LIGHT or Darkness

     How do you feel directing your own & your loved ones' lives, in what many perceive to be a challenging, at times hostile, and seemingly deteriorating world? Many today feel anxious, nervous, afraid, worried for themselves, their children & grandchildren. 

    What if HOW we usually perceive & think is ALMOST ENTIRELY focused on DARKNESS: trying to grab, accumulate & survive at any cost AS IF we were alone, struggling in a hostile, meaningless, mechanical universe? WELL, THIS IS our culture's, and thus our own personal default way of understanding, thinking & behaving, called "left-hemisphere dominant" by noted scholar / researcher / author / psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist MD (http://www.johnlovas.com/2025/10/hope-courage-patience-perseverance.html). This mindset is certain that we are alone in a meaningless, mechanical universe, struggling against all odds to survive. Being trapped in this narrow, robotic mindset IS the nightmare!
    Sadly, those of us who have experienced major trauma, especially in early childhood, have tremendous difficulty trusting anyone, anything, including life itself. As a result, trauma survivors tend to rely exclusively on their intellect ie left hemisphere! This leaves their hearts armored, somewhat protected against re-injury, but effectively blocked from feeling, receiving & giving love. 

    Balanced, well-adjusted, thriving societies & individuals are "right-hemisphere dominant" by default. This right-hemisphere perspective is RADICALLY DIFFERENT because it IS aware of & IS in harmony with ALL of life's INFINITELY WIDER contexts, like Beauty, Love, Meaning, Values, Relationships, the Arts, Spirituality, etc.

    Mystics past and present, are exemplars of right-hemisphere dominance, experiencing life radically differently than left-hemisphere dominant people. Mystics feel peacefully held in love; "at one" - Unitive Mystical Experience - with everyone, everything & the Divine; no separation from others & life; feel no hostility; no desperation to control anyone or anything; no fear of anyone, any "vengeful God" nor death; no neurotic compulsion to do anything, be anyone, go anywhere. They feel liberated, free to be appropriate toward everyone & everything in the present moment ie to embody Divine nurturing unconditional love. ALL of us can gradually open our minds & hearts to our own Divine nature. Watch:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLmOpCCJkuY

    Instead of a steady diet of psychopathic politicians, billionaires, "influencers", and other nightmare visions, for the sake of sanity - how about reading about and listening to wise elders? My blogs are all about inspiring, mature, healthy, wise role models, like: 

    Jonathan Ashford: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Jonathan+Ashford

    Sydney Banks: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Sydney+Banks

    James Finley: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=James+Finley .

    Helen Hamilton: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Helen+Hamilton .  

    Amoda Maa: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Amoda+Maa

    Rainer Maria Rilke: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Rilke . 

    Robert A. Johnson: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Robert+A.+Johnson

    Rami Shapiro: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Rami+Shapiro . 

    Richard Rohr: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Richard+Rohr .  

    Henry Shukman: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Henry+Shukman .  

    John Welwood: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=John+Welwood .

    Toni Packer: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Toni+Packer . 

    Ram Dass: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Ram+Dass .

    James Hollis: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=James+Hollis . 

    Roger Walsh: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Roger+Walsh .

    David Whyte: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=David+Whyte .

    Norman Fischer: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Norman+Fischer .

    David Steindl-Rast: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=David+Steindl-Rast . 

and MANY MORE wise elders to learn from & be inspired by. 

    It's OUR CHOICE - our free will - whether we immerse ourselves in wisdom - OR - darkness (https://www.jonathanashford.com/post/the-darkness). Are we "too busy", yet doomscrolling for hours each day?; Is this wisdom stuff "too deep" or "too confusing", and again, are we "just too busy" to get into it and learn? We can procrastinate and aim at best for feeling superficially OK, "ordinary unhappiness" - OR - discover what life is really about.

 

Neil Young sings - "Imagine" by John Lennon

Spaciousness and Contraction

    There is a back-and-forth rhythm or dance between (apparent) opposites to many aspects of life, as popularized by Pete Seeger's song, "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)."

         One of these 'dances' is our tendency to AT TIMES contract into our "small self," into self-concern: sadness, anxiety, basically a low mood or "ordinary unhappiness" AND AT OTHER TIMES, expand into our "true Self" or wisdom, "a peace that surpasseth all understanding," experiencing uncaused joy, awe, gratitude, awareness, concern for, and even Oneness with, all of creation!

