The MAJOR repercussion of this new understanding (oh boy, it’s big) …
This is part 3 of a mini-series that will cure you of your eating problems, instantly, no matter how long you’ve had them and no matter how severe the consequences. Even if you’re currently eating yourself into a mobility scooter, it’s curable. Go back and read parts one and two, otherwise you won’t pick up the thread. There’s kind of an order to it, you see.
Done that? On we go ….
Now then, if we’re all living in separate bubbles of reality, constantly feeling our thinking, as in, whatever’s in our tank at any one time is determining our feelings in that moment which in turn is creating our experience in that moment, then it must be only OUR thinking that can affect us. Like at all. Ever.
Yes?
As in, we can’t be feeling somebody else’s thoughts sometimes and our thoughts the rest of the time. That wouldn’t make any sense. No, it’s only our thoughts that we feel, ever. Our thoughts create our feelings.
Our feelings aren’t pushed on us from other people. Our boss yells at us and we feel like crying? We’re not feeling his thoughts, we’re feeling our own. Our teenager is upset over something that happened at school and we feel awful now too? It’s our thoughts we’re feeling about the event. Not theirs. And the event itself that happened earlier in the day hasn’t reached through time and space and inserted feelings into our bodies either. If I could feel your happy thoughts when we’re mooching towards the pyramids then there’d be a chance of us having a decent day, but I can’t so we won’t.
We basically live in a bubble of thought that we push around with us all day long.
Because it’s only our thoughts we feel, the bubble is impenetrable. Totally bullet proof. Nobody else’s thoughts can enter our bubble, nobody else’s feelings can squeeze in. Neither can their bad moods. We can’t leave the bubble our thinking. We can’t jump across to somebody else’s bubble to feel their thinking for a time. We can’t step out of our thoughts for a breather and we sure can’t stop them from creating our feelings. This is it. One bubble of thought per person. No sharing, no swapping, no exchanging. Out of the bubble comes our moment by moment experience.
What it means is, and this crucial; we affect no one, and no one affects us. Not even the nitwit who took forever packing their bags at the supermarket yesterday. Not even our child who is stomping about the place, sighing. Or the person at the train station who hogged the one and only ticketing desk buying tickets for a train next week. Next week! Some of us have trains to catch, like NOW, missus.
It’s kind of tricky to work it out that we’re never experiencing the world directly, we’re only ever experiencing our thinking, unless someone points it out. Hi there! Even then sometimes it can be hard to spot. I mean, we’re always feeling our thinking, right? And that’s what’s creating our experience in the world, okay? But a lot of the time we’re flat lining, neutral, on autopilot, going through the motions of our day not particularly aware of any sensations within us that are either good or bad. So why would we assume we’re creating the experience of the moment?
We are though. Even in these quiet, nothing moments we’re still feeling something and that feeling is determined by our thinking. As in, it’s the same colour as the thought we have running in the background.
A lot of the time that colour may well be magnolia, so, not much of anything and naturally in those times we’ll feel, well, not much of anything either. But other times the colour of the thought will be of a sunshiny hue and we’ll be skipping through the day as though it were a grassy meadow, blades of grass swaying in the breeze, all buttercups and bumble bees. Everything will seem exciting and positive and we’ll want to be crushing everyone into our bosom and squeezing them with love until their eyes pop from their sockets. Full disclosure sometimes the thinking that’s churning away in the background is grey, moody and sombre and during those instances, yes, we’ll want to hide under the duvet.
Basically, reality is like one of those giant, clear bubbles that you get inside and then run about a field in trying to push a ball into a goal. Whatever thoughts you have in the bubble with you will determine what you’re seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and tasting on the other side of it. Or “out there” as I like to call it.
Your thoughts create your experience in the world, because you can only, and are only, ever feeling your thinking.
To be clear I’m not saying you’ve “thought up” the pyramids, but I am saying they’re nothing without your input. Without your thought. Your experience of them is determined 100% by the thinking that is coursing through your veins at the time. They won’t look the same to you as they do to me, they won’t smell the same, they won’t be the same. What they are to you is determined by your thinking, what they are to me is determined by mine. What they are to you next week won’t be the same as they are to you today, because next week you’ll be feeling different thoughts. They aren’t objective, they’re whatever you think they are, in that moment.
Is something kind of clicking into place?
This isn’t about thinking up two million quid out of nowhere, or closing your eyes and imagining yourself on an island in the South Pacific and when you open them again you’ve sand in your crack. This isn’t about your changing your physical reality at all. Anyway, you can’t shift Mount Everest two feet to the right no matter how hard you try. This is about showing you how your experiential reality is created. But that’s the only bit the matters because your physical reality doesn’t have the power to make you feel anything anyway.
You can’t feel the scene in front of you directly, you can only feel your thoughts about the scene in front of you.
I realise I’m in danger of repeating myself but I have to keep saying it over and over because it’s so damn important that you get this (and the only way you’re going to be able to learn how to eat less – more on that in a bit, pinky promise). You live in a bubble of thought that sits atop the present moment and it’s from within there you experience the present moment. You don’t experience what is happening, you only experience what you think is happening. Which is why no two of us are ever having the same experience, because nobody shares the same thinking.
