Ticker Tape Thinking

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IMG_0681 (002)Decades ago, when I was first exposed to the inside out understanding of how we create our experiences, my very first ‘different’ way of thinking about things was to see my thinking as ticker tape crossing my mind. I was doing the dishes at my kitchen sink and could see my thinking moving across my mind as ticket tape. It was the first time I could see my thinking  separated from ‘me’.

Last week I came across a tweet from a person feeling bored with the ongoing recording in their head about themselves as ‘marmite’ and how it had become a habit that was now labelled a mental health issue. The use of the word ‘bored’ reminded me of times when I have felt exhausted and down and retreated to my bedroom to hide, only to have something later shift in my mind, a realization that I was bored with feeling down and to leap out of bed with a fresh, vital energy with which I moved into something different. This has happened several times and I am always left with the question, “How can this be? I was physically exhausted and yet here I am with boundless energy!” The experience points to a deeper truth about the nature of our feelings – they are created from the state of our minds, i.e. the quality of thought moving through them. I love the waking up to being ‘bored’, sooner or later our thinking always, always changes.

As I reflected on that tweet, the ticker tape image came to mind again, only this time it was paper tape that changed colour according to the thoughts we entertain. Imagine the flow of thought through you mind as a pale pink tape. When your mind is in that state, you too, flow lovingly in peace. But when our thinking changes, we experience the result. Start to think angry thoughts (see the red on the tape?), we feel that. Start to think self defeating thoughts (see the dark blue on the tape?), we feel that. The driver of our feelings and moods is the ticker tape of our minds, not our external events. This is where we need to turn our attention when we are not feeling so good.

We think that our changes in mood are created by the events around us. But this is simply the illusion we live in. Two people can view exactly the same circumstance in physical reality and have different experiences. What accounts for the difference? Our differences in perception and changes in mood are created by the quality of thought flowing through our minds. In any moment, we are either thinking from the ‘flow’ or thinking from how we have learned to think – our conditioning. Fresh thoughts and bespoke solutions never surface when the ticker tape of our minds is contaminated with the old habitual thinking we have imposed on it. Fresh thoughts and bespoke solutions can only surface when that ticker tape is at rest and uncontaminated by our personality or conditioning.

When you are feeling discombobulated, instead of focusing on the external events, look to the ticker tape first. See what you are creating with your thoughts, thoughts that like the Tweeter with the ‘marmite’ problem, you too have learned to think. We are all conditioned to think in certain ways, but when we repeatedly live life from our conditioned ways of thinking, they have the potential to become personality traits, habits, addictions, diagnoses and disorders.  Try and see your ticker tape of thinking. See the relationship between your ticker tape of thought and your experience and everything changes. And even when life gets messy, your best chance of elegant navigation is through the use of uncontaminated ticker tape, the only state of mind capable of tapping into limitless possibility. So rest, don’t act, and wait.

Monsters Under the Bed

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Monsters don’t just live under the bed. When our children are scared of the ‘monster under the bed’, parents know three things, (a) there is no monster under the bed, (b) our child is feeling insecure, and (c) we need to help. If no monster exists then how do parents and carers respond to a fantasy? And should our response be any different whether the monsters truly exist or not?

Michael Neill, in his webinar series, ‘A Whole New Way of Thinking About Parenting‘ opens with a recount of his daughter’s young life. He tells of how she used to experience episodes of anger and violence, often lasting for hours. He and his wife sought the services of the country’s top professionals and followed their advice, only to be left with a feeling that the recommended solution wasn’t quite right. So they sat and reflected, seeing something for themselves which they acted on. Michael sat with is daughter while she destroyed her room (and him). Several outbursts later, the ‘problem’ disappeared. They did not ascertain the ’cause’ of their daughter’s distress and whilst they did seek external help, in the end it was acting on what felt true for them (staying with her) that turned the behaviour around.

In my own younger years, I developed a psychosomatic ‘disorder’ which lasted about 3 weeks. My parents paid extra attention to my welfare and sought the help of our family GP. Nothing in particular was or could be done (it was a fantasy after all), but several hand holding trips to the GP bundled with a small additional dose of attention and miraculously my condition disappeared. At the time, my condition felt real and I could not stop what was occurring. But stop it did. Was the attention and boost to my feelings of security all that I needed for my mind and emotions to stabilise again?

