The only way to change something is to accept it is in your life forever (that’s more useful than it sounds by the way)

It used to be all about change.

In life coaching we used to look at changing our circumstances, what we were doing or what we owned to try to be happy or successful.

In most therapeutic practices we looked at changing ourselves, our thoughts or our inner dialogues so that we could try to find peace.

In sports we wanted to change our mindset or our belief in ourself in order to win.

In business we wanted to be more driven or problem focused to bring in the revenue.

And that’s all… well… changing.

Because there is a revolution underway.

This revolution is sweeping through all forms of human performance intervention.

It is a revolution in which the human race wakes up, one person at a time (which might take a while but that’s OK), to the mind blowingly ridiculous and yet patently irrefutable fact that we only ever experience our thinking.

Take a moment to really absorb this.

It means that it is impossible for us to directly experience ourself or the job or our past or the match or the boss or the trauma or the event or the competitor or the sales target or the family member or the deadline or the meeting.

We only ever, 100% of the time, no exceptions, experience our thoughts in the moment.

And what's even crazier is that these are not even thoughts about ourself, the job, the boss, the race, the meeting…

These thoughts can’t be about the thing. Angry thoughts are not because the thing has made us angry. Fearful thoughts are not because the thing has made us scared. The thing does not have that power. If it did everyone would be angry or scared all at the same time, in the same way. And we are not.

Because the thing we are thinking of is, you see, made of thought. Don’t get me wrong there is a job, a boss, a sports match but they cannot exist in my life independently of my thoughts. I am creating it all, bringing everything to life and into my reality, in a certain form, from moment to moment. Whether it exists for me or not in the moment, what significance or meaning I create depends entirely on my thinking.

So if I am angry at my boss, it is because I am having angry thoughts in the moment and my mind projects them onto an easy target for me. My boss. Why not?

And I put my energy into trying to appease this boss or creeping around or getting cross or bitching by the coffee machine. And nothing changes because this thought of a boss who can make me angry is being kept alive and well in my head by a total misunderstanding about what is real.

So to come back to the title of this blog, what exactly are we accepting in our lives forever? Not the thing that we’re thinking of. Because that’s made of thought. There is nothing there beyond my thinking in the moment.

What we are accepting is the universal principle of thought coming through us, animating our lives, creating our reality.

And we can accept that because we have been given the super power of consciousness. Consciousness animates our thoughts, bringing them alive in full technicolour making them seem unquestionably real AND it gives us the ability to question that reality until it disappears into the thin air from which it came.

The day it is no longer true is the day we die, the day when consciousness, intelligence and thought leave the human form they have temporarily taken.

Sydney Banks, the man who first recognised that our experience could be described so simply and truthfully said ‘There are no components to thought. Thought is a divine power. It is an element that can never be broken into smaller segments. It is we human beings that use Thought to produce such things as our feelings, moods and our overall perceptions of life’.

There is never a moment when I am not living in the potential for an angry thought that seems to be about my boss or a fearful thought that seems to be about my future or an insecure thought that seems to be about myself. I have zero control over what comes into my head. So there is always that possibility.

I have to live with the possibility that at any moment I could find myself thinking anything. That is a principle of human life. Forever.

But…

(and this is an enormous, life altering, everything transforming ‘but’)

How about if I don’t care…?

How about if I get to a place of clarity and understanding in which I literally could not care one jot what murderous, sexist, racist, homophobic, terrified, evil, agist, victimised, lecherous, suicidal, anxious, depressed, insecure, nihilistic thoughts come into my head. (With thanks to Dr Bill Pettit for that sentence. If a world-renowned psychiatrist can think anything I sure as hell can too.)

The reason I would not care is because I know they are just thoughts.

They have no more significance or relevance to me than clouds do to the sun.

Now that is freedom.

In that acceptance that the principle of Thought is in our life forever all those imaginary demons, those made-of-thought mirages of self and other and circumstance, those desires to fix myself into a state of feeling or mental toughness lose all power. Why would we waste our time fighting our thoughts when we know it is in their nature to come and go?

The storm can still rage across the landscape of my mind, there is no need for me whatsoever to change anything about that storm.

And while it rages, I will simply be still, quiet, curious, listening in to a fresh idea or an insight or guided by what simply makes sense.

And then (but you know this already) everything.... changes.

 

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