The Dangerousness of Byron Katie and "The Work"

Here's another exposé about a faux spiritual teacher — Byron Katie. "The Work" of Katie makes us vulnerable to being led into a dark spiral and in the opposite direction away from deep healing and spiritual groundedness.

 

Hurt people hurt people. And for those of us who work with our trauma in deep and transformative ways, being a victim can be transformed into a passion for compassion, kindness, and love. The question is whether or not we have the resilience, support, and intention to heal how we've been victimized and cultivate the skills of the alchemist. 

 

I see the above quote by Ms. Katie where she names "victims as violent people" as a projection. Bryon Katie has obviously never moved beyond the violence she perpetrates on others that has arisen out of her own likely victimization as a child. She obviously is riddled with deep self-contempt and self-loathing. That she is identified as someone with wisdom and therefore in a position of power makes her an especially dangerous woman.

 

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I'm also familiar with this quote given below by Jeff Brown. Jeff writes that this is "an example of Byron Katie's use of the turnaround technique. On page 35, of Losing the Moon, Byron Katie starts talking about Nazi's taking babies from Jewish mothers and throwing the babies into a firepit near the end of WWII. How do these excerpts land for you? They horrify me, and reflect the kind of dissociation that is mistakenly represented as awakening all too often in the spiritual community."

Quote from Byron Katie:

If Someone (God, ‘what is’), pulls my baby from me - if that's what it takes, I'm there. Take the baby. Tear my baby from me. Throw it in the fire....My discomfort is my war with God. [...]

You see, there are NO choices. What is, is. [...]

But when we get to the baby thing, we're getting down to our sacred little concepts now....You take my baby from me, you're messing with the illusion of I'm the mommy, this is the baby, there's the daddy...

But tearing the baby away- that's the higher. That's the higher, because it snatches your story from you and makes it apparent in your face - nothing's real short of reality....

That's it. That's what is. That's love. That's absolutely Un-describable love. That you, God, would even give me that.

Can you know that Hitler didn't bring more people to realization than Jesus? On your knees - God. God! God! But our stories of reality keep us from the awareness of God is Everything. And God is Good. [...]

There has never been evil and there never will be. Evil is simply a story about what's not...

But I have trashed the baby when I have trashed the Nazi...

I am the baby going into the pit. I am the one throwing the baby in the pit...

 

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I feel like I again need to state that Bryon Katie is incredibly dangerous. I first became familiar with her many years ago when a friend spoke with me about "The Work." She described to me how she was training with Byron Katie to be a "personal coach," and went on to offer me a phone session with her demonstrating "the work." My friend was in Michigan and I was in Oregon, and she knew about my extremely narcissistic mother. So she tried to help me do the "turn around" with my mother. I was left confused and felt that this experience was not helpful and did nothing for me. 

 

I still had already ordered a couple of Katie's books and I began reading one of them after they arrived. That is when I came across a passage where Katie was doing a turnaround with an incest survivor. This woman was up on a stage with Byron Katie in front of a sizable audience and she was going into the trauma of sexual abuse by her father — something which had caused her so much harm and which she hadn't yet addressed. Byron Katie's response to this woman was so horrifying to me, just so incredibly traumatizing and heartless and damaging, that I turned around and dumped both books I'd ordered into the garbage can. 

 

Ever since then I've felt like it cannot be overstated how dangerous, heartless, and I believe narcissistic Byron Katie is. Too many supposedly "evolved" teachers cause untold harm to vulnerable others. It makes my heart hurt. 

 

This comment from a woman following the thread of this original post by Jeff Brown was also spot on. She wrote, "Ms. Katie's unconscious goal was to never feel helpless, out of control or in pain again. So she invented a brilliant dissociative technique to break the connection between her cold mind and her feeling body and heart, and hide forever in the numb peace that this creates. It was a clever move, and seduces/attracts others who are desperate and overwhelmed by inner pain, and seeking to dissociate from themselves as well. She's a bit of a genius of spiritual bypassing... And crazy as a loon."

 

We all need to beware of being pulled into faux spiritual teachings and dangerous supposedly spiritually evolved teachers who, in actuality, are crazy as a loon. Bryon Katie is certainly among them.

 

Bless us all on our journeys. May we be

blessed with discernment and connections with those

who truly support and nourish us.

❤

Molly