos from her base in Manhattan Beach, Calif., Katie travels the globe as host to workshops for corporate managers and bring her message to everyone from prison inmates to abused children. "I just know that people want to be free," she says. "And if I have something they believe will help them, then I give it in the same way I got it."

--By Jeffrey Ressner