We are all on a journey to become the best and most whole version of ourselves and the road of life has many twists and turns. Sometimes, we can uncover a really deep truth or insight that changes how we see the world in a subtle or a profound way. This happened to me when I truly understood that I was okay and not only that, I was always okay and didn’t have to go looking for something or someone else to fix me.
This may sound like a simple and uninspiring statement to you right now, but when the penny dropped for me and I really understood this, it turned out to be a pivotal moment in my life.
I was undertaking my first training in the Three Principles with the wonderful Jack Pransky – a six-month exploration into understanding mind, consciousness and thought and how everything we experience (and I mean everything) is through the lens of our thinking. We were taking turns to speak on the first day, to say why we were there and what we were looking for from the course and one of the other participants said “I’m just looking for the thing that will fix me and change everything. I just feel as though there is something out there and when I find it and understand it, everything will fall into place and I’ll be okay.”
I resonated so much with what she was saying as it felt like the story of my life. I had been a seeker for so many years, reading voraciously, doing courses, working with different teachers, always looking for the one thing that would be ‘it’ – the technique or understanding that I’d learn that would change everything and give me what I needed to be happy, whole and complete.
Suddenly, in that moment, I had an epiphany. I saw, as clearly as I have ever seen anything, that I am already perfect, whole and complete and I realised that I didn’t need to go looking for anything, it was already within me. I had just believed this crazy illusion created by my thinking that said otherwise. It was an incredibly emotional moment and I remember bursting into tears and crying for most of the day as I released a lifetime of searching and longing and remembered who I am.
I continued to feel this sense of wholeness for a while, but because I am human, sometimes the illusion of thought takes over and I forget. However, I have never fully lost that understanding but sometimes I just have to dig a little deeper to find it.
“The thoughts we believe, we experience as reality.”
Now, you may be reading this and thinking that this doesn’t apply to you and you won’t have the same experience, but I am no different to you. We are always absolutely perfect, whole and complete, we just think we aren’t. We believe there is something missing and we need to look externally to find it.
Look at it this way. Imagine the most perfect version of yourself – the one that is relaxed, happy, self-assured and just knows exactly who he/she is. Now visualise this version of you surrounded by a huge wall made from glass bricks. These bricks are a metaphor for the thoughts that stand between us and the world. Behind these bricks we are as perfect as we can be, in harmony and bliss, but then we look out through these bricks and they are the lens through which we experience the world. This wall of bricks (thoughts) have built up from your earliest childhood and have been created from every experience you have had (good and bad). Many more of our thoughts are just random, passing through our consciousness like fish flowing downstream.
When we identify with our thoughts, then we will experience them as our reality. However, we can push the bricks out of the wall and look beyond them to experience the world directly in the moment, or we can choose to disregard them completely. They are not fixed in place and the act of noticing them allows you to get distance from them, so that you can see them for what they are and not be them.
When we approach life from that place of wholeness, rather than through the lens of our thinking, our experience changes. When I coach clients or friends and I approach them as though they are already perfect and don’t need fixing (even though they may not be able to see it in the moment), our connection is always much deeper than through the intellect. When my mind tries to find ways to help them fix their problems or come up with solutions, we never really fix them – we come up with options but they often miss the mark. But if I don’t try looking for answers and instead meet the part of them that already has the answers from the part of me that feels whole, then somehow we find exactly what needs to be said or done.
An example of this happened to me personally recently. My husband had been working really hard (seven days a week) and was feeling pretty stressed and overwhelmed with how much he had to do. I decided that he needed fixing, because I wanted to do something to help him look at his situation differently so that he could let go of the some of the stress (which, despite the very real workload, is always an inside out job). However, my guidance and opinions were met by him with resistance. Then I had a coaching session with another Three Principles practitioner and she asked me why I saw him as broken and in need of fixing. I suddenly saw the whole situation from a whole new perspective and realised that I had got caught up in my ‘thinking’ about him and that had got in the way. I didn’t need to believe my thoughts.
When I got home, I told my husband that I was sorry for trying to tell him what he needed to do to deal with his situation and that I knew there was nothing to fix; he already had the answers and I would be happy to support him in any way he needed it. In that moment, the situation completely changed. He still had loads of work to do, but because I was looking at him now in a really positive way, that’s what he found in himself and he has been able to manage his stress levels much more easily. And because I wasn’t buying in to my thinking, I saw the situation for what it was, and it was no longer a problem.
When you aren’t aware of your thoughts, they affect how you feel, your decisions and behaviours. It is the act of noticing that allows you to distance yourself from your thoughts, giving you the space to respond rather than react. And it’s from that space that the magic happens.
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