Читать книгу Somebody Should Have Told Us!: Simple Truths for Living Well - Jack Pransky - Страница 14

I. Our Thinking is Our Life

Wait! Before you start. I know many of you live with feelings you’d rather not have. I used to too. We live with worry, with stress, with frustration, with anger, bother, anxiety, sadness, depression, jealousy, guilt, with minds too busy, with addiction, and on and on. None of this is necessary. These feelings do not have to rule us. The secret is to understand where these feelings come from, and I don’t mean from past events. I mean understanding how all feelings are created within us. I also know from experience you will be able to see this best if we ease into it gradually. Why? Because the information itself means nothing; only your own insights about it make any difference. The mind has to be prepared to take in the new. Don’t worry about not seeing it right away; by the end of the book it will have crept up on you and will make complete sense. Then you can read the book again and see even more the next time. We begin with the story of Lisa…

Lisa had never climbed a mountain. She wanted to but was a heavy smoker and afraid she’d never make it. She feared not having the wind or stamina. Over her 39 years others had asked her to go hiking with them. She refused. She was filled with trepidation, and not only about mountains.

As a baby Lisa was abandoned. At 39 she still had never met her real mother. She was brought up by a stepmother, whom Lisa believed hated her. When she was a child her uncle, whom she loved and trusted, sexually abused her. Through such experiences Lisa picked up habits of thinking that at the time helped her survive but as the years went by proved less and less helpful. For twelve years she needed depression medication to get her through the day. She became involved in a series of misguided relationships, at least one physically abusive. She felt stuck. Many things in her life seemed like mountains.

Lisa attended a Three Principles-based course called Health Realization* that I taught at the New England School of Addiction Studies. In the class she heard something that touched her deeply. On her way home she realized she actually saw the colors of the trees for the first time. In awe she stood and cried at the beauty. Sporadically over the next few years she counseled with me and attended a longterm professional Health Realization training. She began to see the only thing keeping her stuck was her own thinking.

Through this training Lisa came to realize that she used her thinking in ways that inhibited her, that kept her in fear and longing for a better life. She realized the only thing in her way was how she used her power of Thought, and her thoughts could change. With this realization Lisa’s life improved dramatically. For the first time she began to experience well-being. She no longer felt the need for depression medication. Her psychiatrically diagnosed “seasonal affective disorder” no longer had the same grip on her. She volunteered to teach what she’d learned to correctional center inmates and began to affect their lives.

Because Lisa’s life had changed so, I asked her to co-teach the next Three Principles course with me at the New England School, held that year in southern New Hampshire. During the mid-week afternoon break, for my 56th birthday, I decided to hike Mount Monadnock. I hadn’t hiked it since I was a kid. I asked Lisa if she wanted to join me.

“I want to,” she said, “but I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it.”

“Lisa,” I said, “this is the most climbed mountain in the world. People in far worse shape than you have climbed it.”

With all Lisa’s other insights about her life she was stuck on the mountain. Why could other people climb mountains and not her? What made her so different?

With mixed trepidation and excitement she decided to try. “If I can do this,” she thought, “it would be a huge accomplishment.”

So off we went. Lisa spent the entire first part of the climb, which was more like a gentle walk through some pretty woods, grumbling about how unpleasant it was. She wanted to stop and have a cigarette.

“Is this wise?” I asked.

She agreed it wasn’t. “But if I have to stop and have one, I’m going to!”

Before we arrived at the steep part of the climb Lisa wanted to quit. She grumbled some more but managed to push on.

After trudging along a while, both of us sweating, we arrived at the steepest part of the climb—solid granite. Suddenly Lisa saw it as a challenge. Her experience of the hike changed. She pulled herself up steep boulders.

“This is fun!” she laughed.

After climbing steep rock for a while both of us were tired. We came to the first beautiful overlook. Lisa had never seen a view like it. She loved it. She thought we were at the top.

“You mean we’re not there?” she asked with a pained expression.

“Not yet. It’s up there. See?” I pointed.

