When I’m caught up in stressful thinking, feeling sad or anxious or frustrated, it can seem like there is no other option available. 

No matter how hard I try, no matter how closely I look,

I can’t seem to find any solution or anything helpful. 

And I certainly can’t find any nice feeling.

It’s like an optical illusion.

Have a look at the picture below - let’s say you can only see the old woman.

Now you can go and try very hard, stare at it closely, get very tensed 

and try to shift it, and it’ll probably do nothing.

It’s because the young woman isn’t to find IN the picture of the old woman.

No matter how closely you look.

But when you step back, relax and take a fresh look,

you might suddenly see the young woman.

It’s the same with the peace and the thinking. 

The peace isn’t to find IN the thinking.

No matter how hard I try to shift and bend my thinking to somehow make 

it look more peaceful …

But at some point suddenly something shifts in my awareness and there it is.

And it’s not only there, it’s very obvious that it’s been there all along. 

In a way it’s like the peace/quiet (or whatever you like to call it) is

so big and all around me and inside me, it’s so obvious, 

that I sometimes simply overlook it. I’m getting so drawn into some details,

a problem, a judgment, a certain thing that needs to be changed, that I 

don’t see anything around or beyond it anymore.

Luckily there are some lovely coaches and teachers around,

that keep reminding me it’s there, even when I can’t see it.

Nobody can ‚make‘ me see it, but it seems to

help when somebody whom I trust reminds me that it’s there.

And the more often I see it shift from one to the other,

the illusion becomes more transient. 

Simply knowing it’s there, and trusting that knowing, makes it easier to see it.

Yesterday evening my mind was pretty busy and my thinking was going very fast. For a while I fell into the trap of trying to get in there and sort it out.

'What’s going on there? Where does all the thinking come from? Could I change it into ‚nicer‘ thinking? Maybe I could stop it all together or at least slow it down?' … You get the gist.

Then I realized I was messing with the system.

Engaging in more thinking to try and stop the thinking does only one thing: It adds more thinking. And it creates the illusion of being ’stuck’ in the exact kind of thinking I’m trying to stop.

Imagine cars running on a highway (the cars being your thoughts).

Let’s say you don’t like their speed or shape or color, so you put on your police uniform and get on the highway and stop every single car, to question it’s purpose and destination and try to convince it to go somewhere else.

What you’ll get is a big fat traffic jam!

The magical thing about our thought system is that it’s a self-regulating system. It takes energy to be stressed or anxious or insecure. When we misunderstand what is happening and think something needs to be done about it, we stir it up even more.

The moment we understand how it works and simply leave it alone, it starts calming down all on its own. The moment I realized what was happening I could literally watch the thinking fading away in the background, becoming more transient and leaving room for new thinking to show up.

It seems to me there is always less to do than we think there is ...

I came across these quotes by Albert Einstein today and I'm kind of flabbergasted! In a good way! What he is saying seems to fit perfectly with everything I learned from Syd, at some points he is literally saying the same things. In reading this it became so clear to me, that the Principles are really pointing to a universal truth about life. I hope you'll enjoy these as much as I did .

“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. Matter is spirit reduced to point of visibility. There is no matter.”

"Time and space are not conditions in which we live, but modes by which we think."

"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, determined by the external world."

“Time does not exist – we invented it. Time is what the clock says. The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

“I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me."

"The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.”

"A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

"Our separation from each other is an optical illusion."

“When something vibrates, the electrons of the entire universe resonate with it. Everything is connected. The greatest tragedy of human existence is the illusion of separateness.”

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

“We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.”

“When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.”

“The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.”

“The ancients knew something, which we seem to have forgotten.”

“The more I learn of physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.”

“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike. We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us. It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware.”

“I’m not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books.”

"The common idea that I am an atheist is based on a big mistake. Anyone who interprets my scientific theories this way, did not understand them."

"Everything is determined, every beginning and ending, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper."

