Sermon: Believing Your Thoughts

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Believing Your Thoughts

Ana Levy-Lyons

March 15, 2015

First Unitarian, Brooklyn

“The world is perfect. It’s what we’re believing about the world that could use a little work.” Doesn’t sound like me, does it? Usually I’m up here ranting about how imperfect the world is and how we should be more upset about it than we already are! Well, the “world is perfect” quote is not mine. It’s the words of Byron Katie, a modern day spiritual teacher (although she probably wouldn’t use the word “spiritual”). Her teaching is centered on “loving what is.” It’s about clearly seeing and embracing reality instead of living in the past or the future, wishing that things had been or will be different. She claims that believing our thoughts, especially stressful and fearful thoughts, is the root cause of all suffering. She tells her own story of hitting rock bottom at a halfway house for women with eating disorders and having a life-changing realization. She says, “I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment.”

Imagine that. A joy within you that never disappears, not for a single moment. This is what eastern traditions call “enlightenment.” Byron Katie teaches that this joy is available to us at any moment. And since she believes that suffering is a choice, she has absolutely no sympathy for it. All our suffering comes from the ways that we think about or interpret the things that happen in our lives. It’s very Buddhist. She literally believes that there is no legitimate reason to suffer. Think about that with respect to your own life: no legitimate reason to suffer. She calls suffering or sadness a mini-tantrum at God, like we’re pouting and saying that God did it wrong (God is just a metaphor for reality in her language.) And she takes this all the way, no matter what it is: she works with people who have been sexually abused, people in war-torn countries who fear for their families, people who live with chronic pain, terminally ill, you name it: no legitimate reason for suffering.

Now I kind of bristle at this idea, and some of you probably do too. It seems to belittle the truly horrific things of our world and in a sense blame the victim. And in fact, she is blaming the victim – not for the event itself, but for the suffering associated with the event. She believes we always have a choice. There are thousands of people who have found these teachings to be completely life changing. So as much as this might rub you the wrong way – and I completely get why it would – I invite you just for the hell of it, for the next ten minutes to just suspend disbelief and go with it. Maybe she’s right – maybe believing our thoughts does cause undue suffering. So let’s just try this on for size.

In her workshops, of which I’ve attended one (and it was really fascinating), Byron Katie asks people to fill out what she calls a “judge your neighbor” worksheet. This is the sheet where you rant, unedited, about whatever is causing you suffering in your life. You write down what the other person (or what God) is doing wrong, how they’re making you feel, and what they should do differently. So try this for yourself. Fill out this sheet in your mind, “I am feeling _______ at _________ because ____________. I want him/her to __________. He or she should ________________.” I’ll give you a minute to think about that and pick a really loaded one.

When we’ve got that in our mind and we’re all worked up believing our thoughts about this person or situation, and we’re feeling really pissed off and upset, Byron Katie invites us to ask ourselves four questions. It’s a kind of Socratic self-inquiry: 1. Is it true? Yes or no? 2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? 3. How do you react – what happens – when you believe that thought? 4. Who would you be without that thought?

When it comes to relationships with individuals, this can really be a very useful tool. A mother came to one of Byron Katie’s workshops and talked about how her son was weird. She thought he should try to fit in with the other kids more. She said he makes her worry about him. There were never any details about what he did that was so weird, but through the conversation it came out that he was very kind – kinder than other kids – and he never hurt anybody and that he was a happy kid. Byron Katie helped this mother realize that the problem resided in her, the mother, not the kid. She was upset, he wasn’t. And she was projecting her anxieties onto him. He wasn’t making her worry about him; actually she was making him worry about her. And who would she be without the thought that her son should be less weird? She would be simply the mother of a happy child.

Byron Katie helped the mother recognize that the problem was hers and not her son’s, and that recognition was tremendously liberating. This question of responsibility for one’s own experience I think is key here and I like the way she talks about it in terms of whose “business” one is in. She says, “There are only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s. Whose business is it if an earthquake happens? God’s business. Whose business is it if your neighbor down the street has an ugly lawn? Your neighbor’s business. Whose business is it if you are angry at your neighbor down the street because he has an ugly lawn? Your business.” So the idea is that if you’re upset about something, ask yourself, “Whose business am I in?” Because the only person’s business you have any business being in is your own.

This emphasis on personal responsibility strikes me as a very Unitarian Universalist concept. We tend to be big on taking responsibility for our actions, our words, and our beliefs. It’s etched into our Seven Principles in the language of the “right of conscience” and the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” It’s etched into our history in the form of the early Unitarians and Universalists insisting that they could read the Bible directly and draw their own conclusions, not relying on the mediation of the religious authorities. And then Emerson and the Transcendentalists asserted that, not only that, but we have direct access to God and that that experience of direct connection is true religion. Byron Katie calls it the “unmediated moment” and I think they’re talking about the same thing. My experience of reality is my responsibility, it’s my business, and it’s there for the taking. So in this sense, I think Unitarian Universalists can embrace Byron Katie’s philosophies.

But there is another angle on this, where her thinking doesn’t gel as well with ours. Because in addition to our emphasis on personal responsibility, we have a strong and faithful sense of responsibility for one another. We like to think that on some level we are our brother and sister’s keepers. What’s my business and your business and God’s business are not always that clearly distinguishable. Is global warming God’s business or ours? Is domestic violence your business or mine? If you are hungry, isn’t it my business and my responsibility to feed you? If you say something hurtful to me, isn’t it your business as much as mine to seek healing and understanding?

So to our new members here today – Gloria, Danny, Chris, Ashleigh, Annie, Rebecca, and John – yes, I invite you to do this work of taking responsibility for yourselves. You are responsible for your words and your actions; for being kind and thoughtful and respectful. You are also responsible for your experience here in the sense that the more you put into it, the more you will get out of it and the more you can jump in and help out and fix things that need fixing, the happier you will be. But also know that this is a place where we take responsibility for one another. By joining together in a congregation like this, you become our business and we become yours. That is, after all, the point of community.

And so, like Ben’s subway preacher, we can say that we have a role in creating our own reality. Every little thing is gonna’ be all right, as long as we say it is. As long as we say it is together and say it loud and make it so together. And as long as we take the time to love what is, and embrace the starling beauty of what we already have instead of wishing things were different, we can practice here, and find out what it means to really be free.