Lisa became discouraged. Her experience of the hike changed again.

“I don’t know if I’m going any further,” she grunted, sat down, pulled out a cigarette and lit up.

“Lisa, look, we can see the top! Do you really want to quit now, when we’re almost there?”

Lisa grunted again.

A couple of Puerto Rican women, also attending the New England School, appeared on the trail. They didn’t feel like going farther either. We chatted a few minutes until some athletic-looking hikers passed by on their way down. I asked them how far it was to the top. They said, “Oh, probably about ten minutes.”

“It’ll probably take us twenty minutes then,” I joked.

For some reason the Puerto Rican women thought that was the funniest thing. They couldn’t stop laughing. Amazingly it jazzed everyone up, and we all got up for the last leg.

Grudgingly Lisa put out her cigarette and stood up. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Twenty minutes later the four of us stood on the peak. Lisa witnessed her first 360-degree spectacular view. Again she stared in awe. Lisa had climbed her first mountain. She had made it to the top.

Lisa made it because she stopped thinking she couldn’t.

Most of us don’t realize how our thinking controls us. We are at the mercy of our thinking—until we see and realize how it works to create our experience of life.

Thought is the greatest gift, the greatest power we have. It is our creative power—the power to create anything with our own thinking. This is the first spiritual Principle. It is a fact. We can have any thought. We generate it. We create it. We make it up.

The second Principle is the fact that we also have another awesome gift: the power of Consciousness. Consciousness allows us to experience life. Without consciousness we would not have any experience because we would have no awareness of whatever is happening out there.

Contrary to the way it appears we can never get a direct experience of the world out there through our consciousness. Our consciousness can only give us an experience of what we think is out there, of our own interpretation of what is “out there.” Our consciousness can only give us an experience of our thinking. The only experience we can ever have is of our own thinking.

This statement can be baffling. To truly understand this changes lives.

I’ll state this in a different way.

We take in life through our five senses. That’s obvious. What isn’t obvious is whatever our five senses pick up must be filtered through our own thinking. We can never get a “pure” or direct experience of the outside world. For example, some people looking out a window will see tree branches gently swaying in the wind. Others won’t be aware of trees or branches at all; they might see a truck going by. They are looking out the same window at the same stuff at the same moment but are having a different experience of what is out there. They are seeing a different “out there.”

Some people like the taste of broccoli; others don’t. Most people love the smell of roses; some don’t. Some people love rap music; others can’t stand it. Some people love the feel of velour because it reminds them of velvet; the feel of velour used to drive me up the wall. No matter what the sensory organ, it’s all how we think about it. It’s only how we think about it. Always! We can only know our own personal thinking of the outside world. That’s it. That’s all.

In other words, the mountain is not the problem. The mountain is the outside world. Our own thinking about the mountain is the problem. Lisa’s experience of the mountain differed from mine because we had different thinking about it and what it meant to us. That was the only difference! During the hike Lisa’s experience of the mountain changed numerous times. Sometimes it was drudgery, sometimes impossible, sometimes a challenge and fun. Why? Because along the way her thinking changed about it. The point is Lisa is the one who had to live with whatever experience she happened to think up at the time.

This is what happens in life. This is what our life is all about. This is our life, period. When we truly realize everything we experience— our perceptions, our feelings, our problems, whatever we call “reality” or “the way it is”—is really only a product of our own thinking, everything then changes for us. Our experience of life changes.

The outside world can never make us feel anything. Only our own thinking can make us feel things. Sometimes in the heat of battle or in a sport such as basketball or football we may not even notice we’ve been cut—until we notice we’re bleeding, and then we think about it. Only then does it hurt. We’re not experiencing the pain until we think about it. Our work isn’t what’s stressing us out; our own thinking about our work is what’s stressing us out. It’s not Johnny driving us nuts; our own thinking about Johnny is driving us nuts. It’s not our fear of speaking in front of a large audience; it’s our own thoughts about speaking in front of an audience. It’s not the mountain. Our thinking is the mountain. Our thinking is what the mountain is to us.

