Category Archives: Uncategorized

Beyond Conditioning

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LeggingsA recent Twitter feed post stated that a high school in Houston USA will turn away parents if they show up at the school wearing bonnets, pyjamas, hair rollers or leggings. Now many of us may sit here and ask “who on earth would wear pyjamas and hair rollers to a school?” Well, it seems that just as a significant number of Australian parents wouldn’t have a second thought about wearing leggings into a school, some parents don’t give a second thought to wearing pyjamas or hair rollers.  Whether you are a person who thinks pyjamas are okay or whether you are a person who thinks that only suits are okay, the reality is that both of you are convinced that what you think is correct. Different thinking but both ‘thinkers’ convinced it is correct. How can this be so?

Until we have a fresh thought, every one of us is living out of thought from our conditioning. Some of us have thinking that says it is okay to wear pyjamas; some of us have thinking that says it is okay to wear leggings; and some of us have thinking that says it is okay to wear a suit.  None of our thinking is either right or wrong, it is simply what we unconsciously think. But, put a suited person in a slum alley, leggings in a boardroom and pyjamas at a court hearing, and it may not be without unwanted consequences. Much of our everyday thinking comes from our conditioning, so whenever you go to judge someone, first remember it is what they have learned, and second, it most probably has a use by date.

Experiencing the limits of our conditioning is a powerful moment. It is an opportunity to recognise that the thinking we have going through our heads no longer serves us and that it is time to move on, to open up to a fresher way of thinking of living.  We are all making up our thoughts about life. We are not bound to only live out our thinking created during our childhood or experiences since. That thinking sooner or later says something is impossible. This is not true. At any point we can recognise our conditioned thinking for what it is and be open to something fresh.

Human beings continually experience the ups and downs of their thinking. One moment we can be feeling despondent, and in the next feel blessed to be alive. If we can recognise that our thinking is coming from our conditioning, the potential angst over its content is irrelevant. Be curious and reflective about thought and I guarantee that you will continually shift and change, and deepen into a wiser version of yourself. Becoming more than what we were yesterday, being open to possibility, is available to us throughout our entire lives. The journey is amazing.

Stay involved with life. And whenever you hit thinking that says something is impossible, know that that is just thinking from your conditioning. Regardless of your background, or your life experiences, moving forward with curiosity, enthusiasm and wonder is always available. Stay with it.

Journal Writing

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In my experience, journal writing facilitates wisdom inspired personal change if:

(a) guidance is gently provided on how to write your words freely, without censorship, and how to ‘divine’ for wisdom that sits beyond;

(b) you have an opportunity to safely speak and hear your words that have unfolded from within; and,

(c) you have a structured opportunity to hear other people’s writing and heed words and phrases that resonate with you.

Powerful journal writing groups provide a ‘held’ space in which we hear something deeper in our own words and/or in the words of others.

In a nourishing journal writing group there is the writing, and listening. Listening to the words of ourselves and others, as against the words we have going on in our heads about others and ourselves, is the ‘soil preparation’ for a rich yield. When listening well, we drop the walls of thought about ourselves and others, about our stories, and we are left with openness and possibility. Here is where we find the seeds of something new. Tend them and life changes.

LifelinesBeginning Monday 8 April 2019 I will run a 12 week journal writing group, using immersive journal writing prompts from the CD learning course ‘Lifelines: How Personal Writing Can Save Your life’ by Christina Baldwin. Each session will be conducted from 10 am to 12 noon. Cost per session: $25. Location: Bibra Lake. For enquiries and registration, please contact myself, Georgina Mavor, at 0417 949 179 or georginamavor@hotmail.com

 

Love

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LoveDuring the week, I read ‘The Secret of Love’ by Lori Carpenos and Christine Heath. It weaves wisdom, stories of love and behaviours that can interfere with it.

A few very poignant understandings stood out.