Whether you’re feeling anything particularly of note or not, right now you’re plonked in the feeling of your thinking, and I’m in the thick of mine. I’m feeling a bit tired and pissed off to be honest, despite the fact I’m living my level 50 life, on a schooner moored off the East African coast. If my physical reality had any impact on how I’m feeling from one moment to the next, I’d be glowing with pride and happiness, all the time. Instead I’m wondering if a swig of coffee might put some pep in my step seeing as a nip of rum is no longer on the menu.
When your thinking is in the toilet, the scene in front of you – whether that’s a desk beneath a strip light in a dingy office, or a tropical paradise with turtles and reef sharks – is going to feel like a barren wasteland littered with worry, wasted opportunities and self-loathing. If, on the other hand, your thinking is of a more optimistic persuasion, even if you’re still labouring beneath a blinking, buzzing strip light that’s half fallen off the wall, you’re going to feel awesome and optimistic and like something incredible is just around the corner.
Joy can pour from your chest regardless of your circumstances, you see, because it comes from within. Like all feelings, joy comes from thought.
The reason we’re all so fucked up as a species, constantly beating ourselves and each other up whilst swallowing fistfuls of antidepressants is because nobody has thought to tell us. We think the ball ache in front of our eyes has the power to make us feel something. So when “disaster” strikes or someone behaves like an arsehole, our feelings automatically plummet, assuming them to be attached directly to the ball ache. They’re not. Our feelings are attached to our thoughts about the ball ache. Only when our thoughts plummet do our feelings go down with them.
Which means, you don’t have to jump out of the window because of the ball ache. You don’t have to lose your rag, cry, scream, rage or drink until you’re piddling blood. You can recognise the ball ache is not the cause of your negative feelings, it’s not the cause of anything. It’s raw, neutral, colourless data. An outline. You’re the one creating the experience of the ball ache, using the power of your thought.
So when you’re walking along the pavement and slip in dog muck and you start vibrating with anger (why can’t these people clear up after their horrible hounds!!) Wait. Stop. It’s not the turd that’s pushed those angry feelings into your bubble and “made” you rage. A turd is an inanimate object, it has no power to do anything. You’ve created the feelings via your thoughts, and pushed them onto the turd.
The dog turd, like everything else in the world is a splodge of raw data, totally neutral. You’ve created the whole experience of stepping in it, using thought. Which happens in this case to be negative. Thought is the bridge between the turd and you. Thought is the bridge between you and the whole world “out there”. Whatever type of thought is flowing from you across that bridge will determine your experience on the other side of it. If it wasn’t for thought you wouldn’t be having any experience of the turd at all.
Literally the turd would be colourless and odourless without your thought.
I’m not saying thought made you step in the turd, no. I’m not saying you subconsciously create a turd to step in because you secretly hate yourself. And you can’t change the smell of it by thinking up a bowl of potpourri, but what I need to impress upon you is you don’t need any of that. You don’t need to force your thoughts to change to improve your experience. Knowing it’s your thought that’s creating your every experience is all the heart racing, blood pumping, vein popping power you need. It makes any experience you do create (and have thus far created), good or bad …. illusory.
Tell me you can see that.
There is no person or turd-flavoured situation in the world that can force you to feel a certain way. Because you can only ever feel your thinking. I’m saying you’re not obliged to flip out when you step in a turd.
The world is powerless. It can’t make you think a certain way, or react a certain way or behave a certain way. It can’t do anything to you. It’s a colourless outline only. How you experience the world is the result of how you choose to think.
You are powerful. You create your experience in the world, moment by moment, using the gift of thought.
I’ll say again, this isn’t about closing your eyes and “manifesting” a winning lottery ticket. This is about letting you see with white hot clarity how every experience you ever have is created, because once you see how the system works, that it’s your thoughts creating the look and feel of the present moment, not the physical elements of it, life begins again. With you, as one of the most powerful people on the planet.
Your thoughts create your feelings. Not the big house or the tiny bank balance. Not the mean bully from school, or your abusive upbringing or the extra couple of stone on the scales. Nothing and no one has the power to create your feelings, or your experience. You are only ever feeling your thinking, not objective truth. You live in a bubble of thought, impenetrable to the outside world, and from in there you get to experience the world. No one can force their thinking on you, their will, their ideas about how things should be done.
If they are trying, pity them. It’s because they believe they are experiencing an objective world. They believe there is one world that 8 billion of us are all sharing. They think their way of looking at the world is spot on. Bless. It isn’t. They’re experiencing their thinking. When they look out at the world, they’re seeing their thinking. It might be that a large number of people share that thinking, so a lot of people see the same thing, but that still doesn’t make that particular strain of thinking objective truth.
A strain of shared thinking isn’t truth. The fact that we think is truth. What we think up is neither here nor there.
Bit of a head fuck I know. We’re nearly there though, now let’s cure this pesky eating problem —–>