I've been on Michael Neill's email list for quite some time. If you don't know who Michael is, he wrote the Inside-Out Revolution, among other books, and has been a prolific coach around the world. He runs a podcast called Caffeine for the Soul and his material has resonated with me for quite some time. The Inside-Out Revolution, by the way, is the first book I suggest reading when someone is curious about the Three Principles of Mind Consciousness and Thought and wanting to learn how to have an easier time of things on a day to day, moment to moment, basis.
In an email this morning I read this line..."Struggle is normal, not natural." What I loved about that line is that most of society thinks that life is "automatically" hard, stressful, anxiety producing, worrisome, etc., and it's really just taken as fact. People assume the world gets more stressful every single year.
Michael goes on to say that struggle is a feeling, not a fact. In the moments where we feel struggle (or a better way may be to say when we feel we are struggling) we are only feeling the current thinking we have. The feeling we have in the moment is nothing more than a reflection of the thinking we have about a circumstance or situation in our life. As you can imagine some days those circumstances and situations seem insurmountable and some days you take those on with ease. So what changed?
It all comes down to your thinking in the moment. What you are thinking right now is giving you a feeling that you are feeling in your mind and body. Here is a simple test you can use on yourself. Think of a time in your life where you felt really really sad. If you sit and think about it long enough those sad feelings will come back and you will experience them in your mind and body. If you think of a time in your life when you felt really really happy, again, you can think hard about it and you will feel those same feelings again.
So the fact that people are struggling has become normal. We believe that since we live here on this earth we will struggle because "life is stressful". But when you deeply understand that you only ever feel your thinking from moment to moment you will start to realize that feeling what we call struggle is not normal. What is normal is that we were created to be in the present moment. What is normal is that our life can only be happening in the here and now. Our past is simply stored thought and memories that we are holding onto, and, after so many years some of the details start to fade and we fill in the blanks.
One of the most amazing aspects of having a deep understanding of where my experience is coming from (always and only from your thinking) is that life doesn't feel like a struggle anymore. I'm able to let thoughts come in and out of my mind like clouds roaming through the sky. I may acknowledge them for a minute and ponder on them but when I let them go I go back to feeling blissful and at peace.
So, struggle is normal but not natural. Break out of "normal" and come to deeply understand that you "feel your thinking from moment to moment. A life of presence and peace is only one thought away. Simple, amazing, and requires no analysis to live a life of more peace and clarity.
Until next time,
Jackson Brown
Your thoughts are not reality but your reality is created by your thoughts
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