Our consciousness gives us an experience of whatever our thoughts create, and it makes that creation look real. That’s the job of consciousness: to make everything we believe look real to us. If someone cuts us off in a car nearly causing an accident and we get angry, it seems we really should be angry. But it is only our thinking. I’m not saying what the driver did wasn’t wrong or dangerous. I’m not saying we don’t sometimes have too much to do in too little time. I’m not saying Johnny doesn’t drive a lot of people nuts. I’m not saying there aren’t real people in the audience who judge us. I’m not denying the mountain is real. But what determines our experience of the mountain—whether we think we can climb it, whether we think we can make it, whether we think it’s too much for us, whether we think it’s overwhelming, whether we think it’s exciting or exhilarating—is all determined by our own thinking. Our thinking creates the mountain—for ourselves. Our experience of the mountain is determined by our own thinking. When our thinking changes, our experience of the mountain changes for us.

First there is a mountain,

Then there is no mountain,

Then there is.

-- Donovan

“There Is A Mountain”

I had no idea what this song meant until I understood this. Like the mountain, our experience of our entire lives is determined by our own thinking—every aspect of life and every situation we encounter. Of course we will encounter challenging times, challenging people, challenging relationships, challenging circumstances. Yet, how we experience these we make up with our own thinking—not on purpose, but that’s the result.

Our thinking is everything. Life would be nothing for us if it weren’t for our thinking. Without our thinking any experience that happens to us would be neutral. Thought provides the content, whether it is good or bad to us, happy or sad or mad to us. With this incredible power of Thought we get to create anything. We get to create the life we experience.

Whether we know it or not we are creating our lives constantly, continually. Whatever we happen to see of life changes with our next thought. Some thoughts seem to be more entrenched than others, but even these can change because they are only thought.

Suppose we realize that any experience we’re having can and will change with new thought. Wouldn’t that mean we don’t have to take whatever experience we are having now so seriously? After all, whatever we’re experiencing will eventually change. Sometimes her fear of the mountain looked real to Lisa; sometimes it didn’t. We may be angry at the driver who cut us off now, but a month from now we probably won’t be still carrying that around. So why take it so seriously now? We may be stressed because of too much to do at work, but sometimes we’re not stressed with the same amount of work. Sometimes Johnny bothers us less than at other times. What is going on? The only difference is our thinking has changed. We don’t need to take our momentary, passing feelings so seriously. Our feelings are fluid as our thinking; they are the river flowing by. Why get caught in it?* In other words, our relationship with our thinking can change—whether we take it seriously or not, whether or not we believe in it and trust it and follow it.

Thought continually flows within us. God knows where some of the thoughts come from that pop into our heads. We have no control over most of the thoughts that pop in. We can’t always decide what we think—that’s not our point of choice. Sometimes completely bizarre thoughts come up. If we get a thought of a pink elephant standing on the telephone wires, we may get a picture of it but we won’t take it seriously (unless perhaps we’re drunk); we will naturally dismiss it. But if we get a thought, “that person doesn’t like me” or “that person is ignoring me,” those kinds of thoughts we tend to take seriously, even when we have no idea what that person is really thinking.

Who decides what we take seriously?

Tammy feared needles. Because a medical condition required her to get shots from a doctor, this was not good. She avoided her shots because of her fear of needles; therefore, her health worsened. As we were talking by telephone about her fear I said something like, “It may hurt a little when you’re stuck by a needle, as it would if you were walking down a hallway and brushed against a pin sticking out of a couch, but whether someone sees it with fear or not, they decide.”

I don’t know what made this pop into my head at that moment, but I flashed upon a time back in 1965 when I took my then-future, nowex-wife, Judy, to her first visit to New York City. As we stood in her first subway station and the train screeched in Judy stiffened like a board. She clamped her hands over her ears, clenched her jaw, closed her eyes and stood cringing and rigid, while everyone else in the station went about their business as if nothing unusual happened. I asked her what the matter was and she said, “It’s too loud for my ears. I have very sensitive ears. I can’t stand it!” Every time a new train pulled in she did the same thing. Yet I remembered, over time, as we kept visiting the city she didn’t do that anymore. I told Tammy to hang on the phone a moment—she was thinking, “What in the world is he talking about?”—and I ran down the hallway to Judy’s office and poked my head in the door.

