Guided Meditations With Katie is an audio work from well-known life help teacher Byron Katie. Within Guided Meditations With Katie, Byron Katie directs the listener through an exercise that is simple enough in its premise yet is quite profound in its effects.
Katie initially invites the listener to focus on breath and the body and body functions in general. Katie points out the various elements of body function that are sustaining and / or supportive and require no input whatsoever. These are, in effect, “free” benefits that come as a result of simply being.
Katie refers to this as the inherent support that life provides.
From here Katie goes on to reference an absolute life truth: that thinking regularly interjects itself into human awareness. Katie rightfully points out that thinking is what ultimately causes all emotional suffering (when the thinking is toxic, and through emotional responses to this toxic thought).
Rather than trying to rid ourselves of painful thought and resulting emotion, Katie suggests allowing it; even more than this she encourages giving each thought a name, and thanking the thought for sharing of itself. When considering Katie’s approach the admonition to love our enemies may come to mind — only that Katie doesn’t seem to consider painful thought as an enemy at all, a sentiment I wholly agree with.
Thinking simply is, and it comes and then goes. Thinking only becomes problematic when we grab hold of it by accepting it as our truth, or through trying to push it away.
Katie’s advice to name the thoughts that interject into our awareness ultimately serves to maintain the space that naturally exists between us and our thinking: thus we don’t fall into thought, so to speak, and become consumed by it. We are almost forced to remain objective, and thought is free to come into our awareness and then go on its way.
Byron Katie, Eckhart Tolle, and others, are modern day advocates of the ancient wisdom of presence — which is, essentially, maintaining space from mental activity. It’s a simple enough act but is exceptionally unusual to find and can be difficult to carry out, especially at the outset.
Guided Meditations With Katie is a valuable tool for becoming aligned with presence, and maintaining presence over time. I recommend it.
Find Guided Meditations With Katie Here.
