The simple truth that everybody misses, but is really the answer to everything, ever (like, meaning of life shit) …

 

If you’ve parachuted in here straight from the ether, you’ll want to check out the previous post in this mini-series on how to stop being ruled by food because otherwise when I start talking about The Nudge your eyes will glaze over and you won’t have that horrible habit of yours healed.  Life’s too short to live with back fat, mkay?

 

Oh alright then lazy bones, here’s a quick recap.  That feeling that comes over you when there’s a hot, crispy crab samosa wafted in front of your nose is thought.  That tight, gripping sensation that enters your chest area, that I’ve called The Nudge, is thought.  It’s the nuts and bolts of your eating problem.  The feeling that says, I want it.  But I mustn’t have it.  But I want it.  It’s what leads you to reach for yet another handful of peanuts even though you know you’re ruining your appetite for supper. 

 

Got it?  Let’s continue.

 

Now, The Nudge, or to use a more pompous name, the feeling of compulsive desire, is not the only feeling that comes from thought.  All feelings and emotions are brought in by thought.  It would be kind of weird if the feeling of wanting to eat was the only feeling that rode around on the back of thought, don’t you think?  Quite.  Rest assured then all feelings come from thought.

 

Thoughts create feelings.

 

There is no feeling or emotion that can rock up on its own, uninvited and start being.  You can’t start being angry without having had an angry thought.  You can’t start feeling jealous for no reason, without the precursor of a jealous thought, I mean.  When a happy thought pops by you feel good. A sad thought, boo.  An eating thought, The Nudge.  Thought —-> feeling, thought —-> feeling, the system never changes.

 

Feelings don’t create thoughts, ever.  Thoughts create feelings, always.

 

Even if you aren’t aware consciously of, say, the happy thought that’s causing you to smile, it’s in there.  A big warm sunshiney thought bundle is pinging its way through your system delivering as it passes a warm, sunshiney glow to your insides making everything seem less awful.  Even the sitting room carpet that you can’t afford to replace.

 

Now, here’s the thing.  We’re never NOT feeling something.

 

• Even first thing in the morning when all we’re aware of is a bladder full of piss, we’re feeling something.
• Even when we’re zoned out in front of the TV, we haven’t blinked in thirty minutes and we don’t even know what show it is we’re watching, we’re still feeling something.
• Even when we’re driving completely on auto-pilot and don’t even know where the last 30 miles has gone, we’re still feeling. It’s because …

 

We live in the feeling of our thinking.

 

Let’s say you and I were on the back of a camel, heading towards the pyramids in Egypt.  A pretty impressive excursion, no?  Okay, so what if I’m hungover, the up-down-up-down motion of the camel is making me queasy, I’m terrified it’s going to throw me off, spit at me and then kick me to death, I’ve got fleas biting the inside of my thighs and it’s so hot I’m worried I may spontaneously combust.  To cap it off, I forgot the deodorant and my pits stink worse than the camel.

 

If the situation itself was causing my feelings, you’d be feeling the same, right?  You’re on the hump of the same camel, in the same desert, the same hot sun beating down on your scalp.  You’ve the same stinky pits (trust me, you have), heading towards the same pile of stone.

 

Except you’re not having the same experience.   You skipped the final round of flaming sambucas last night, you’ve trousers on so aren’t being bitten, a bit of body odour doesn’t phase you and the camel you’ve fallen in love with, nicknamed Derek and want to take him home as your emotional support animal (so the airline is obliged to let him on).

 

If the situation itself had any power at all to create our feelings, we’d be having the same experience.  Yet I’ve a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp whereas you’re in rapture, quite giggly even.  The conclusion?  We can’t be living in the world, we have to be living in the feeling of our thinking.  My thinking says get me the fuck off this camel and yours says giddy up Derek.

 

Different thinking, different feelings, different experience.

 

This is an extreme example for illustrative purposes, but it’s not only during the big moments in life when you’re feeling your thinking (why would it be?).  It’s all the time.  Driving to work, you’re feeling your thinking.  If your thinking is calm, you feel calm and there’s no aspect of your life that can ruffle your feathers in that moment.  If your thinking is antsy and nervous, you feel antsy and nervous and everywhere you look, from your bank balance to the state of your marriage, you see trouble brewing.

 

Whatever thinking you have in the tank at any moment, determines your feelings in that same moment and that’s what creates your experience, in that moment.

 

Thought is like the overlay that sits atop the world.

 

We don’t experience the world directly, we can’t, we can only experience it through the prism of our thinking.  Because we all have different types of thoughts coursing through our bodies at any one time, even when we’re standing side by side looking out the same window, we are not having the same experience.

 

Do you see what this means?  There IS no objective reality that we are all sharing.  We are all living in separate bubbles of thought. Separate thought-created realities.

 

Think about it, if you’re only ever feeling your thinking, I’m only ever feeling my thinking and the muttering man in the bus shelter is only ever feeling his thinking, and it’s that thinking that’s creating our experience from one moment to the next, then we must all be living in separate worlds.

 

It looks like we’re sharing because we can both see the pyramids from atop our camel, so we assume we must be living in the same place.  You can smell my pits so again, it looks like we’re sharing something.  But I am experiencing the situation from the feeling of my thinking, you are experiencing it from the feeling of yours.

 

The pyramids can’t force us to experience them one way or another.  Derek the camel doesn’t control us.  No thing can make us feel anything, good or bad.  Sure the pyramids and Derek the humped devil beast might bring an outline of the moment to us both, but we fill in the detail, we create the experience of the moment; separately, uniquely, using nothing but our paintbrush of thought.

 

This is how (unbeknown to us) every moment of life works and has done since we came down the chute as babies.  This is the great big misunderstanding that’s lying at the heart of humanity, making everything suck.  We have misunderstood where our experience comes from, thinking it comes from outside us, whereas in fact it comes from inside, from our thoughts.

 

The ramifications of this are huge.  It means far from there being one world with 8 billion or so of us sharing, like an objective space in which we all live, to all intents and purposes there are 8 billion separate bubbles of reality, all rubbing up against each other, jostling for position.  It also means your crazy eating is much easier than you thought to change.

 

And if you’re not convinced, you will be by the end of the next post.  This way when you’re ready ———>

 

Photo by Dustin Belt on Unsplash