There is only one ‘truth’ and that is that you are the thinker of your life. Every thought is like a dot appearing out of nothing. Sometimes they are created out of our natural state and sometimes they are created from our memory (learned). All of them activate neurological pathways and are experienced in the body and mind. Our perfect makeup brings thoughts alive. The fact that we are the thinker is the only truth, even though the content of our thinking can appear and feel true.

We are always (and only) in a relationship with our own thinking. Our thoughts are the medium through which we experience the external world. Our thoughts create ‘molecules of emotion’ (Dr Candace Pert) which we physically experience. Create negative thoughts and we will experience those, choose positive ones and we will experience those. Nothing outside us creates our personal feelings, although there are many, many low feeling behaviours and events now occurring in the world.

Everyone is thinking different thoughts, so everyone is having a different experience of circumstances, even the same ones. You cannot eradicate differences in any relationship.

When in relationship with another it is your thinking about differences that makes the difference in the quality of your relationship. All differences can be seen for what they are – innocent expressions of the thinking we are entertaining. Decide what differences you can live with and ones that you can’t. It is possible to love another and decide not to live or be with them.

When looking for an experience of love, whether on your own or with another, you are looking for a beautiful feeling, in yourself, and/or someone who wants to share that – above everything else. You are looking for someone who is willing to explore what’s possible when we drop negative thinking and interact only when reconnected with thought from our natural state.

Love is the natural state of Thought. Drop the dots of negative thinking and experience the warm feeling, the spontaneous eruptions of gratefulness and the wisdom that resides in the natural state of Love. Love is and can be experienced regardless of our external circumstances.

Falling in love, or falling out of it, are both an internal process of falling in the stream of thought called Love or entertaining negative thoughts that make their cheeky appearance and falling out of Love. Imagine sitting on a jetty, basking in the warm sunlight, luxuriating in the feeling on your skin and soul. A strong thought emerges to jump in to the murky water below and because you know nothing different, you follow that thought. Your mind panics, thoughts run wild and you cannot navigate the dark depths. You see a ladder beside the jetty and climb out. You resume your place on the jetty and begin to warm up again. In hindsight, you wonder why you followed that thought in the first place.

Possibility

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PossibilityWay back in 1993, John A. Wood brought the Three Principles understanding to Perth. Whilst his Centre closed its doors, John continued with his life journey and recently released his book, ‘Possibility … a state of mind’. It is an autobiography, one that draws out his more recent insights.

Whilst I found it overly ‘wordy’ (but which was deliberate for those for whom his words maybe foreign), I enjoyed my reading of it, and found his thoughts ‘fresh’. John refers to the energy that flows through us – Life, or Thought. Human beings turn that energy into thinking, moment by moment by moment. For most of us, and for most of the time, we use memory to turn Thought into thinking. As thinking is the mediator of all experience, thinking crafted from memory creates the same quality of experience, over and over again. The alternative, the ‘road less travelled’, is to let go of memory, and instead be open to Possibility.

Unlike the Three Principles understanding, John distinguishes only between thinking created from memory …. or Possibility. Letting go of thinking from memory, includes letting go of gender, our past, ethnic origin, religion, work, achievements, etc. etc. etc. They are all irrelevant.

The fact that Thought can be sculpted using memory or open to Possibility explains why viewpoints and behaviours often narrow as we age.

In the 3 Principles understanding, insights are recognised as the mechanism for personal change, whether that be in the moment or over time. Seeing Thought as either manifested from memory or Possibility expands our understanding of insight and allows us to ‘see’ our thinking more upstream.

Perhaps his greatest clarity is around innocence and compassion. When we can ‘see’ both ourselves and others as either operating from memory or Possibility, this immediately changes our stance both to ourselves and others. If we are unaware of Possibility, then we are stuck with what we have always used – memory.

John has posed Possibility workshops as a way forward. Similar attempts to bridge the divides in humanity that emerged in the 80’s from people like Scott Peck and Robert Theobald held huge promise but unfortunately ran out of steam. Maybe John’s offering provides a missing piece of the puzzle.

He, I and others are scheduled to meet later this week. I look forward to …. Possibility.