    Expansion can occur spontaneously, because 'everything is perfect as it is' as experienced & understood by shamans, saints, prophets & mystics of all wisdom traditions throughout the ages. Expansion usually occurs when we're able to relax, self-reflect, and finally allow ourself to deeply listen to our inner wisdom's whisperings. 

    Today's mystics agree: 
    "... happiness is our default setting. That’s the way we come wired from the factory. It is our natural state. ... quieting of your mind allows that natural state to come back to the surface." Interview of Chip & Jan Chipman on The Three Principles and Relationships https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmqLI8_9pko
     “All we are is peace, love & wisdom, AND the power to create the illusion that we’re not.” Jack Pransky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kni9VRMIuD4 . 

    Contraction can be very easily triggered & maintained by stress. BUT, the WEIRDEST CAUSE IMAGINABLE is that WE are used to thinking shitty thoughts, which invariably CAUSE our shitty moods - our "ordinary unhappiness." YES, WE habitually choose to continuously re-tell & thus continuously re-suffer the sad "story of me," the sad story of my tribe, and visualize in gory detail horrible future events, which, to paraphrase Mark Twain, "never happened!" The QUALITY of OUR MOODS are ENTIRELY OUR CHOICE! Though we habitually blame our moods on our external circumstances, they have almost nothing to do with it! 

    “The simple truth is this: We’re living in the feeling of our thinking, NOT the feeling of our circumstances.” Michael Neill 

    “The original, shimmering Self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. 
    Instead, we live out of all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on & taking off like coats & hats against the world’s weather.” Frederick Buechner 

    “Stories are prisons we choose to live inside.” Bob Falconer  

    "How we experience life depends on our level of consciousness." Sydney Banks 

    “You can’t be in fear and curiosity at the same time.” John Clarke 

    WHEN you've had enough of being trapped in sad & anxious stories and wallowing in 'ordinary unhappiness' or depression, burnout or worse: 
1) realize self-talk's destructiveness,  
2) recognize self-defeating self-talk within seconds,
3) let it go,
4) immediately bring attention back to the present moment. 
5) cultivate the courage, perseverance & curiosity to remain, rest in, live in & savor the present moment. THIS is the HEART of Mindfulness Training & Practice! 

    You are cultivating PRESENCE - being fully awake, alive, free, engaged with whomever you're with, whatever you're doing - whether in motion or at rest. 
    While in presence, you will feel free, light, peaceful, relaxed, warm, loving, competent no matter what is going on, including a painful medical procedure!

    As soon as you start to feel down, anxious or otherwise troubled, DROP the shitty old thinking habits, go to #4 & 5 above.

    From Jack Pransky's excellent book: “Somebody Should Have Told Us!: Simple Truths for Living Well" 2011. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
    “I realized that if we deeply understood three spiritual facts or principles, how these facts work together and how our use of them gives us every experience we can possibly have in life, with this perspective we can move through life with peace of mind, well-being, mental health and psychological freedom. … The Three Principles point to ten little (but huge) points about life and relationships that would be extremely helpful for people to understand. … Each takes exploration and reflection. Thus a full chapter is devoted to each:

I. Our thinking is our life 
II. Wisdom is always available to guide us, if we know how to access it 
III. If someone’s thinking doesn’t change, they can’t change 
IV. When our mind clears our wisdom appears 
V. We don’t have to think our way out of our problems (or to happiness) 
VI. The feeling is what counts, and it’s foolproof 
VII. What we see is what we get 
VIII. In low levels of consciousness, it is unwise to believe, trust or follow our thinking 
IX. To deeply listen to others instead of to our own thinking gives us a richer experience 
X. We’re only as stuck as we think we are

    To deeply understand the meaning of these statements is to live in a different world, and inside-out world. You may never see yourself or the world in the same way again.

    Our innate Health and its natural intelligence is always hidden within us, just waiting to rise to the surface. All we have to do is allow what we think we know to drop away, or no longer take it seriously, and this wisdom will speak to us. It is so close to us that we have forgotten it is there – like the air we take for granted – yet it holds the key that unlocks the potential in everyone.” Jack Pransky

     Spiritual porosity refers to one of the qualities of Self: openness, connectedness, inter-relatedness or "interbeing," and ultimately Oneness with everyone & everything - nonduality. An old saying, "No man is an island." 

