​From the time I was young, I was hungry to know what the most learned and wisest people knew.

 

I wanted to understand what we are doing here. I wanted to understand myself and I wanted to feel safe and secure within myself and be happy and in order to do that, I needed to understand life.

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There’s a lot to be confused about when you’re young. People get angry with you and are sad. At some point you learn that there’s death. And before you know it, you are one of the people who get angry and scared and sad, too. What to do about all of this seemingly serious chaos that is human existence?

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I put my mind through its paces. I read, I studied, I acquired knowledge and developed my ability to think critically (logically, analytically). When the dust settled, I had four university degrees including a PhD on the nature of mind, consciousness, and what can be known by humans directly (i.e. without being accumulated through knowledge).

 

I pursued academia because I thought it had the answers I was looking for. I spent ten years in psychotherapy from my mid-twenties to my mid-thirties so that I was also analysing myself. I was leaving no stone unturned in my search for self-understanding and understanding human nature and the purpose and essence of life.

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I didn’t realize that there was another option other than thinking and analyzing. I didn't yet know that intelligence could come from another source. This makes sense because a default core belief of our collective humanity is that thinking is our best bet — our highest hope — for both solving the world’s problems and our own.

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But it isn’t. What I didn't know I was searching for was a higher source of intelligence than that of the intellect. In fact, it is the only true intelligence. Information from the mind is knowledge but it isn't intelligence.

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It was this transcendence of the mind that led me not only to answers and relief from suffering but to the awareness of who I actually am in the absence of all my accumulated beliefs.

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In the end, I discovered that the answers we are seeking are only to be found within us, as an experience, not as conceptual understanding. I discovered that the thinking mind is extremely limited in its ability to solve our problems. We need to go to another source, and we all have access to it.

 

I am both the source of my question -- the one asking -- and the one answering, and, it became clear to me that we are each the only one who can do that for ourselves. 

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This is the missing link for people that changes everything.

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Discovering The Work of Byron Katie (a form of self-inquiry, which sages through history have used to directly experience life) finally let me see the source of all of my confusion, depression, and anxiety. It was inside me, as the beliefs I was holding. Cause and effect (the definition of "karma").

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From a young age, we adopt beliefs -- we just conclude things -- as a way to make sense of the world. And those thoughts cast ourselves in a negative light and make us feel unsafe to be in the world. It's the mind doing its best to protect us but it wreaks havoc on our lives until we meet these thoughts and undo them. 

 

For example, my dad once told me, “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” when I was very young and I had excitedly shared my idea with him, and my mom once told me, “You’re lazy,” when I didn't want to unload the dishwasher, and that was enough. I believed onto those situations and voila, I became Kathryn, the One who is Lazy and Doesn't Know What She is Talking About.

 

So I (my mind) have looked for proof of this ever since. I thought when I was procrastinating or feeling scared to take on jobs with a high level of responsibility it was because I was lazy and also because I didn’t think I knew what I was talking about. I suffered severe Imposter Syndrome. But neither of these things have ever been true.

 

I have been finding my way into trusting myself and what the experience is like to back myself and approve of myself — love me — unconditionally. 

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It is my dearest desire now to share this work with the world. We are so blessed that Byron Katie had the awakening experience she did so that this simple-but-profound tool that anyone can use was born. I was certified by Katie personally in January 2015 after a rigorous curriculum over two years. My awareness has continued to unfold since then, as I use life's challenges to continue to take me deeper into the mysteries of the Universe.

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I am enormously grateful to Katie for sharing this tool and her world with us so that I know of a different way of being on this earth.