In my own daughter’s young life, there was one occasion in which I was hospitalised overnight. Whilst I ensured everything was in place for her to feel secure whilst I was away, I learned later of some very bizarre behaviour and I briefly considered seeking professional help.  She couldn’t articulate why she did it but she knew she did it when I was in hospital. I didn’t do anything about the behaviour but I listened to thoughts that  surfaced within me about what I needed to do to ensure she felt secure again. The behaviour never resurfaced. I also learned that bizarre behaviour amongst children is quite common.

IMG_0645When it comes to young children, I’m not sure we can ever really ascertain the ‘trigger’ for the shift in their thinking that creates their insecurity, or really whether it makes any difference. What we can do however is to quieten down in our own minds, do whatever we can to reestablish a secure feeling and listen to what surfaces within ourselves that feels like the right thing to do. Maybe holding them in our hearts, trusting what comes to us in our quieter moments and following through is all that is needed. Maybe the solution to all monsters, imagined or real, is love and the wisdom that comes from it.

 

 

Possibility in Perth

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As the train pulled into the Perth station, I watched the young man before me walk past our carriage door and ahead to the door in the next carriage. I realised that if he exited at that door, the would alight at the foot of the escalator and beat the exiting commuter squeeze. I followed.

Day 5 of the Australian Writers’ Centre MOJO Month was on my mind. ‘Do something special and unexpected for someone else.’ I had decided to buy a coffee for one of the homeless people that inhabited the train station concourse and Perth Cultural Centre.

Past the boutique street food vendors at the Yagan Centre, up another flight of stairs and through the gaps in traffic on the Horseshoe Bridge, I entered the Alice in Wonderland feel of the urban garden. Perfectly manicured squares of lawn; lemon, lime and native trees; rosemary, fennel and lavender; were just some of the sights and smells that now adorned this once derelict area.

IMG_0576A man sat on a bench under a tree casually eating fruit, whilst a woman sat at one of the iron tables writing notes in her journal. Two men in wheelchairs and their carers enjoyed a coffee in the middle of the garden whilst another group of skinny males, garnished in dirty jeans and black windcheaters, hands shaking as they tried to hold their take away coffee cups, tried to light the cigarette stubs in their hands.

But no homeless person skirted the boundaries. No pieces of cardboard with hand written words in black marking pen; no empty hats on the ground; no shopping trolleys filled with plastic bags containing personal treasures. Today wasn’t looking like the day for my random act of kindness.

I ventured over to the coffee carriage. A group of high school students in black and red blazers sat in the fake grass area adorned with hand made planter boxes and secondhand tables and chairs. Two men were caught in an awkward embrace, seemingly unsure of whether they were friends or foe, but extracted themselves with the words, “I love you man.”

Whilst standing in the warmth of the early morning sun peering over the man made swamp behind me, I ordered my latte and chatted with the barista about why I was in Perth and the creativity of the students at the local TAFE College.

Coffee in hand we wished each other a great day and it was then that I  noticed a woman sitting next to her trolley at the side of the Art Gallery. She was scrunched over a book, pencil in hand. I had seen her before. She was rolling a cigarette. I walked over.

“Hello, I see you every time I come into the city. You have the perfect spot here to catch the morning sun. Would you like a coffee?”

A wrinkled face with smoke stained teeth looked up at me, her fingers suspended in the air mid way in her cigarette making operation. “Yes, but I’ve just had one.”

I looked at the white empty mug beside her. “Would you like another one?”

“No thank you.”

“Okay, have a lovely day.”

“You too.”

I walked away, mission not accomplished, but I noticed a lightness in my heart that hadn’t been there before. I crossed the concrete pedestrian bridge, expecting to see more of the ‘regulars’ but found no one so I entered the automatic doors of the Citiplace Community Centre and the meeting I was there to attend.

Three hours later I emerged and walked through the train station, across another concrete bridge to the Myer and through the Forrest Place complex. Building renovations had been underway in this area for months. Pedestrians were routed through boarded up tunnels with painted illusory mirrors and swirling flowers. Renovations over, I now walked through ultra clean glass lined walkways with brass bollards and marble floors, not a speck of grime in sight. Dirty concrete stairwells had been removed; access to designer label clothing boutiques taunted passersby; and lounge areas with free ‘buy for your body shape’ workshops had appeared.