    “I’ve had the honor of being able to work with some of the Northern Plains indigenous peoples here - the Crow, and Sue, and the Northern Cheyenne. And I think they were much more comfortable with ‘porosity of mind.’ When they talked about the world around them, it was ‘all my relations.’ That’s a porous attitude toward the world. And I also think if we really could get back to that different attitude, we wouldn’t be able to treat the world around us so badly anymore.” Robert Falconer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSa9hvEgWpk WONDERFUL INTERVIEW

     Simon & Garfunkel sing about the opposite of porosity, the "small self":

Our Natural State - OR - Choosing Illusion

    In my previous blog, I tried to summarize some of the key aspects of Sydney Banks' insights that have helped me "feel nice" - Banks' name for "uncaused joy" that is, feeling peaceful, happy, loving independent of circumstances. This arises from within - 'an inside job' or an inside-out process - the opposite of how most of us incorrectly assume things work ie that our circumstances directly determine our mood. Actually, all it takes is choosing to not entertain oneself with negative thoughts. 
    Open your mind & heart to these valuable mystical insights, and you too may be surprised to feel sustained gratitude, peace, happiness, kindness ...

 

    “I thought that ‘All we are is peace, love & wisdom, and the power to create the illusion that we’re not,’ was sufficiently simple. 
    But recently I realized that, at any moment, we are either in our essence, or we are in illusion. Now I’m not saying that we ever lose our essence, but I’m saying that we don’t have an experience of our essence. SO we are EITHER having an experience of our essence - being in pure peace, love & wisdom, for example OR we are caught in the illusion that we have inadvertently created for ourselves with this incredible gift of the power of thought.” 
    Jack Pransky "Things That Have Been on My Mind – A Three Principles Keynote" - Viva 2025 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kni9VRMIuD4 .
    Jack Pransky "Somebody Should Have Told Us! : Simple Truths for Living Well" CCB Publishing, 2011. 

Phenomena are preceded by the mind,
ruled by the mind,
made by the mind.

If you speak or act
with a calm, bright mind,
then happiness follows you,
like a shadow that never leaves.
Dhammapada 2 

 

 

“… a Sioux friend told me: 
The Creator gathered all of creation and said, 
‘I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it. 
It is the realization that they create their own reality.’ 
The eagle said, ‘Give it to me, I will take it to the moon.’ 
The Creator said, ‘No. One day they will go there and find it.’ 
The salmon said, ‘I will hide it on the bottom of the ocean.’ 
‘No. They will go there too.’ 
The buffalo said, ‘I will bury it on the great plains.’ 
The Creator said, ‘They will cut the skin of the earth and find it even there.’ … 
Then Grandmother Mole … who has no physical eyes but sees with spiritual eyes, 
said, ‘Put it inside them’ [for that is the last place they will look.] 
The Creator said, ‘It is done.’”                                                         Gary Zukav

 

“Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful. 
To practice meditation is to be in touch with both aspects. 

Smiling means that we are ourselves, that we have sovereignty over ourselves, 

that we are not drowned in forgetfulness. 
How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? 
It is natural – you need to smile to your sorrow because 
you are more than your sorrow.”

Thich Nhat Hanh 

 

"A true healer simply remains fully present as the storm of healing rages, providing a safe field in which unfamiliar and intense energies can be felt, bound-up emotions can be released, and we can come out of time together, out of the drama and chaos of My Life, and breathe into our bodies, fall into our own being, reset, recharge, simplify, rest.

Healing is not a destination, nor a special power in the hands of a few. Healing means recontacting That which is already whole, beyond the healer and the healed - our true nature, simple and beautiful and ever-present.

In this field of true healing, we can truly meet..."
Jeff Foster


“Everyone in mental institutions is sitting in the middle of mental health 

and they don't know it.” 

Sydney Banks


“You can’t get wisdom from another person. 

You can only find it deep within the quiet of your own being.” 