“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It will transcend a personal God and avoid dogma and theology.”

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”

“Everything is energy and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you can not help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”

"I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care about money. Decorations, titles or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. I claim credit for nothing. A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future."

Albert Einstein

Last week someone told me that I always seem to be so settled and calm (thank you!). It made me think I should share some of my not so 'settled and calm' experiences too ...

I fell right into one of my 'favorite' rabbitholes during the last two weeks, and even though it's a familiar one, it took me quite a while to notice it.

I've been doing pretty well in general since quite a while now, I still experience a certain amount of general muscle pain and have to rest regularly every day, but most of the time I don't have too much worry about it going on. During the last weeks I got very creative in different areas of my life (translating books, creating a training-group for my employees, recording youtube videos for my shop etc.) and it all felt super nice and pretty easy.

What I didn't really notice was the general state of mind I was getting in, which was pretty much about doing stuff and handling things.

Before I knew it I had read a medical book proclaiming if you just did this and this exercise AND got rid off your tension you'd never have back-pain again...

Since several bad episodes of really intense back-pain was what started my whole chronic pain experience I often notice that I'm still scared of making a wrong movement and 'hurting my back', it's like habitual thinking that's often going on in the back of my mind. Sometimes when I see it I get annoyed about it, but in a - more or less - clear state of mind I know there is nothing I have to do about it. It won't get better by adding more thinking on top of it.

But the last weeks, in my 'just do it' state of mind I quickly came up with a solution: I would just exercise a lot and build up so much muscle strength and additionally somehow (miraculously) would let go of all my general tension and this way I would make it 'impossible' for myself to hurt my back or even feel the fear of it again.

And I honestly didn't realize what kind of thinking I was believing in, even though I did feel tension and fear while reading the medical book.

The first sign I noticed of something going in the 'wrong direction' was when about a week ago I got very freaked out about an emotional habit I noticed (it was about being scared of people getting annoyed with me) and I felt that I very urgently have to solve it, because it might be what keeps my pain going. Luckily Chana had time to talk with me and helped me seeing it for what it was and let go of the idea of doing something about it.

I felt much better, but I was still not very comfortable in my body. I was feeling more afraid of hurting myself and I felt tense, but I still had logical reasons for it - I haven't been exercising for 5 months due to lockdown and so I thought that must be it.

On saturday morning I actually did 'hurt' my neck while brushing my teeth (so of course nothing was really 'hurt', but I couldn't move my head normally) and that's when I finally saw it. I was completely caught up in an attempt of control, of protecting myself against fear/pain/symptoms. My actions were coming from a state of fear and no matter what I do, when it comes from that state of mind, it's very likely to lead to more stress and suffering.

Luckily once I saw that it pretty much fell away and even though my neck/back is still more uncomfortable than usual I'm feeling at peace now. It's amazing to me how I'm very clear on some things when somebody else asks me about it, but for myself I can look right at it and still not see it, completely duped!

Ah well...

So stuff like this happens to me all the time, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. I guess what changed is that I don't stay caught up in it all the time. And that I made peace with it being a part of being alive, I don't blame myself for it anymore. So it stopped looking like a big problem. 

(And of course I'm not saying anything against exercise here - I'm just talking about the inner place it's coming from.)

When I first started learning about the 3P, the idea of experiencing pain and not be constantly thinking about it seemed impossible (maybe even ridiculous) to me. I couldn't imagine how that could work - after all I was reminded of it all the time. In other areas of my life it was easier for me to see that thought is fluid and changes on its own. But the evaluating of the pain and trying to figure it out (why is it there? is it better or worse than yesterday? what did I do that made it get worse? ....... ) seemed very constant and strong and not fluid at all.

But slowly slowly, during the last year, little changes started to happen. In the beginning I still tried to 'make it happen', to somehow control my thinking or convince myself intellectually that it would be a really good idea to stop thinking about it. But let me tell you - that doesnn't work... 
It's just more thinking on top of it all.