I walked to the Hay Street Mall to buy a recommended book from Dymocks and followed the business crowd thronging into the ENEX Food Court to see if I could buy something small to quell my growling stomach,

Women in tight fitting black skirts and jackets; metro men in body hugging shirts, dapper shoes and thin legged trousers; and round, ruddy faced men with shirts bulging at the waistline; sat at every table talking business and eating vast platefuls of food. I perched on a plastic stool at a thin plastic bench and ate two Vietnamese rice paper rolls filled mostly with lettuce and noodles, accompanied by a shiny brown sauce, plum, I assume.

Back in the sunshine, I commenced my return journey to the train station. As I walked across the Myer overpass, I noticed a coiled up figure hiding behind a shabby piece of cardboard with the usual black writing scrawled across in fine print. Long stringy blonde hair hung like rats’ tails over his face. Thin arms and legs made little impression under the lightweight long sleeved t shirt and trousers that hung on his body. His hardened feet were bare.

I tried to walk past but couldn’t ignore the impulse to approach him. I turned around and bent down.

“Hello, do you drink coffee?” I asked.

A thin, grey face punctuated by even greyer teeth looked at me. “Yes,” he replied.

“Would you like one?”

“Yes, please.”

“What would you like? Latte? Capuccino?”

“Latte please.”

“And how many sugars do you like?” I was expecting him to say ‘3 or 4’.

“Oh, just a quarter of a teaspoon.”

“Okay, and would you like something to eat?”

“Er, no thank you.”

“Are you sure? It’s not a problem.”

“No, I’m fine thankyou. Just a coffee would be great.”

I purchased a large latte from the cafe next door, and as he was talking with someone when I returned, I unobtrusively placed it and some extra sugar by his side. Before walking away I noticed a woman filming him from across the walkway.

I have made comment on the inside out dynamics of this experience, and the profound impact it has had on my deepening into Possibility, on my FB page, Possibility Psychology.

A Feeling of Unease

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Sometimes a general feeling of unease comes over me, and I am unable to shift it. I know it is just thought but knowing that doesn’t make a difference. Sometimes the feeling shifts with a good night’s sleep, but sometimes I get many good nights’ sleep and the feeling continues anyway.

On those occasions, writing in my journal works. But I cannot approach the writing trying to analyse my experience from the inside out ‘understandings’ that I know. Trying to interpret my experience in those moments through those understandings does not work. But if I approach my writing with an open mind, allowing my thoughts and writing to meander where they will, without ‘imposing’, something magic happens. Staying in the openness is different to staying in what I already know. Staying in the openness is where I discover and see anew.

Writing is a process of discovery. Thought is both conscious and unconscious and possibly everything in between.  If I am caught up in unconscious thinking, then perhaps an open writing process in which I am guided by wisdom/possibility/thought from beyond my usual habits can bring clarity to the surface, both about the thoughts building the feelings of malaise, and the possibility that awaits. Writing allows form to emerge around both. When possibility births into form, my experience changes. I change.

This morning’s journal writing brought clarity to both. I began by writing down what occupied my mind. I had been reflecting upon my personal states of mind that weren’t comfortable and wondered if a better state was more accessible. I recalled a quote from Syd Banks which I attempted to locate through someone I follow on Twitter, only to find that the quote could be saying something completely different to what I had understood when I read it. So I wrote that, I wrote about what it could mean and what I thought it meant. My mind then moved on people and events currently in my life. I kept writing what surfaced. I stayed honest with myself and before long some interesting thoughts emerged that I had not been aware of. “Oh, so that is what this is all about.” I continued with no censoring, just allowing the next thought to arrive and I recorded it.

I kept on in this way until the writing felt finished. I was clearer, I could now see some of the thoughts that had been at play. As nothing felt like it needed to be written I walked to the bathroom to take a shower. My thoughts were still floating through and as I turned on the hot water I had an insight about the words of another person and the meaning I was imposing onto those words. Ooh, another moment of liberation in which I could see how my thinking was contributing to the ill at ease feelings I was experiencing. An image of a different possibility for myself came in next, with such clarity that all the other stuff fell away. I had shifted.

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I wrote in my journal what had come to me in the shower. What do I know deeper from this experience? It doesn’t matter how much we understand how we create an inside out experience of life via thought, when we hit those times when we feel dispirited and have no clarity, be open to allowing thought to flow – even when what surfaces flies in the face of where an inside out understanding tells us to focus. The depth of our inside out understanding is also evolving. Each of us has to be true to what is unfolding for ourselves if we are to be part of a broader evolution. When working with writing, be open to starting somewhere and allowing your flow of thought to take you where you need to go.

Maybe our experiences of writing from a state of openness is the bigger teacher.

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.