Wisdom isn’t a hard task master …

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This Tweet crossed my feedline yesterday. “Our intuition about stress is wrong. Ask most people how to avoid stress & they’ll suggest curling up on the sofa for a Netflix marathon, but the opposite is true. Research shows it’s better to stimulate your brain w/ hard work & engagement–not cocoon it in the familiar.” @Pfagell

Commenting on research is not my area of expertise so I will leave that to those whose area of expertise it is. What I did comment on however was the inferred definition of intuition.

Intuition can be another term for wisdom … innate intelligence …. common sense. In my experience it never suggests sitting in front of Netflix or a television screen when my thinking is creating feelings of overwhelm. In fact, at one point in my life, wisdom suggested I turn the television off completely and in its place write in a journal every day. I did – for over 5 years! Whilst wisdom always points me in the direction of slowing down my mind when it is overwhelmed, screen based relaxation rarely surfaces as a solution for me.

img_0061Just yesterday, after a very busy day, I was in that feeling and knew I had to quieten my thinking so that I could relax into what was ahead – a bbq evening meal and hanging out at home – without a screen. To calm my mind, the wisdom that appeared was to ride my bike around a local wetlands lake. Even though I was tired and it was slightly windy, the ride was beautiful. I noticed things I had never seen before, tracks into secret groves of paperbark trees, grasstrees that had obviously been rescued and transplanted with love, and people running, riding, playing … holding hands.

By the time I returned home, I had let go of thinking about tasks to do. It was the thinking that been creating my feelings of overwhelm, not the tasks themselves.  In letting go of my mousewheel thinking, I had brought myself back into the present moment, and also created a space in which work tasks would be freshly considered the following day. Some tasks that in my mousewheel thinking seemed important, would no longer be necessary; whilst others would no longer be urgent. In a calmer state of mind I have greater clarity with a heightened ability to discern ‘idea’ from ‘must do’. Since coming across the three principles understanding, conscious experience of their action in my life has taught me that thoughts accompanied by feelings of tension and fear simply need to be allowed to pass. Letting go allows for a deeper part of me to be liberated.

At one point during my relaxed evening, the thought crossed my mind that my wisdom is not a hard taskmaster. ‘Taskmaster’ thinking is something I have learned to do. I have internalised a thinking pattern which previously I unknowingly accepted as truth. Now I see the playing out of thought in my life. It is the creator of what I am feeling, not external events. Not all thoughts serve each moment well. See the action of thought creating our feelings and everything changes. Seeing this truth gives space to listen to our feelings, pause and exercise free will. What I used to take seriously often now melts into a smile.

In understanding intuition or wisdom, the feeling of whatever is crossing our mind is the key. It is the barometer of whether our thoughts are internalised ones that we continue to ‘work’; or whether our thoughts are coming from the common power of intelligence that runs through us all. Internalised thoughts manifest as familiar patterns, whether they be a Netflix marathon or groundhog days of endlessly running lists of tasks through our heads. They feel well worn, dull and tired. Experiment. The next time you feel this way, stop and listen for something fresh – then follow it. What would you prefer to follow – stale, internalised habits, or streams of thought that open up the possibility of a new you?

Deeper Wisdom …

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I usually refer to that active knowing within as wisdom. But in a conversation with a colleague the other day she spontaneously referred to it as a person’s God given intelligence. As those words left her lips both of us felt their impact and realised the depth of what she had just uttered.

God given …. not some isolated faculty, one that is divinely gifted. We are not isolated, we are connected via a power greater than our physical beings and we remain connected throughout our lives. This realisation led to a bigger discussion about love, about a power bursting with so much love that it could not contain the impulse to  share it. Wisdom … God given intelligence … Love.