What I noticed over time, is that it isn't really the pain that makes it impossible not to be vigilant - it's my judgements about the pain. In being coached by Chana and listening to Syd I experienced more peace and quiet and I started to see my thinking more clearly.

I realized that I can be peaceful and fulfilled even while I'm in pain. I realized that I'm always doing the best I can - given the thinking that looks true to me. And I started to forgive myself and feel compassion for myself.

And 'suddenly' (it's many little steps for me, but somehow it still feels 'sudden' when something changes) it isn't so compelling to think about the pain anymore. There just isn't much to think about.

If it's there - okay. I just do what makes sense, on a very practical level. And I can still experience love and joy and whatever else. And when I'm in a really low mood and think the pain is really shitty, I realize 'I'm in a low mood. I would find anything shitty right now.'

If it isn't there - okay. I do whatever makes sense and I feel the way I feel. 

I realized that when I feel compelled to think about something, it's not because of the 'something' (whatever that might be in the given situation), it's because I believe my thinking - mostly to me it seems I believe a judgement (the thing shouldn't be there) and I believe the thought that I could somehow change it, if I just think hard enough...

So it all comes back to one of my favorite quotes by Dicken Bettinger (he might have been quoting Syd though, I'm not sure):

'The only problem that exists is getting caught up in thinking and believing it to be true.'

Syd talked a lot about 'seeing the perfection', or 'seeing in love', or 'seeing what is, instead of what isn't'. To me this means seeing without judgement. By seeing without judgement we are in peace with whatever is, and that's the space where all the happiness lies and where all the healing comes from. 

Chances are if I asked you what you see on the picture on the left, your answer would be 'a little black dot'. Which is kind of interesting, because there isn't just a little black dot - there is empty white space WITH a little black dot in one spot.

Consciousness does that.

Zooming in on stuff.

I find that very interesting.

You know how it's almost impossible to NOT glance at the TV when it's running? And, on the other hand, how you sometimes are so caught up in reading a book, that you literally don't hear what's going on around you? (even if a TV is running...)

Consciousness can zoom in and out. It can be focused on a tiny little thing and literally forget about everything else that's going on. And it can 'zoom out' and become very wide and open, noticing all the tiny things that are happening, but from an awareness of the space, in which they are happening.

To me this image of zooming in and out is very helpful in understanding what happens when I get caught up in stressful thinking.

When my personal busy mind comes up with a 'problem' my tendency always was to 'zoom in' - to look very closely at all the details of the problem, hoping in doing this I would find a solution. Unfortunately from this 'zoomed in' state of consciousness it's pretty hard to come up with something new or fresh or creative, since all I'm seeing from there is... the problem.

In learning about the 3P I have discovered that there is another way. Instead of 'zooming in' there is the possibility of 'zooming out'. Of letting myself fall back into a wider, more open space, from which I can not only see the bigger picture, but am actually aware that I am the space. Not the dot.

Learning that when I feel tension or stress, this is an indicator of me 'zooming in' and narrowing down my consciousness and getting caught up in the stories my mind makes up, makes all the difference. It always felt to me like there was no other option. And even when I tried to stop thinking about something it felt almost impossible or at least like really hard work.

But what I realize now is that it was so hard because I didn't really see that there is no sense in doing it. Deep down I still believed I had to figure it out. It was only after getting little glimpses here and there, again and again, of the peace and wisdom that comes with hanging out in the quiet open space, and after seeing problems literally dropping away without me thinking about them, that I started to see the truth and simplicity of this.

And now suddenly it doesn't feel impossible or hard to drop out of the thinking. It simply happens.

Of course not all the time, I definitely have my hang-ups But it's like I'm finding peace with them too, because I know there is nothing I (my personal mind) can do about it. It will change on its own, in Syds words 'by listening to truth and looking for a nice feeling'. 

