I used to think that as I moved through life, everyone else was experiencing and seeing exactly what I was.

That my feelings of frustration, anger, resentment, bitterness, mistrust, loneliness etc where coming from my children, my parents, or the weather, the farm animals I was working with, the people I was encountering at the time or from my husband.  I would innocently blame other's or my circumstances,  for how I was feeling.

As I got older I learned calming techniques, (that worked in the class) avoided stressful situations and people.  I felt my world get smaller as the fear of events and people followed me around.

I searched for what was wrong with me.  I got really really low as my world closed in and felt helpless to control my world.

In my search I started to hear a theme that kept calling me back. That I was not broken or needed fixing. I already had innate health, peace and calm inside me.  The message was pointing me to my suffering coming from my own thinking.  And that I was more than my thinking.  My thinking was not ME.  I kept searching and seeing more.

 

When I woke up to the the fact that I was not experiencing these people or circumstances outside of me, but rather my own personal thinking about them, it changed how I saw  my experience.   It allowed me to see that when other's were upset, that they were innocently caught up in their own thinking that THEY were feeling - and that I didn't need to take it personally.  Not taking it personally meant I didn't need to react to them OR  keep thinking about what happened.

This was such a relief!   It completely changed my experience of LIFE!

For example

Just because a family member or friend was in a low mood, meant nothing about me.  It said everything about their OWN thinking THEY was feeling in that moment.  I saw that thinking kept changing and so did the feeling that came with it.

I didn't get caught up in any of my own insecure thinking about what their mood meant about me. 

  I noticed that because I stopped reacting to them, their mood passed quicker too.  I wasn't feeding it back.

 

If I was upset about something someone had done, and something needed to be said, I waited until MY mood improved as it does, and had a conversation from a better state of mind. 

From this calmer place, natural common sense and wisdom resulted in a better outcome.

 I also noticed that I stopped reacting to other people and circumstances,  with the new knowledge that I was simply feeling  my thinking about them. 

This in turn meant that I was a nicer person to be around.  My reality of the outside world and life in general, improved.

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This understanding of how our human experience is universal,  overflowed into other areas of my life.

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I started to see that using food or alcohol to temporarily fix and escape feelings of discomfort was simply repetitive conditioned thinking that had become a habit.

Knowing that thought and the corresponding thinking is constantly changing and its happening inside me, allowed me to seeing it for what it was.  A pause was often all it took. And to drop out of the movie of my thinking that felt real, back into NOW.

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I had to see this for myself for the habit to fall away on its own, and all areas of my life improve.

 

Insecure thinking, problems and fear of the future cannot exist when you are present in this moment.  See for yourself.

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