In the Three Principles material, wisdom is also referred to as common sense. In general, the senses are usually referred to as our way of perceiving and navigating the physical world. But common sense is something different. It is a sense we have in common, it is a sense that enables us to perceive the oneness that flows through all of us, it is the sense that enables us to perceive wisdom … the intelligence that a greater power streams through all of us.

longbeach-4Listen to that intelligence and you jump the boundaries of time. Listen to that intelligence and you don’t have to wait for hindsight to gain wisdom. Listen to that intelligence and you gain wisdom immediately. I once knew a man who had a friendship that did not serve him well. The friend undermined this man’s family life and his words contributed to the dissolution of this man’s marriage. A decade of experience with this friend later, the man could see what he had ignored a decade earlier and ended the friendship. The sad part is that wisdom was knocking on his thinking all those years ago but he ignored it. He ignored it and then needed a decade more of chaos before he accepted wisdom’s words. Because wisdom (the formless) is always coming up against our formed thinking – an operating system devoid of acknowledgement of gifted Divine intelligence. It is the repository of original sin – an absence of awareness. But once we wake up to the very real presence of wisdom streaming through us everything changes. As we listen to it we no longer need so much painful experience in order to learn, we jump the boundaries of time.

In listening for wisdom, in listening to wisdom and acting upon it, (a) we loosen up the formed thinking by which we have lived, we change our level of consciousness, and (b) we are no longer bound to live our formed thinking out so that we may change. Wisdom can be gained through physical world experience, or it can be gained through listening to the divinely gifted intelligence that runs through us all.  All we have to do is wake up to Wisdom’s presence and the journey within begins.

Presence of Mind …

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Once exposed to the spiritual principles of Mind, Consciousness and Thought, we can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that because we understand how our psychological functioning manifests, we should be able to live with clarity and equilibrium all the time. This hasn’t happened for me and I also suspect it is not a reflection of normal, healthy functioning. But seeing the action of the principles in my life has made a big difference, even during disequilibrium.

Spiritual intelligence … information, guidance, wisdom … is always active. It is part of our operating system. It is not meant to numb out life experience, to render all experience neutral, rather, in my experience its purpose is to inform it. As a working, solo, mother I invariably have times in which there is a lot on my plate and my mind is anything but calm. But the difference for me now that I am conscious of the principles and their manifestation, is that I can recognise when my mind is busy, sometimes very busy, AND I have the presence of mind not to speak or act from that mindset and instead to look after myself as best I can.

Sometimes, looking after myself impels me to withdraw from the busy-ness of my life and to write, or read, play Uno, lie down, or any other activity wisdom offers. There are also times when I can’t withdraw and I simply have to proceed with my schedule as best I can. But even then I know it is my thinking that I am experiencing and I trust that I don’t have to keep my thinking alive, that life will continue to unfold and that everything I am juggling in my head is probably not that important. So I continue with my life, withdrawing my attention to my busy mind and being present as much as I can to who or what is before me. And then there are other times when even that seems beyond me.

quinninupOver the Christmas break I took several members of my family and my dogs away for a week. Our very rustic self catered accommodation was nestled in the quiet serenity of the southern forests and away from more popular tourist destinations. Kangaroos abounded and the nearest town was half an hour away. In my mind it was perfect for time to read, write and reflect. Not so. All decision making and physical work rested with me. My dogs had to accompany us everywhere, a troublesome knee flared and I spent much of the time in pain. But whilst I was overloaded with responsibility, I also knew that the overwhelm I was experiencing was all my own creation.  Thought and consciousness come together to create experience, for everyone, and I was no exception.

Knowing this made things easier. I couldn’t change the demands upon me but I could do what I could to calm my thinking. I turned my attention and thinking about external events to looking after myself. The shift of attention to my internal source of wisdom for guidance on caring for myself brought immediate relief. I managed to take some time out to rest and read. And I called on others to help when this was possible. I reigned my thinking in to what I could do and let go of everything else. There were still times when it was clear I was stressed, and wisdom supported me to have the presence of mind to not act from my agitated state.  I didn’t voice some of the thoughts sailing through. I was mindful of my tone of voice. And I consciously opened up gentler topics of conversation. At times, I acted rather than react.