I'd like to say a heartfelt 'Thank You' today. One year ago today Chana Studley contacted me on facebook and introduced me to the 3P. I was quite desperately struggling with chronic pain back then and learning about the 3P literally opened up a whole new world for me. During this last year I have been so deeply touched by all the love, the support and the friendship I've experienced from Chana, from other 3P teachers and from this whole community. My life has been truly changed and I'm so very grateful for all the love, peace and beauty I've experienced. Learning about the nature of life, finding glimpses of my own inner wisdom and starting to trust in that, even during the times I'm feeling down, and having friends here who support me when I get caught up... it is just the best thing I could have wished for. 

I love this quote.

Sometimes - for a very sweet moment - I can see that it is that simple. During the last weeks I've pondered a lot about this. How I am always suffering when I judge something as wrong. Doesn't matter if it's another person, circumstances, physical sensations, thoughts or feelings. The moment I believe in a judgement my mind makes up, I'm starting to suffer. And of course my mind gets very active in trying to figure out a way to change whatever is 'wrong'.

And I pondered about the nice feeling I fall into when I listen to Syd talking about the perfection of life. How even in the imperfection, it's perfect. How everything that is, is 'God in motion'.

And how Love is always the answer.

It's in a feeling of Love and Peace and Tranquility that we see something new. That problems disappear and new ways and solutions show up. That we find compassion for ourselves and others.

And even on a bigger scale, nothing good ever comes out of condemnation. Adding hate to an already hateful (or fearful) situation doesn't help. I think we sometimes are scared that no change will ever occur if we make peace with what is. That we have to fight to change the world.

But is that really true? Aren't we way more helpful and creative and inventive when we come from a loving, peaceful state of mind?

Do you know this feeling, when you are really caught up in something, and you talk to someone who deeply cares about you, and he/she doesn't buy into your story? You feel they really listen and have empathy for you, but they truly know you are perfectly okay, even though you can't see it right now?

That's the power of looking through the illusion. It's like it takes the energy away from the illusion and shines a light on the truth. I like that. 

I like looking in that direction. 

We can forget, but that's just part of our story, part of the illusion.

Something in that really touched me. I think it showed me the part in me where I often believe I have to somehow earn the Oneness, or find the Oneness, or change something about myself to come back to Oneness.

Listening to Syd I realized: There isn't anything else. I am part of the very fabric of life. I can never really get lost, I can only think I do. 

And this very nice image popped up in my head, of each and every one of us being a teenie tiny little part of the vastness of Life / Consciousness. And how we are kind of 'unimportant', being such a teenie tiny part, but at the same time being completely irreplaceable. I am the only one that can be me. You are the only one who can be you. Your unique way of expressing life. And you are doing a very good job at being you. You can't go wrong with that. You might get covered up in some dust or loose sight behind some clouds, but you inherently always stay you. Your essence can't change. The beauty and love that you are stays always untouched, unharmed, eternally expressing the pure joy of being alive.

A little reminder, for me and for you. We never left Home.

Whenever we are trying to have a different experience than we are having in the moment, we are creating stress for ourselves. We create a gap between what is and what 'should be'. It doesn't matter if it's the pain we want to get rid of or our resistance against the pain. Or any other circumstance or emotion. We have been taught to believe that peace lies at the other end of figuring out our problems. Of managing and controlling and changing our circumstances/emotions/thoughts/experiences.

What I'm seeing again and again, in teeny tiny little steps, is that it's the other way around.

Peace and contentment is what's already there - before my judgement, thinking and controlling.

And - luckily - it is still there, no matter how much I get caught up in my busy mind. It doesn't go anywhere. It actually can't go anywhere - it is what we are made of. It only gets covered up by our busy thinking temporarily. 

What we are is pure life, pure being, an unconditional open space for every experience to arise in it.

And the beauty is that this quiet space inside holds all the answers we have been looking for.

