The Nature of Thought

“Understanding the nature of thought frees us from the illusion of our thinking” – Michael Neill. 

I named this community the Nature of Thought as once I saw for myself what was holding me back in life, what was getting in the way, I realised that it all came from our understanding or more our misunderstanding, of the nature of life and specifically the nature of thought. 

So I started this community to have a conversation around our deeper understanding of our human experience. And that is how The Nature of Thought was born. 

I have always been interested in how our mind works and specifically,  why someone thinks one thing in a situation and another person something else from the same situation. 

Remember those times when you went on holiday with your family and you were having a great time and your siblings thought it was boring. Well this difference in our experience of life was always of great fascination for me. 

These separate realities; Looking at the same thing and having a completely different experience of it.

I became an avid reader of all things to do with psychology, philosophy and self development. This brought me to read a book by Jack Pransky called ‘Someone should have told us!”  which completely changed my perspective on how we experience life.

You see, what Jack Pransky wrote was that we live in an ‘inside out’ world and not an ‘outside in world’, the latter of which most of us believe our life experiences emanate. 

In other words, it is not what is happening outside of ourselves that is creating our experience of life. 

We think that because someone shouted at us, that is why we are upset 

We think that because the train is late that is why we are  frustrated 

We think that because our children are struggling in school, that is why we are anxious  

However that is not how we experience life. How it really works is as follows;

We are having upset thinking about someone shouting, which is causing us to feel upset

We are having frustrated thinking about the train being late which is causing us to feel frustrated. 

We are having anxious thinking about our children struggling which is causing us to feel anxious.

This seemingly small (for some) distinction has an enormous effect on how we navigate through life

This idea peaked my curiosity and started my journey into this understanding; The Three Principles. 

It all began with Sydney Bank , a Scottish welder who had a spiritual experience. He was at a conference and having a discussion with someone about who was the most insecure of them, when the other person said: “ Syd, you are not insecure, you just think you are”. This awakened something in Syd and he realised that at a fundamental level he was not insecure, there was nothing wrong with him, he just thought there was. 

The second insight that Sydney Banks had was that we are infinite potential. We have this creative force inside of us where something is created from nothing. 

None of what I write above, or some of what I write may make sense to you and that is OK.  It has taken me a while to see what I know see for myself and others. That we all have innate wellbeing, innate health, innate wisdom, innate creativity, innate resilience… fill in the blanks after innate….. because the potential is infinite. 

When we realise where our experience of life is coming from, that it is inside out, we break away from the narrow band of our potential that we have created for ourselves and tap into the limitless possibilities, beyond our stories, past, beliefs and labels.

The moment we wake back up to who we really are we have the capacity to have a completely different experience of life.

Because our experience is 100% made of thought.

This won’t be a space that will give tips and techniques on how to overcome our anxiety, insecurities, stress, etc because there is nothing to do. Once we see this understanding for ourselves, we begin to see how our experience of life is created through thought.

And that opens us up to a more enjoyable and simpler life that has infinite possibilities, infinite potential, infinite creativity which has an influence on our relationships, our work life, our families, our  ……..

There is nothing to do, but when you see more, your experience of life will become so much more simpler

Till the next time

Ruth