I did the best I could with the wisdom that came to me in the circumstances in which I found myself. Wisdom is wonderfully responsive to the unique nuances of our lives. Why would we go anywhere else for help? The physical and mental demands whilst I was away were too big but I had wisdom to call on and it offered the best that could be done. We spent time visiting places of interest, we ate well, we played games and my dogs survived a more restrained routine. And now I am much clearer on what I need to truly give myself the relaxation and rest I need, and I am more committed to time with my family whilst they are around me. Thankfully wisdom is with me, always.

What if ….

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Bibra LakeSitting in the lush grounds surrounding Bibra Lake, my friend and I chatted about our lives. She was in the throws of renovating their home in preparation for sale. The prospect of ‘home opens’ loomed and she commented that she didn’t want to go through them. And in the next breath, she dismissed this personal truth  with, “But that’s just my thinking I suppose, so I guess I will need to do them.” So often I have heard people exposed to the three principles understanding of our spiritual nature write off the truth of words they utter with the comment, “but it’s just a thought”. This is crazymaking. Thought is streaming through us all the time. Anything we think can be written off as ‘just a thought’. But that doesn’t help us navigate life. I commented that not wanting to do home opens is her truth and I wondered why we negate the truth of what comes out of our mouths.

When I first had my insight it was about the logic/common sense/wisdom that had surfaced in my consciousness during years of living in an unhealthy relationship. The insight was simple. The thought that I should leave the relationship was accurate, yet I overrode it with all sorts of twisted thinking. When I had the insight I was relieved that I was not insane and that my thinking was valid. What I didn’t see in that moment was that that stream of spiritual intelligence was speaking to me all the time – I just didn’t know how to recognise it. Could this lack of awareness be the one thing in the way of life with more peace and love?

What if we assume that our beings have everything inbuilt to maintain equilibrium and health? What if we have a innate operating system of spiritual intelligence running through us that is is speaking to us constantly about how we need to interact with the world so that our unique makeup is maintained and we are fulfilled? What if, the key to life is to heed that intelligence, listen and respond?

My colleague recounted a story of a woman who had been looking after another friend’s cat whilst its owner was seriously ill in hospital. The cat was rather demanding and the woman commented that she couldn’t meet the cat’s needs. The person seriously ill passed away and the cat remained. The woman who had been looking after it heeded her truth and arranged for the cat to reside in a cattery. The choice of cattery was an interesting one in that the woman chose it on the basis of its ‘feeling’. Each week the woman would visit the cattery and spend time with the cat in question. The story unfolded further with the cat finally finding a loving home in which its needs could be met.

When I listen to people (and myself) talk about the problems in their lives I am always struck by how often the solutions come out of their mouths but are then dismissed. Where did we learn to dismiss truth from our true nature? All of us have spiritual intelligence (formless) talking to us and it seemed to my friend and I that it is often coming up against formed unconscious thoughts about the nonexistence of innate spiritual intelligence streaming through us. It exists, it is alive, personal, responsive and wise. When words come out of our mouths that bring tears of spiritual recognition, we are experiencing a moment when our mindset has loosened and we have heard something from beyond. When we have an insight, a moment of recognition, it is another moment when spiritual intelligence has broken through our unconscious armour and we have heard from beyond. When we have a gut feeling about something, that is our spiritual intelligence communicating, and we need to listen. Perhaps most of all, we need to listen to the words that come out of our mouths. Innate spiritual intelligence is much more abundantly present than we think. What if much that we dismiss is wisdom we need to heed?

Am I really lonely?

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Ever pondered loneliness and what it is really about?

I am not in intimate relationship, haven’t been for quite some time, and for many months on end that circumstance doesn’t even cross my mind. But today, I had a moment when I felt a gaping hole of isolation and loneliness within.

It was a fleeting moment, and I tried not to pay too much attention to it, but a troubling thought had birthed a troubled feeling and it wasn’t going away. All my moments thereafter seemed to be tarnished with that feeling , and as the afternoon progressed, my state of being deteriorated. Unlike Santa joyously handing out beautiful gifts from abundance, I felt more and more burdened with bleakness.

