Taking off the Goggles: What "Loving What Is" Taught Me About Truth and Reality
- Jun 27
- 4 min read
I first learned about Byron Katie early in my Yoga Teacher Training. Our teacher told us that we all see the world not as it is but through our own goggles. These goggles are formed by our beliefs, opinions, traumas, societal norms, etc. Each person’s goggles are different. We believe that our life, and the world, is like it is based on the view from our goggles.
We believe that we haven’t achieved such and such thing because our boss has something against us. We believe that we are unlucky in relationships because there is something wrong with us or the people that we are choosing. That we can’t do something. That we mustn’t do something else. That’s it’s too late. That it’s not worth it. All these beliefs are living in our mind.
Over time, these thoughts become stories. Eventually, those stories become what we call truth. We stop questioning them. We defend them. We build our identities around them. Sometimes we hold onto them even when they are making us unhappy.
This was me. I had created my own story based on the goggles with which I saw my life and the world. I was quite invested in it.
I remember our teacher telling us: take that belief, that story that you hold so dear and ask yourself, “is it true?” Of course, everyone said “yes”. But then he said: “are you 100% certain that it’s true?” At this point many of us paused. He continued, “because if you are not certain 100%, there is a possibility that it is not true.” This blew my mind.
Unbeknown to us, he was introducing us to Byron Katie’s “The Work”.
That day, we explored the idea in depth. We were given the Judge-Your-Neighbor worksheet and asked to take one of our own painful thoughts through the process.
And it was extraordinary.
The four questions were so simple, almost too simple at first:
Is it true?
Can I absolutely know that it’s true?
How do I react when I believe that thought?
Who would I be without that thought?
This exercise broke the narrative that I had been carrying. Knowing that these thoughts that I had believed so completely were no longer the only possible truth, shook my world. There was space. There was another angle. Another possibility. Another way to see. And I was the one to decide.
In Loving what is Byron Katie goes beyond The Work. She also talks about our relationship with reality itself.
Katie invites us to see that so much of our suffering comes from arguing with what already is. We live in the shoulds and woulds. She should have behaved differently. He should have understood me. This should not have happened. My life should look another way by now.
But life happens anyway.
Katie challenges us to consider something radical: that what happened should have happened, simply because it did.
There is something deeply freeing in this-not because everything is easy, or because everything feels good, but because reality does not need our permission to be real. When we stop fighting what is, we begin to see more clearly. We can meet life from presence rather than resistance.
This book helps us realize that there are two practices happening at once. The first is learning to see life as it is, without the goggles. The second is learning to question the thoughts that keep us from loving it.
Together, these two practices are what make Loving What Is so powerful.
Katie invites us to trust that what happened should have happened, simply because it did. Not as punishment. Not as proof that live is against us. But as part of a larger unfolding we may not fully understand from where we stand.
When we combine that trust with The Work, something opens. We begin to see that our suffering is not caused by life itself, but by the thoughts we place on top of life. The shoulds. The woulds. The stories. The beliefs that we never stopped to question.
For anyone walking the path or starting to create more self-inquiry, this book is more than a companion. It is a powerful tool. The Work works.
It gives us a way to begin transforming how we see our lives, other people, and the world around us. It helps us notice where we are trapped inside a story and then gives us a process to loosen the story’s hold.
Katie herself writes how this work freed her from her misery. How through these practices she was able to access happiness in a way she never had before.
This book also mirrors yogic teaching beautifully. Yoga asks us to create space between ourselves and the movements of our minds. It teaches us to observe thoughts without getting pulled by them, to see more clearly, and to meet life with steadiness, truth, and presence.
Loving What Is gives us a clear way to practice that space. Through The Work, we begin to see that we are not every thought we think. We are not every belief we inherited. We are not every story we have carried.
And once we see that, something opens.
What might become more possible if you questioned the story you’ve been carrying?
Loving What Is is available in our Mesa Shop.