It's the space from which new ideas and fresh thinking arises.

It's where we get in touch with a bigger intelligence than our personal little minds have to offer.

Every time I get a little glimpse of this it's like a heavy burden is being lifted off my shoulders.

It's not my job to manage my life or my health. The same energy that keeps me breathing and lets flowers turn their heads towards the sun is taking care of that. 

Today I felt like I suddenly 'got' why everyone in the 3P community keeps saying 'look for a nice feeling'. It's not just because it's nice to be in a nice feeling (or because it calms you down or is good for your nervous system).

It's because all the answers, the inspiration, the wisdom come from hanging out in that nice feeling.

I always had it upside-down: First I'd try and figure out all my problems by thinking about them a lot, then after figuring everything out (which of course very rarely even happens) I could finally spend some time in the nice feeling.

But it's the other way round!

I just drop into that nice feeling and somehow all the problems disappear. It's like they figure themselves out.

And by this I don't mean that I'm now sitting on my couch the whole day, grinning like an idiot and doing nothing... I still do all kinds of stuff, it even sometimes feels like I have more ideas and am more creative, but it seems to me that the amount of thinking that is needed for that is somewhere in between 'very little' and 'zero'.

It strikes me as very funny - in a way it's the most perfect and most simple guiding system anyone could imagine: Just follow the nice feeling and you'll find all your answers and all the love and peace and understanding you need. But somehow we still manage to convince ourselves, that really digging into the annoying stuff, into all the problems and stressful thinking, is a better idea... 

I saw this comic today and it made me laugh so much! 

This was exactly me, when I first came across the 3P about 9 months ago...

I had experienced 5 years of severe chronic pain and since I knew it was stress-related, I had become hyper-hyper-vigilant about avoiding stress.

This was the 'anti-stress-routine' I was following:

- coherence training (a breathing exercise) three times a day for 20 minutes (hated it by the way)

- wearing a 'breathing-tracker' which constantly reminded me of breathing more deeply (it vibrated when my breathing became too shallow)

- taking about 15 different supplements/herbs that are supposed to calm the brain down

- pacing and monitoring myself constantly, planning my day, trying to avoid pain flare-ups

- trying to manage my moods, so that I wouldn't get too angry or annoyed and by that aggravate the pain

- avoiding situations in the outside-world that I perceived as stressful

- doing 'neurofeedback therapy' once a week (where they basically do an EEG while you sit in front of a screen, trying to calm your brain down and getting feedback about how you're doing on the screen)

- researching all kinds of stuff about diet/resilience/chronic stress disease/neuroplasticity etc.

...

As you can imagine, I was quite stressed.

It seems very funny to me now in hindsight, but back then it was the best I knew to do. I had been meditating for 20 years before getting sick, so that obviously hadn't helped, so now I went with all the techniques I could find.

What I can see now is that I had no understanding about what stress actually is and where it is coming from. I am deeply grateful for meeting Chana and being introduced to the three principles. Somehow it really 'clicked' for me and so much has changed. 

I'm doing none of the above anymore - once I got a deeper understanding of myself, of how my mind works, of the real source of the stress, it just didn't make any sense anymore. 

Inspired by a beautiful Zoom call yesterday and by re-reading Chana Studleys book 'The Myth of Low Self-Esteem' I wanted to talk about 'Thought'. And also about 'recovery time'. Hopefully you are going to see why I put those two issues together 😊

I was reading a passage in Chanas book, where Marty talks to Deborah about 'Thought'. She explains to her, that 'Thought' doesn't just mean the thinky thoughts, the ones that you can 'see' or 'hear' running through your head. It also includes daydreaming, anxiety, imagination, your believes... all kinds of stuff you do with your mind. And have been doing for a long time.

I'm seeing something funny, not sure if I can express it... It's like my (personal) mind is always looking for an 'either-or' answer. But every time I see something new or true (for me), it's an 'neither-nor and both' answer.

