Becoming Whole - Using The Work

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 dark force, which kept attacking me, was able to still 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 dark force 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.

* 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 judgements that one was carrying.

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.

* For more about parasitic 'lost' souls, see The True Nature of 'The Dark Force' and its Interference and Attacks.

It is actually 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 is nothing like as speedy or efficient as healing one's own material. 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 clear them - and few people indeed would be enthusiastic about keeping on doing the same inquiry sessions again and again pretty well indefinitely!

Also, even without the issue of attached 'lost' souls, 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, judgements and stressful thoughts, taking themselves progressively towards optimal self actualization. Indeed, even I myself was coming to find it tedious as a daily practice - 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 have gained 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 almost a 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.

• Almost all of us have some degree of  interference from the dark force. This may manifest as (actually illusory) entities such as demons or 'astral entities', 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 have 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 dark force - well, for some months, until the dark force took up a particular way of hijacking my sessions to make them a very troublesome part of the build-up of major dark force attack crisis events.

However, having written this far, now it's time to tell you why I've ceased using The Work. It isn't because The Work is 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 be 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 Post procedure, both of which 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.

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 process based on a sequence of four fundamental questions and one or more turnarounds to apply to each belief, judgement or stress-laden thought that you carry.

It is important to write each thought down before submitting it to inquiry, for this takes 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 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. The methods that I had declared redundant include Re-evaluation Counselling, EFT* and various sorts of spiritual healing including Reiki in enhanced form and extra-powerful healing with sacred geometry healing wands. The Work is not just an improvement over any of these but a spectacular improvement - well, with the exception that some people get quite quite spectacular results with the EFT, but The Work is even easier and more direct.

* For a while in early 2007 I resumed use of the EFT as I found it handy for dissolving attacks from the dark force, and actually there were many situations where I found the EFT to come more naturally to me than The Work and to hold my attention better. When I originally abandoned the EFT in 2005, that was in the face of sustained and truly massive attacks from the dark force, and at that time the EFT, although clearly an excellent technique for more normal circumstances, was proving not very effective for me.
Now that I was using the EFT again I was finding it useful for dissolving the more modest attacks I was getting. I was then most commonly using the EFT first on an issue or feeling that arose, then finishing off by inquiry using The Work.

As noted in the Preface above, although it is theoretically possible to use solely The Work for clearance of all one's issues (i.e. one's own and not necessarily those of attached entities, which may be experienced as though they are one's own), for most people it's more realistic to use a combination of at least two methods if they're really serious about wanting to clear all their issues. I recount an instance of my using such a combination of methods on my EFT page.

However, as I explain further below, in mid 2007 I took on what was for me a much superior methodology, which effectively rendered both The Work and the EFT fully redundant, even though I'm still in principle open to using either if I had any particular cause to do so.

The Work can be used by yourself 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. 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.

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 won't get self actualization and 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 are aware. People suffering from depression usually want a method that will be figuratively a magic wand, taking away their problems pretty well 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 are not willing to take that sort of personal responsibility and commit themselves to ongoing personal 'process' work cannot get much out of The Work, not because of anything lacking in The Work but simply because they are 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 won'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 are wanting a quick fix, is to commit yourself instead to ongoing work, preferably with daily inquiry sessions, and taking on board the truth that you are fully using The Work when you have integrated its inquiry process into your life permanently. For starters I would recommend putting to inquiry such thoughts as "I need a quick fix / instant cure for my problem(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 are in such end-gaining mode you are not really opening yourself to reality and are allowing yourself to be driven by underlying thoughts which themselves are unexamined stressful ones which 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 is 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 have 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 for this specific issue 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 judgements, 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 is another important reason for the advisability of working on a broad front. If you restrict yourself to working on a specific issue you are not allowing for the interconnectedness of your various emotional issues, both major and minor. That way, you would 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 would 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 are 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 worked 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 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 are addicted to their ways, even if they know really that there is 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 had not 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 put them on the doorstep of enlightenment.

Also, they would 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. However, what I observe is that the particular individuals show no sign that they are really seeking to clear anything of significance. So, it isn't 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 has 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 do know one other person who seemed to be more dedicated than most in his approach to The Work and might possibly be in the same league. However, I shan't know how he's getting on till I eventually get the odd progress report from him. Quite a bit of time has passed now, however, without any further news from him, so I have 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 an overall speedy process of clearance of one's issues.

After about nine months of using The Work I'd got to the 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 the issue of the dark force 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 look out 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 is 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 would 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 dark force 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 does not 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. 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.

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 pretty well immediately in the way I was experiencing life. In fact at that time I still had a pretty 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 belonged instead to parasitic lost souls attached to me, 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 dark force 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). Initially, my 'guidance' (actually the dark force posing as a higher source), gave me the impression that I had almost completely cleared those issues, but the reality became increasingly evident as very severe dark force attacks came to me a matter of months later, and it became very apparent that the dark force 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 that the dark force could no longer use them in attacks on me.

