“Thought creates your word, and then it says I didn’t do it.” David Bohm
“If people learn not to be afraid of their thoughts and their feelings, that would change the world.” Syd Banks
“Feelings, by themselves, do not create problems. It is rather the tendency to interpret and analyze them. When out of habit you believe those interpretations, it is there that the suffering begins.” Mooji
Insight of the day:
Ready to take a dive into the nature of human experience?
A simple, yet often misunderstood, truth with huge implications, is that the human experience is 100% inside-out. We only experience – and feel in our body – our thoughts in the moment. The outside-in experience is an illusion – if it were true, all of us would have an identical experience of the same environment, yet we don’t. No two people in a crowd experience an external event, such as a concert, in the same way. We ourselves don’t have the same experience around a certain external event through time, i.e. we don’t experience the sunset in the same way twice, although the sun sets every day. There are many other examples, if you think of it.
At any given point in time, we experience a unique reality that comes only from our thinking. Yet we are used to believing that people, events and circumstances outside of us can affect us either positively or negatively. Yet, how many times did something negative not affect us as much, because we were in a good mood (feeling good about ourselves) and how many times something positive that was supposed to make us feel better left us completely untouched when we were in a bad mood?
And do you think that moods are created by our environment? The answer is no, moods themselves are the result of passing, arbitrary thoughts and thought patterns. The problem is when we take our moods seriously, i.e. act on them, trying to find the reasons behind them, who is to blame, trying to resolve them, to label them, to change something in our environment or in our thoughts so they can go away… and the more we try the more they persist. We cannot control other people or our environment.
In addition, we cannot control our thoughts or our moods for that matter. The more we try, the more disappointed and powerless we feel, the more self-obsessed and neurotic we become, not to mention that our relationships suffer. Personally, in the past 20 years I have practiced and trained in many self-improvement methods; with techniques and regimes meant to change my thinking to positive thinking: positive affirmations, mindfulness practices, focus disciplines, vision boards…etc, but they could only take me to a certain level. Once I acquired this understanding, of how the human mind really works, that’s when I transformed and my life acquired a different meaning.
So, where is the truth? In understanding that our power to create authentic feelings and experiences is inside only – from the relaxed mind, and saving ourselves the trouble of trying to control something we cannot in order to feel better. From the quiet mind we go to our default mode, which is well-being, and from there we always have a more intelligent choice, one that works, through love, understanding and acceptance.
Reflection journal:
Where in my life do I notice the inside-out nature of experience? Do people, events and circumstances always affect me in the same way? Have I ever planned something that was meant to give me joy and I ended up bored or miserable? Have I found myself strong and resilient when I least expected it, like it came from nowhere? Can I truly control my thoughts? Can I say with certainty what my first thought in the morning will be?
How can I recognize my moods and the moods of other people for what they are – and how much more easily do they come to pass if I don’t act on them? Try it! We, 3 Principle practitioners, call that internal weather or mood meter.
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