“Remember when you used to have this horrible reaction to the noise of subway trains coming into the station and now you don’t?” I asked. “What changed?”

Judy reflected a moment and said, “I decided not to think about it anymore.”

“Ha!” I ran back to the telephone and told Tammy.

“That is very cool!” said Tammy.

We ended the conversation shortly thereafter.

When I spoke with Tammy again a month later I learned she had completely overcome her fear of needles. She got her shots and reported it was no big deal.

What happened?

For whatever reason Tammy realized her fear of needles was just a thought that looked “real” in the moment but actually was just something she made up in her head. Tammy’s thinking about needles changed, just as Judy’s thinking about subway noise had changed. As a result their experience of these events changed.

Our thinking is our experience of life. Our thinking is our life.

Now standing on the top of the mountain very proud of herself Lisa could not believe what she had accomplished. She couldn’t imagine why she had ever thought it impossible, why she had denied herself this experience all those years. Lisa realized the only thing keeping her from climbing mountains was her own thinking. Now she had different thinking; now she had a different life experience.

Could it be that simple?

Yes!

That’s the amazing thing about it. It’s so simple we haven’t been able to see it because it’s too close to us.

Earlier I said Lisa is off all depression medication and her “seasonal affective disorder,” which used to debilitate her, now affects her very little. How is this possible? None of the many psychiatrists she’d seen over the years could help her get off medication. But when Lisa’s thinking changed—when she truly saw the creation of her own experience through her very own power of Thought—when she truly saw her experience of life coming from within her own self, she changed, and her body chemistry changed with it.

I’m not saying this always happens. I’m not saying people can think their way to a changed body chemistry. I am saying when people have an insight of enough magnitude about the true source of their experience, miracles can happen. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes again and again I might not even believe it—alcoholics and drug addicts who stop using alcohol and drugs and see themselves as “recovered” as opposed to “recovering”; people with a lifestyle of criminal behavior who stop committing crimes; people so stressed out and driving themselves crazy who now live with peace of mind; relationships that were falling apart where now the couple is happier than ever. If I hadn’t seen these with my own eyes…

One way to understand Thought is through dandelions. I realized this while mowing my dandelion-riddled lawn. The thought crossed my mind how curious it is that dandelions are seen so differently by different people. In Vermont dandelions are so plentiful they’ll take over a field so the entire field turns bright yellow-gold. Contrasted against the emerald green it is quite beautiful—at least I think so. I love the way dandelions look, except when I try to mow my lawn and the blade isn’t sharp enough and leaves dandelion parts behind.

To someone who cares about a manicured lawn the dandelion is a nightmare. To a dandelion winemaker the dandelion is a resource. To the herbologist the dandelion is a blessing. To some it is a flower; to others a weed. Other people don’t care about dandelions one way or the other. What makes the difference in people’s experience of dandelions? Thought and thought alone.

I’m not saying dandelions don’t exist unless we think about them. Of course they exist! Of course they are real. I am saying that dandelions do not exist for us in a particular moment unless we think about them. I am saying that how we think about dandelions determines our experience of them. Then we get to live with whatever we experience.

If we see the beauty of this flower covering a field in gold we feel like sighing. If we see the utility of this plentiful flower we appreciate what it can do for us. If we see it as a weed getting in our way, we curse it. The same dandelion can be a beautiful or a miserable experience. All because of the way we think. The same dandelion!

What determines how we think about it? Why do some people end up in one place about dandelions and others in a completely different place?