Sydney Banks

 

 

    "When you stop thinking about yourself, all that’s left is all there is. And that aliveness bubbles up through your pores, it bubbles up through your eyeballs. It bubbles out into the world because it awakens the aliveness in the people that you are with, and they begin to change, they begin to see differently, they begin to see through their own story, to see beyond the limits they’ve made up about themselves – no matter how cool those limits are. The best version of you that you can make up in your head, is not a patch on the infinite potential of life."
    Michael Neill "Can a TEDx talk really change the world?" TEDxHSG 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv0EH93k8QY

 

    “Not knowing how long we have here makes today extraordinary. Here. Now. A shocking gift. A humbling gift. Inhabit your days, friend. Step into them. Let them step back into you. Reach towards life and let life reach back into your soul. If you are reading this, you have today! Let today matter, deeply. Let today steady you. Let it bring you back to the ground. Let it breathe you awake. Again and again. Let today be the day you finally stop waiting to live.” Jeff Foster 

 

    A number of modern thinkers have reflected on how our Earth has an incomprehensibly huge array of features (eg gravity, oxygen, humidity, temperature, etc, etc, etc,), each set at an incredibly narrow range, that precisely allows life to flourish. No clear-thinking person would call this 'mere chance.' Then to be born a human being on Earth is, again, an incredible gift. As Iain McGilchrist, in one of his wonderful interviews recently said, the only reasonable response to our Earth, and our gift of life, is awe and gratitude. 

 

    As Ram Dass famously advised, "Be here now" - remain lovingly, intimately engaged with present-moment reality, moment-by-moment-by-moment co-creating our ever-evolving reality.

    "The first gulp from the beaker of knowledge 
estranges us from God, 
    but at the bottom of the glass 
God is waiting for him who seeks."         Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker

 

"A person is not a thing or a process,  
but an opening through which the absolute manifests." 
    Martin Heidegger, widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century

Helpless - Empowered - Awakening

    How do you feel right now? Frequently checking in on your mood is a valuable practice, because, whenever you find that it's low, and you feel grumpy, irritable, pessimistic, sad, sarcastic, etc - it's not caused by your circumstances, but by broken thoughts. And positive thoughts are instantly available - just one thought away.
    This is not how we usually see it. We're used to seeing things from the outside-in: our external circumstances, be it pleasant or unpleasant, makes us feel accordingly.

    Broken thoughts are the natural spawn of broken worldviews. And more of us than we realize, at least subconsciously hold bleak worldviews. Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) understood that the most important question we each need to answer, 'Is the universe a friendly place or not?' IF we believe it's unfriendly ... peace is elusive at best." Joan Borysenko. “Fire in the Soul. A New Psychology of Spiritual Optimism.” 1993. So broken worldviews beget broken thoughts & broken moods.

     Michael Neill spent the first 25 years of his life as a "reasonably successful victim." He writes: "I did my best to fight back against the victim voice inside my head with a cacophony of plans and schemes designed not so much to create things in the world as to take me away from my own unhappiness & insecurity. Studying the personal empowerment and success literature, led me to better understand the path he imagined as a continuum from left to right:

HELPLESS --------- EMPOWERED

    On the left-hand side of the continuum we see ourselves as helpless victims of circumstance [of an unfriendly universe]. There’s not much point in setting a direction in life because we believe that we have no choice about what to do – we have to stay married or get divorced, keep working at the same dead-end job or leave immediately, allow ourselves to be bullied or ‘defend our honor’ by fighting back at every imagined slight. 
    But as we become more conscious of our role in creating our experience of life, we realize that we aren’t really helpless victims and we begin to see that even in the direst circumstances we do have some choices, although we may not particularly like any of the ones we’re currently able to see.

    The further we go toward the right of the continuum, the more empowered we feel and the more choices we become aware of until we realize that in any situation we have a nearly infinite range of choices. There are not only innumerable actions we could take (though some of them may take great courage), but we also have choices about our attitude and the meaning we ascribe to whatever it is that’s happening. 
    This would seem to be the pinnacle of possibility on the empowered path of life.

HELPLESS ------------- EMPOWERED 
Victim                                 Creator 
Fear                                   Courage 
No Choice                            Choice

    Compared with the quiet desperation of being a victim, the testosterone surge of empowerment felt amazing. I set my direction, planned my work, and worked my plan. Yet in the back of my mind, I knew something was off. I was beginning to meet with some extraordinarily successful people. Many of them were just like me – happy & confident when things were going well; petty & desperate when they weren’t. We wore masks of arrogance or indifference to hide a head full of insecurity & fear.

