Each month we’ve used this column to explore the principles behind life and our life experiences. Now is a good time to bring these ideas together and simplify the language around them.
The three principles underlying our experience are mind, thought and consciousness. Mind refers to the pure formless energy, the universal creative intelligence behind all life. Thought is the form that this energy takes as images that allow us to experience or see life, moment to moment, and to create our own reality. It’s a tool and on its own is a completely neutral gift. Consciousness is our ability to be aware of, or feel, our reality through our five senses. It gives our personal take on each thought. It’s what we make of each thought and allows us to choose whether to take a thought personally or to survey life from an impersonal or objective stance, a perspective we call innate health.
One of the greatest gifts we have is the gift of choice. Although we’re often innocently unaware of it we can, in every moment, choose to take a thought seriously and personally or lightly and impersonally. When we choose the impersonal stance we’re accessing our innate health. We’re living in a higher state of well-being. We’re seeing the world with compassion, wisdom and forgiveness.
So what does all this mean in everyday language? The bottom line is that we’re the thinkers. While we may not choose every thought, what we can do is choose what we make of every thought. What spin do we put on it: will we take it personally and give it power and an emotional spin? Will we see it for what it is, an opportunity to choose?
For example, if we’re rushing to an appointment and someone cuts in front of us and takes the last parking spot will we: lose our temper, rage at the driver and fate, feel totally victimized, or, see that the other driver has lost his bearings and was distracted, or, even see the humour in the situation and laugh at how our buttons get pushed?
If we apply this template of choices to most of the events that are scattered throughout the day, and that seems to dictate our experience, a truth is revealed. An aha moment may occur. Life isn’t an outside-in experience as we once imagined but is rather an inside-out reality.
Simply put: We are the thinkers. We have innate health. We have choice. Life is an inside-out experience. This all adds up to a good feeling, more of the time. It’s a simple choice.