Like for example my personal opinions about stuff (the world, politics, my neighbor) aren't important or unimportant - they are both. They are illusionary and changing and futile, because they are just made-up and have nothing to do with what's happening AND they are my unique expression and experience of life itself. I realized nobody will ever see the world the way I do. To me - knowing there are 7 billions people alone on this planet - that makes my view of the world super-unimportant and super precious at the same time. But precious in a new sense, not in the sense of having to impose my way on other people, more like precious to just experience them. In my own unique way.

When we talked about 'techniques' yesterday in a zoom call I thought about how my view on using techniques has changed. During the years of feeling sick I've tried everything I could think of. When I met Chana I was very much into techniques - I was doing neurofeedback, coherence-training, breathing techniques, meditations, neuroplasticity techniques... I was even wearing a 'breathing tracker', that would vibrate when my breathing got too shallow. After doing the painless program with Chana I dropped a lot of it, because I could see how it kept me busy and very focused on the symptoms.

Since being in the 3P conversation I feel like more 'cracks' are becoming visible to me.
I'm talking about the 'good' kind of crack.
Cracks in the illusion of how I see the world.

The ones that give you room to breathe.
Time to rest.
Space to see something new.
The ones where the light comes in.

I'm feeling very happy today, so I thought I'd share my thoughts with you ❤️
In my original post they come with a song too, but I can't add that here - so please go to youtube and listen to Bob Marley's 'Three little birds' 😃 

There is peace available, everywhere.
In each and every moment.
In this one infinite, everlasting moment.
All we have to do to become aware of it, is give up - everything.
Everything we think we are.
Everything we believe in.
But this 'giving up' doesn't have to be a big act.
It's not a task to plan for next week or next month or next year.
It happens right now.
Very gently, very simple, very quietly.

I posted something yesterday about the credibility of thought.
What came up for me today, is that I am so very used to taking my experiencesfrom the past and projecting them onto my future.
The thing is: for some areas in the ‚outside world‘ it is very helpful. Like right now, I know what is expected of me when I go to the fitness studio (because of the corona situation). I learned it during the last weeks, and so I act
accordingly, when I go their next time.
I also know where to find my favorite food in my favorite grocery store. That is helpful.
(I can get quite annoyed when they change everything 😄)

From what I can see, confusion and suffering arises, when I try to apply this to my inner world, my experience of whatever is happening in the moment.
Just because I enjoyed training last time, I won’t necessarily enjoy it this time.
Just because I was scared at the dentist last time, I won’t necessarily be this time.

As I heard Syd say somewhere: ‚2 plus 2 doesn’t make 4 in the inner world.‘

Experience is fluid and ever changing - but for my thinking about it, that tries to put it in a box, in a fixed state, which I can handle and rely on.
In a futile attempt, to make me feel safe.

What believing in this fixed ideas about me and my surroundings really does is it keeps me imprisoned. It keeps my attention away from THIS moment. From seeing what is right now. From listening to life.

To give an example of my recent experience:
As long as I believe in a certain story about my physical symptoms - and may it only be the story of ‚I have a chronic stress disease‘ - there are all kinds of ideas
and expectations connected with it.

For a while for me this showed in a lot of thinking:
aah, okay, a stress disease means to much ruminating, too much thinking, so it would be good to be in a peaceful state of mind. hmmm, I often feel peaceful, but then why
isn’t the pain gone? shouldn’t it go away after X amount of time?… and on and on.

But what I realized is, that it also shows in giving a lot of credibility to certain thoughts. It’s like even when I’m not ruminating, the beliefs just sit there and every thought that fits in with them gets accepted as a truth. It isn’t seen as ‚just another thought‘.
It has more weight. And it feels like I’m caught up in a circle of a made-up logic in a made-up story.

