Most of us think of time as “real,” as a measurement of where we are in our day, our week … our life. It comes as a surprise to realize that time is actually where we are in our thoughts, no matter where we are chronologically in our day, our week … our life. I have seen this again and again working with clients: The woman who spent most of her days angrily rehashing her violent marriage, which had ended five years before I met her. The young woman who relived...
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Across the world, it often seems Civility has gone to sleep. Angry, even vengeful, Clamor seems to be the dominant voice. What we hear a lot of now is loud and forceful and menacing. It appears powerful as it happens. But it is not natural to humanity. And it represents only the power of thought when it flows through insecurity. The power itself is neutral; how we are using it determines how it manifests. The same power flowing through love is even more stirring. As I listen to what too often passes...
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Many of my clients are intensely engaged in a fruitless, frustrating effort to prove others wrong, or to get others to say or do what they expect. They come in angry and resentful because these people are “ruining” their life or “making” them miserable. They hang their happiness on getting what they think they “need” from people they who have “let them down”. “When”, I always ask them, “is the last time you complied with an angry, accusatory person who insisted that you do or say something?” The usual response is, “Huh?”...
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People seek help from counselors when they feel bad. No one has ever come into a session with me to complain about their thinking. They come in to say, “I’m really depressed.” “I’m sad and I can’t seem to get over it.” “I am so anxious that I can’t concentrate.” “I get so angry I feel like hitting my children.” That kind of statement. So, intuitively, we know that bad feelings are a sign that we need help. But we believe the bad feelings are coming from the events, people and...
Read MoreIt is ultimately a matter of war and peace whether people across the world come to understand the role of their own and others' thinking and fluctuating states of mind. One person at a time, when someone comes to understand how thought works and what is creating their experience of reality, they become increasingly secure. When a person feels secure, not living at the mercy of external factors, life does not look threatening. Secure people remain calm and exercise judgment, and look for insight and wisdom, rather than reacting or over-reacting...
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Every time we get new information, we have a choice what to make of it. That choice has nothing to do with the information. It has to do with whether we understand how we bring our own thinking to life as reality. We don't choose the first thought that comes to mind. But every subsequent related thought and what we make of it is strictly up to us. The more deeply we understand our own spiritual nature, that we are generating our life experience by bringing thoughts to mind and then taking them more...
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