    But some people I met seemed to be on a different path, even though they had many of the same things that I was working so hard to achieve. As I looked to see what was different about them, I realized they were following inner wisdom instead of outer goals. They still wound up getting somewhere in the game of life. It’s just that it didn’t matter so much to them where that happened to be. 
    Instead of striving to be the predominant creative force in their life themselves, they delighted in being conduits for a creative force – the principle of Mind – that existed far beyond the consciousness of the fragile ego-mind. In short, they allowed their life to unfold from a place of connection with a deeper wisdom that seems to be an innate part of the human potential. 
    This opened up a new possibility for how to live in the world: 

HELPLESS ---------- EMPOWERED ---------- ENLIGHTENED* 
Victim                          Creator                                Conduit 
Fear                            Courage                                Insight 
No Choice                      Choice                               No Choice

    I call this enlightened* approach ‘the path of the soul’ because I’ve learned that the moment someone begins to follow their inner promptings & live insightfully in the moment, their life begins to unfold with a beauty & perfection that their own best-laid plans never seemed to have. It’s as if their own soul is designing the perfect path and laying it out in front of them, one daily brick at a time. 
    When we begin to see the illusion of our thinking more clearly, we realize that in a world where our experience is being created from the inside out, mastering the circumstances of our life is the booby prize. That doesn’t mean we might not wind up with a big house or a nice car – there’s nothing wrong with tapping into the abundance of the universe if the opportunity comes our way. It’s just that we’re unlikely to spend too much time chasing the dream of success when we’re awake to the dream of life. 
    Once we start to recognize the feeling of our innate wisdom, we realize that when it comes to setting our direction in life, we don’t really have that much of a choice after all. This isn’t because we’ve gone back to being victims, but rather because we’re pretty much always going to go where that inner wisdom directs us. Not because we ‘have to,’ but because not going where the intelligence behind life wants to take us would be self-defeating and a little bit silly."

    Michael Neill “The Inside Out Revolution. The Only Thing You Need to Know to Change Your Life Forever.” Hay House, 2013. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED CONCISE VALUABLE BOOK

    * Like a growing number of meditation teachers, I understand evolution of consciousness as a life-long process rather than a sudden, once-and-for-all, complete transformation. Therefore I prefer the term "awakening" over "awakened" or "enlightened."

 

    To derive maximal benefit from Neill's advice above, immerse yourself in Sydney Banks' mystical insights by way of his books & online interviews. Here are just a few:

    • "Much of human suffering comes from the mistaken belief that we are fundamentally broken. We’re made of the intelligent energy that animates everything in life. So we’re actually made to thrive. We’re not born in original sin, we’re born in original grace, and then we learn all this other stuff that makes it really seem – because we’re living in the feeling of our thinking – like we are messed up, and we are problematic, and we do need to fix ourselves, and change ourselves in order to be okay.
    • True spirituality is not something to attain, but something we already are 
    • Peace begins when we trust life more than the anxious strategies of the mind. When we get caught up in the machinations of the intellect it becomes considerably more difficult to hear the whispers of a deeper intelligence. 
    • When clarity & purity of thought are present, the answer you seek will present itself, for what you seek is with you and has been with your always. 
    • In the silence of our minds lies creative incubation, bringing the wisdom & joy we all seek.
    • Everyone in this world shares the same innate source of wisdom, but it is hidden by the tangle of our own misguided personal thoughts.    
    • Healthy compounds – feelings, such as compassion, humility, love, joy, happiness and contentment – are all rooted in positive thoughts. 
    • Hate, jealousy, insecurity, phobias and feelings of depression are all compounds of negative thoughts. 
    • All feelings derive & become alive, whether negative or positive, from the power of Thought.
    • Every human mind has direct access to its experience here on earth, and the human mind always has access to its own spiritual roots … from whence it came. 
    • The Universal mind, or impersonal mind, is constant & unchangeable. 
    • The personal mind is in a perpetual state of change. 
    • All humans have the inner ability to synchronize their personal mind with their impersonal mind to bring harmony into their lives. 
    • Some believe the brain and the mind are the same. But there has to be a power behind the brain to make it function. 
    • The brain and the mind are two entirely different things. The brain is biological. The mind is spiritual. 
    • An important thing to realize is that Universal Mind and personal mind are not two minds thinking differently, but two ways of using the same mind.
    • The world in the form of Nature is a reflection of the human mind, which creates an illusionary gap between the spiritual and the physical. This gap, in turn, creates the duality of life. Trapped in this duality, our minds become full of disillusionment and lostness. 
    • As the human mind ascends in divine consciousness, the gap between subject and object begins to vanish and the oneness of life emerges.
    • There is one Universal Mind, common to all, and wherever you are, it is with you, always. 
    • There is no end or limitation, nor are there boundaries, to the human mind." 