Because we have deeper, hidden thoughts or beliefs that determine our thinking (and therefore our experience) of dandelions. People with manicured lawns may have something in the back of their heads saying a manicured lawn is of utmost importance. Whatever the reason, that person may not even realize or notice he is carrying around that belief. But when he sees a dandelion he is looking through those beliefs—through that lens—at the dandelion, and that is what determines his experience of the dandelion. The lawn guy will think the dandelion is in his way because it interferes with the manicured lens he is looking through. But the lens he is looking through, too, is self-created. He made it up! He doesn’t realize he is getting a bad experience only because of what he himself has made up.

This is what we do with our kids. This is what we do with our neighbors. This is what we do with our partners. This is what we do with our business associates. We have a set of thoughts about what’s important about life—from wherever we picked it up—then we look out at the world through that lens and see a distorted vision of the dandelion, person or situation. The lens, however, is not reality; it’s only an illusion we have inadvertently created, again with the power of Thought.

Very often we allow someone to drive us crazy because inadvertently we have created the illusion of what people should be like for us. In other words, we are creating our own misery by what we have made up—only we don’t realize it.

To realize this, to realize what we do to ourselves can be quite humbling. To realize this usually makes us want to take our thinking a little less seriously.

At least it does for me.

We’re sitting in a car stopped in traffic next to a large truck. All we can see out our window is a wall of truck. Suddenly we’re rolling backwards! We freak out and go for the brake. Only we’re not rolling backwards; we’re stopped. The truck is really moving forward, but we have the illusion we’re moving. That’s the thought. We freak and go for the brake because Consciousness gives us a real, sensory experience of our thoughts. We would swear we’re moving, until we find out we’re not. It’s our own thinking creating “our reality.”

I walked out of my motel room near Detroit, suitcase in one hand, banjo in the other, and my car was not in the parking lot. “What the...?” Maybe it wasn’t where I thought I parked it. I walked around the lot. It wasn’t there. Close to where I parked I saw a car a little bluer than mine and a little longer than mine, but it wasn’t mine. So I walked around the parking lot again. I still couldn’t find it. I walked around a third time and still didn’t see it. I couldn’t believe it. For some reason I didn’t panic. I thought it was interesting. Since I was on a book tour and had to get to a book signing a little later in the day I wondered what I would do. Because I hadn’t officially checked out yet I dropped my luggage at the front desk and decided to go back to my room and gather myself. As I walked up the stairs to the second floor I put my hand in my pocket for my car keys. They weren’t there!

“Oh my God,” I gasped, “I wonder if I left them in my car last night, and somebody stole my car!”

Instantly I remembered some very loud people in the room next to me late last night as I tried to sleep, and they had left early in the morning, saying, “Hurry up! Shhh! Quick!!”

“Oh no!” I thought, “Maybe they stole my car!”

I walked into the room and immediately noticed my car keys laying on the bed. So much for that theory! Puzzled, I looked out the window overlooking the parking lot and saw a car with a sticker on the back window just like the one my daughter had stuck on mine. “Whoa, that’s interesting,” I thought. Even more interesting, the car also had a green license plate and, what a coincidence, it was a Vermont license plate and, oh my God, it had the same number as mine, and oh gee, it’s my car! I ran downstairs and, sure enough, my car was right where I had left it. It must have been the car that had looked a little bluer and longer than mine.

There are a few possible explanations: 1) I may have been in a time warp, as on Star Trek. 2) Someone could have picked my pocket, took my keys, run to my car, drove to the store and zipped back so quickly he slipped the keys on my bed without my noticing. 3) I could be at the first stage of Alzheimer’s. More logically, for some reason my car was not in my consciousness, and as a result it did not exist for me at that moment. My car (the fact that it was there) was not in my thinking. Even though I was thinking about finding my car I was not having thoughts of the presence of my car; therefore, my car did not exist for me. This is a perfect example of Thought and Consciousness in action giving me my experience. Weird but perfect.

Like Lisa with the mountain, Tammy with the needles and me with my car, all demonstrate how our thinking is our only experience of life. Our thinking is our life.

* “Health Realization” is a term used primarily in the past to describe the understanding shared in this book.

* Note: I do not mean that feelings aren’t important. They are! I will explain their importance in Chapter VI.