Whereas in these moments, when I kind of ‚fall‘ into the NOW and somehow ALL the stories get surrendered for a teeny tiny second, it is a whole other world.
There isn’t any continuity. No ‚person‘, that suffered X amounts of years of chronic pain, that has tried this or that, that has dealt with it in a good or bad way… nothing of that.

Just aliveness. Being. And in this being-ness every kind of experience has its place. And its own beauty, its own wonder. There is place for everything.
Sadness, Joy, Love, Anger… without anything ‚on it‘ there is nothing wrong wit any of it.

Just knowing that this space is always available, no matter what the circumstances, that it’s always just a blink of an eye away, makes me feel safe.
And then I forget and feel scared again… but I remember, there was something there… ❤️

I did some research 😊 (meaning I talked to some fellow 3Plers... 😃) I thought I'd share what I found because I think it might be helpful for some of you too.
Since being in this conversation (first learned about the 3P at the beginning of this year) I've been feeling much much better. Not just on a physical level (chronic pain was what brought me here), but in so many other areas. I'm seeing so much new stuff and a lot of stressful issues have changed or fallen away. And some 'difficult' circumstances just aren't much of a problem anymore. However, during the last 2 or 3 months I experienced a curious phenomenon: It seems that I sometimes get random pain flare-ups out of nowhere. Or sometimes even following a few days full of joy and new insights and feeling very free and content. Since I'm still a bit conditioned from the classic TMS approach, every time this happens I immediately come up with some ideas of what I might 'have done wrong'. Like being 'too excited' or maybe having overlooked something that's been troubling me. At the same time I could watch myself with every time this was happening getting less and less likely to get caught up in this kind of thinking. Maybe because of my grounding in the 3P is deepening or something like that. With my last flare-up a few days ago on the first day it truly felt like I was watching these thoughts come and go, they didn't effect my emotional state.
On the second day it changed, I got annoyed and more 'why??' thinking came up. I watched some webinar and read some posts and suddenly I realized, that I'm still holding on to some belief, that experiencing pain is not okay. That it means I have done something wrong.

A few days ago I posted something about free will. Now I'm seeing something new 😊 I was talking about not seeing that I really have free will in my choice of behavior or thoughts. Now I feel that's looking way 'downstream', at the form, that's already been created. What I see now is that the 'gift of thought' itself is what gives us 'free will'. It gives us the ability to literally create everything. Depending on how we use this gift we can create a world for ourselves that's full of anger or sadness or disappointment, of fear and terror, or one that is full of love and joy and compassion and kindness. With this amazing gift we can create literally anything we can think of. And experience it. Feel it, get lost in it. By the gift of consciousness, that makes our thoughts come alive. Until we fall out of it and come back home. To the only true reality there is - Oneness. Peace. And no matter how deeply we get lost - we will always find our way back home. Because this is what is build into us, this deep longing and the ability to find our way back to Peace. Because it never gets lost in the first place, we just think it does. 😊 We don't have to do it - it's what happens when all the doing stops. It's pretty cool... ❤️

I've been pondering about 'free will'. I have to say that to me right now in a way it looks a bit illusionary. I don't mean that I'm not responsible for my actions. And I know we are able to decide what to do, to change our mind and change our behavior, but when I look closely, all the ideas or impulses about what to do - they occur to me. Just like thoughts occur to me - I can't 'make' them. I can't tell myself 'Now I will find a new thought about...' and then force it. The more I'm trying, the more I get caught up in my personal thinking, the more of the same old thinking comes up. Sometimes I'm in a state of mind where I feel I can choose to let go, to fall into an open space and then often something new comes up. But sometimes all I can do is remember to not take my thinking too seriously... And it doesn't seem up to me to decide what state I'm in. What I can see is that by getting a deeper understanding of the principles I don't seem to get caught up so easily and so the 'ability to choose' is available more often. Like I notice more space inside, It all doesn't feel so constricted. But I can't 'make' Insights appear. And on a deeper level I sometimes wonder: what is there to choose from? It seems to me the only choice I have is the choice between either Love/Compassion/Understanding or Resistance/Fear for what is happening right now. Inside and outside of me. Sometimes I have this choice and sometimes I feel I don't. Because I'm caught up in a certain view of what's happening, a certain perspective. Depending on my level of understanding in that moment. Don't know if this makes sense for anyone. 😊 I guess for me this is an important topic because during the last years I used to feel guilty a lot about having 'created' a state of chronic pain for myself. So it's a relief for me, to let myself off the hook. To see that I always act from my present level of understanding. Until I see something new. I guess it's about being innocent. And about trusting in the bigger picture, to see that I'm always okay and well - no matter how much I temporarily get caught up in thoughts/habits etc. It seems to be a part of being human ❤️