    Sydney Banks, "The Missing Link: Reflections on Philosophy and Spirit.” Lone Pine Publishing, 1998.

Kevin - P. Michael Lovas photo

Our Only Real Problem

     Ancient & current mystics, shamans, sages, prophets and other awakening individuals from all times, traditions & geographic locations, repeatedly assure us that life is dramatically different than our common understanding suggests. A classic example:
    "All shall be well, 
     and all shall be well,
     and all manner of things shall be well." Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English mystic

    Most of us are if anything, hyper-aware of how badly so many things in the world around us appear to be going, so statements about everything being rosy are at least puzzling, if not infuriating! 
    Closely associated, is the common assumption that our external environment directly determines our quality of life, and to ensure our survival, security & happiness, we must control & manage our external environment. Mystics call this predominant misunderstanding 'outside-in thinking.'

    A common characteristic of awakening people is that they have evolved to 'inside-out thinking':  

    “regardless of what ‘problem’ we think we have, our only real problem is ('outside-in thinking,' thus) feeling cut off from our innate wisdom & well-being. And the moment we reconnect to that source energy (by shifting to 'inside-out thinking'), our problems stop being so problematic and we move into a new reality.

    I call this natural state of connection to the whole ‘being online.’ It’s the space of relative clarity and well-being where we have access to both our personal database of knowledge & the deeper wisdom of Mind.

    When we’re online, we can be assured that whatever comes through us is likely to be of use. At these times, intuitions and insights flow through our mind like gigabytes through a data cable.

    When we’re offline, feeling uncomfortable, stressed, pressured, scared, or just numb, we get caught up in trying to figure things out, work them through, or overwhelm them with our brilliance.

    In simple terms, being online feels better – it’s that quieter, deeper feeling … People describe it as clarity, contentment, happiness, ease, well-being, or even peace. In the quiet of that deeper feeling, we can easily hear 'the still small voice' within. This is the way our mind is designed to work – as a clear channel to our higher wisdom.

    When we’re online, we see that any situation can be handled through a combination of common sense and insightful action. Any changes to be made become obvious, and while not always easy, remarkably straightforward. Life stops seeming so overwhelming, and the world stops seeming like a problem to be solved.  

    So how do we do it? How do we go online?

    As with so many of the things we’ve been discussing, there’s nothing to do: 

Being ‘online’ is our natural state. 

     We don’t need to worry about learning or practicing techniques to get or stay there, because the moment our mind clears, even if it’s only for a moment, we automatically return to our factory default.

    Understanding that we’ll always get back online when our thinking slows down takes the pressure off – it’s not up to us to manage our state. This allows us to take advantage of our state of mind when it’s high, stay in the game when it’s low, and not waste much mental or physical energy trying to change, control, or ‘fix’ it in between times. Meanwhile, we’ll do less damage in the world. In my experience, this is one of the most beneficial and least considered implications of the inside-out understanding – recognizing the role of Thought in creating experience makes us less inclined to run amok when we’ve gone offline. Instead of blaming our job, our partner, our kids, or the universe in general for our problems, we recognize that but for our thinking, we’d be having a completely different perception and experience of our situation. Consequently, there’s nothing to be done other than the basics of what needs doing.”

    Michael Neill “The Inside Out Revolution. The Only Thing You Need to Know to Change Your Life Forever.” Hay House, 2013. CLEAR, CONCISE, DEEP, VALUABLE! 

    “If you want to help people, you can try to help people. But if you really want to help people, show them a new world, a new reality, and get out of their way.” Sydney Banks