By the time I got home I felt the impulse from beyond the troubled feeling to find a quiet space and write.  I grabbed my journal and retired to my room to write. No censoring, no plan for where it would take me, just put down the thoughts that came. A paragraph or two and clarity began to emerge.

Every day I live a very rich and fulfilling everyday life. No glamour, just getting out there and doing what I do, allowing my thoughts to come and go and enjoying insights as they come. For years, I have lived those ‘everydays’ without a significant other and been untouched by thoughts made up about that. Until today, when, in a split second, my thinking created a deeper level of meaning around a circumstance and I was left feeling sad and lonely.

Thought, not events, creates our feelings. Thoughts create the ebb and flow of feelings as we move through our day and if we leave them alone they pass by. It was truly liberating to see the deeper meaning I had created with my thinking about the experience of not having a significant other. I am on my own and for 99.9% of my days I make no meaning out of that and live fully engaged with life. But today, I created a different experience of the very same everyday ordinariness. Our experience of life is truly inside out.

We are all not really alone. The insights, the ‘aha’ moments, the clarity, those experiences all come through us – from somewhere way beyond the boundaries of our selves. We are all always wisdom … oneness …  and if we are experiencing anything different, we are thankfully just making it up. Listen to innate wisdom and our creations disappear.

 

Unlimited Possibilities

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There are some brilliant free resources available for those interested in learning about the three principles understanding of how human beings work. A practitioner I particularly enjoy is Judy Sedgeman. Her website http://www.three-principles.com includes the METV Series: Innate Health, consisting of training videos with contributions from esteemed practitioners such as George Pransky, Linda Pransky, Aaron Turner, Christine Heath, Bill Pettit and Rudi Kennard. Last week I watched the first video several times and was struck by a deeper appreciation of how insights change us. It inspired the creation of the visual below.

In the moment of experiencing an insight, everything changes. Prior to that moment, thinking arises out of formed thought, it already exists, and depending on what is being lived in the moment can be accompanied by a feeling state we may perceive as normal, even if it feels tense, tight or anxious. But when an insight occurs, unlimited pure potential is opened up and our thinking is free to take a different form. It enters with a completely different feeling.

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Recently I have experienced 3 insights which in the moment created a significant shift in my awareness and feeling state, leading to significant change. The first occurred when I noticed how I was starting each day – usually with a feeling of overwhelm, even after a solid night’s sleep. From my experiences and awareness of the three principles that explain how human psychology works I knew that my feeling was not due to the demands of my working life. Instead, it was being created from within my own mind. It was then that I got curious about what it was that I was thinking that was creating my reality. Bam! Insight entered and I could see the underlying template I had innocently imposing on my beautiful life. At an unconscious level I entered each day seeing it as a series of problems to solve. This was a personal reality I was creating – but that didn’t make it true. Life could be anything! This insight was huge. Immediately my mood elevated and my body loosened.

In the second example, I once again became conscious of a ‘restrictive/limited’ feeling I was experiencing in regards to work that I considered I was ‘qualified’ to pursue. I was limiting my options. Again, I got curious about the nature of feeling and was blessed with the insight that the limitations I had imposed was simply due to thought I was entertaining within and that I could give myself permission to flourish as I chose. In the video mentioned earlier, George Pransky comments that no problem is a problem if we can see it as thought. Become aware of the feelings that accompany them and you open up a space for insight.

In my final example, I again had cause to pause and reflect on the feelings I was carrying around about my life. Once again, an insight enabled me to see that because I had categorized some activities as work and others as leisure, (the marketing industry is very good at promoting this dichotomy) it was no wonder that given my daily schedule, I was feeling like a worn out camel. But we’ve made this whole picture around work and leisure up. Activity is activity, life is life. It moves and flows and is filled with activities. My job is simply to follow the life that flows through me. Nothing I do need be a category to weigh me down – I am simply making that up.

Immediately following each of these insights I felt my body loosen and my feelings rise. Whilst those feelings will again change (thought is dynamic) I notice an increasing ability to notice and live from a truer state of being – wisdom.