Basically, I'd nowadays counsel anyone carrying obvious past life traumas (and actually that's a high proportion of people who would choose to use The Work, whether or not they recognise that they are carrying such traumas), to bypass The Work and go to the 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 is genuinely one's one.

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 judgements 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 judgements and other thoughts generally need to be in the present tense. In other words, for the purpose of inquiry you imagine that you are at whatever time in your life that the particular thought was most relevant (or when it originated, if you know that). That is still true if it was, say, a judgement upon a parent who died when you were tiny. Imagine you are still tiny and judge that parent from that perspective. Similarly for thoughts and beliefs that you know or suspect 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 is 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 judgement 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 is because that person is reflecting something about yourself which is, perhaps unawarely, bugging you. The aim here is not 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 do not include the self deception words "should", "shouldn't" or "need", it is 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 are 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 are 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. We have very few true needs - air, water, enough of the right food to live on, a surface to stand, sit or lie upon, appropriate shelter from the elements... 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.

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 are right in a particular view that you are holding, so it shouldn't be put to inquiry. In fact all such feelings are the most wonderful friends because they are 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 shouldn't 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 experience a great relief when it came to the turnaround(s), and often even break out into laughter as I see 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 is 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!

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 judgements and stress-laden thoughts on a blank sheet.

In my own experience, when a particular trauma or stressful feeling (such as fear or loneliness) grabs my attention this can 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 pretty well 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 are just starting, is that upsets and apparently hurtful words from anyone can now be recognised as friends. When somebody has 'hurt' you, what has 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.

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.

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 are 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 are at least largely immune to being hurt or upset by their words and 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 isn't one of them. In fact true needs are not stressful thoughts and the above thought definitely is, for it is 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 would 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 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 is no conflict / 'disagreement' between different levels or aspects of my awareness - such as between my deeper aspects and my more superficial aspects ('ordinary mind').

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, 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 cannot enjoy the company of friends because they do not 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 would 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 would do well to be put to inquiry)

I need me to make me feel comfortable / good

This has two possible meanings for me:

1. I need me (rather than anyone else) to make me feel comfortable / good
2. 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 would 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 which would do well to be put to inquiry)

I need me

I often add this turnaround for "I need..." statements. When I am 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 pretty 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.

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 is 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 have worded that carefully, however, because it's quite possible, and would fit neatly into a pattern that is all to 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 dark force. 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 dark force 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 do not remain tied to just working ritualistically through the list of judgements 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've been 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 did not mean that I am 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 is in reality the truth not only about me but also about every person when unexamined thoughts are not causing them to act otherwise. I looked again at situations involving particular people at different times in my life, including the abovementioned 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 judgements upon him I would 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 judgements 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 judgements as issues in their own right in many aspects of my life and resolve them 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 shouldn't do something or be a certain way, commonly I would 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 is 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 cannot 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 unawarely carrying.

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 cannot be accurately described. Therefore, the more that we acknowledge that we really don't know, the more we are 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, judgements or stress-laden thoughts, whatever they are 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 are 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 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 are 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 shouldn't seek some assistance, 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 is 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 are not trying to get rid of the thought, but you are dissolving your attachment to it. As long as you are attached to a thought (i.e. you believe it) your awareness is constrained and you are out of harmony with reality and so are under stress from that disharmony. In the case of beliefs that are positive the same still holds true, even though the amount of stress that they are causing may 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.

Therefore it is definitely beneficial to put any belief to inquiry, no matter whether it is 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 positive beliefs to inquiry. On the other hand, sometimes what is perceived as a positive belief is not so positive under the surface because it's involved with going into denial about something. Religion-based 'positive' beliefs can often be like this, and are in fact high priority for putting to inquiry.

You will never lose anything truly positive by putting an apparently positive belief to inquiry; you'll 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 is not that of the person at all and actually belongs to one or more attached parasitic 'lost' souls, and the answer is actually remarkably simple - skip The Work 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 Post procedure described in the latter page and forget about The Work!). For more about parasitic 'lost' souls, see The True Nature of 'The Dark Force' and its Interference and Attacks.

Advantages of The Work over 'spiritual' healing methods

Spiritual healing as generally understood (including Reiki and all its variants, Vortex Healing, 'spiritual healing', 'faith healing' and so on) is in my view now - thanks to some very hard experience - something of a disaster area that needs moving right away from, because of its dark force connections. Its practitioners believe that they're working with or in 'the Light' and are thus clear of all dark force connection, but what they don't understand is that 'the Light' and indeed any concept of 'light' other than true physical light has come to us from the dark force, for the purpose of pointing us away from the clarity - NOT 'light' - that is our true nature and our ultimate and pure healing source.

The Work has two - indeed probably three - particular very important advantages over 'spiritual' healing for the resolving of emotional issues, apart from its greater power, speed and simplicity:

• Grounding. People who are disposed to be healers are typically not very firmly anchored in the physical 'reality' - in healer parlance they are 'not well grounded'. There is an imbalance of their energy and awareness towards the non-physical aspects of 'reality'. That is not a healthy state to be in, either emotionally or physically. Unfortunately spiritual healing and 'lightwork' tend to aggravate this state, necessitating frequent 'grounding' practices (which, unfortunately, are usually ineffective as used within those traditions). On the other hand The Work is an intrinsically grounding method, keeping your focus on the physical 'reality' and speedily bringing you in touch with the simplicity of 'What Is'. The Work thus gets all its users into a distinctly healthier balance of awareness.

• Problematical entities and dark force interferences. The Work is simply an inquiry process and so you NEVER need to channel guidance, open to higher perceptions nor do anything that can attract interference from or be hijacked by the dark force. Indeed, by rapidly unravelling and releasing emotional issues and traumas The Work makes you increasingly resistant to the dark force and 'entities'. The dark force actively sought to stop me using The Work, presumably because it could detect that I was at last working against its ability to interfere with me, in a much more purposeful and effective way than hitherto.

The Work cannot replace energy work healing methods for, e.g., directly healing physical conditions or injuries, immediate energizing / rebalancing of one's energy system or sending off 'entities' and inappropriate energies* - but it can relieve pain and also resolves the underlying cause of a fair proportion of energy blocks and imbalances, allowing them in turn to resolve, so that it is a good holistic healing method and physical healing method in the longer term - albeit, as I now understand, far from the ultimate in that respect. Energy work healing methods therefore still have their place, even with people who are consistently using The Work - but they need to be more effective than any of the versions of so-called spiritual healing, and of course free from dark force influences.

* Well, except that most energy work healing methods, although generally claimed to be able to carry out those functions, are actually more or less ineffective at doing so.

The only energy work healing methods that for real effectiveness and safety I can recommend are those that I present on this site - which methods, apart from my dark force free version of hands-on healing, wouldn't be regarded generally as 'spiritual healing' at all. As I have already noted, actually they are in my experience and estimation very significantly more effective and easy to use than The Work.

If you use a combination of the Grounding Post procedure, Self-Power Walking and the Returning Life Sequence you'd get not only more powerful yet also more simple and easy clearance of beliefs and emotional issues, but in addition you would get the full range of healing and self actualization assistance, including progressive clearance of 'entities' and dark force interferences and attacks, powerfully and in the most balanced and grounding way. Once you're doing that, I can almost guarantee that you'd look back at your previous use of The Work and think "Boring, Boring!", glad never to have to endure those inquiry sessions again!

The Work in mental healthcare

Having had some stays in a psychiatric hospital owing to severe attacks from the dark force, and having also for a short while during those troublesome times experimentally been in support groups for people with various 'mental health' issues, I have 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 dimensions 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 pretty 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 is not healing at all.

The truth is that the vast majority of 'mental health' issues, including even various supposed personality disorders, are in essence NOT medical issues and can be helped through ongoing use of The Work. However, because people have free choice and many people are currently addicted to their suffering and their helplessness and neediness patterns, not everyone would 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 would 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 is 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 are 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 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 are 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 on a journey of self actualization and we leave behind psychiatry and the very concept of mental illness.

It's important, however, to recognise that, as I have already indicated, there are distinct limits to what one can reasonably expect The Work to achieve - and so it is 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 both The Work Grounding Post and Self-Power Walking, even if no other self actualization methods were used.

To get the ball rolling I am willing on demand to run workshops on using these methods, particularly for mental health workers in my area (Exeter, UK) - especially Self-Power Walking and Grounding Post, but I am no longer actively promoting The Work and the EFT and thus, generally speaking, would not include either of those two in workshops.

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 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 is the official core of it, but actually it is 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.

Later note (2008) - What a hassle!

As already noted, in mid 2007 I took up methods that effectively made the EFT and The Work redundant for me, never mind how good they are in relation to what had been available before they'd been developed. Now, in December 2008, on reading through all the above on this page, my immediate gut response is "Phew! What a bloody hassle!". Although I'm keeping this page and the one on the EFT on this site for the time being, I'm doing so as much as anything so that people can see how much easier and simpler and indeed more powerful it is to use the Self-Power Walking and Grounding Post methods, especially when these are combined with use of the Returning Life Sequence. One thing that is especially great about those methods is that no particular mental acuity is required to use them (though some degree of that is pretty essential with Grounding Post, but there is much less complexity about the procedure). The EFT and The Work cannot 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 Post and the Returning Life Sequence is much more effective in progressively healing and eventually clearing out any parasitic lost souls or indeed other attached entities, which may well be the true owners of most or even virtually all of the emotional issues that you are carrying.

However, as noted further above, both the EFT and The Work are 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 would thus be used in the context of more limited life improvement than the full self actualization that I nowadays promote, and that is why I'm not involving myself in that way.