Not that way

You know what I remember during the times, when I get so caught up in my thinking, that I feel I don't remember anything anymore? Like all the Insights are gone, I'm back to zero, totally lost? I remember: 'Not that way'. Not the way of more thinking. I love a saying of Sydney Banks that goes something like this 'You can never think your way to peace. No one can.' Somehow this is the one thing that always stays present with me. It's enough to guide me back home, back to peace. ❤️

Today while listening to a webinar I heard the sentence 'slowing down to the speed of life'. There seems to be a book with that title, I didn't look into it yet, but while hearing that saying it struck me - how I have this tendency to rush things. How I always want to be 'done' with everything, want every situation to be sorted out, want the lockdown to end, want a solution to this 'problem' or that... and on and on. It gave me such a sense of relief to realize: I don't have to do that. It doesn't work that way. It's not my job, to 'do' life or 'manage' life faster than it is already going. It seems to me while learning about the three principles that I become aware of more and more areas in my life, or maybe attitudes about life, where I tend to rush things and stress myself out. And again and again I have this experience that there really is nothing I need to do about it - the moment I see it, it looses its power. This is not to say that I don't have moments or days when I feel totally unable to get out of my stressful thinking... But again and again I also experience this, this sudden peace, this dropping away of anything I need to achieve, or manage. It really feels like there is no end to the depth of this understanding, I'm in awe of how this simplicity has such deep implications for every aspect of my life ❤️

Yesterday evening I realized how much time I usually spend in my mind, trying to make up my own opinions about everything. Suddenly it became very clear to me, that I don't need to do that. I don't need to figure everything out. The answers don't lie in my intellect. I can't keep myself 'safe' or plan every step or behavior by thinking about what might happen. I don't even have to have an opinion on everything - life (including what I do myself) just happens anyway, whatever I think about it. This feels very calming to me... 😊 It feels like - even though I'm certain I've had insights and new thinking before - before coming across the principles I never consciously realized I have wisdom available in every moment and the answers to all my questions are coming from a space beyond my intellect. That's pretty cool ❤️

There is no gap...

During the last weeks I'm realizing more and more how often my personal thinking creates a gap between where I am and where I think I should be. What my life looks like and how it should look like. How my partner behaves and how he should be behaving.

So much of my personal thinking is dedicated to finding all the wrongs, everything that doesn't fit into my belief system of how everything is supposed to be.

I’d like to share with you were I’m at right now.

As I’ve already said before one of the main issues I’m
struggling with is chronic pain.

Over the years I’ve tried everything - from traditional medicine, to all kinds of alternative healing approaches, many therapies and meditations, mindfulness etc., until about half a year ago I started learning about TMS and all the brain science on chronic pain.
What all these approaches have in common is the notion, that being in pain is not okay (which of course seems very understandable) and so they offer you some theory or technique to get rid of it.

Since learning about the principles I’m starting to see something new. I’m experiencing moments, or even days, when I couldn’t care less about the pain. I’m experiencing this deep sense of freedom, that’s not dependent on how freely I can move or what I can do in the outer world.

I’m starting to see that when I’m in a low mood I tend to get very annoyed and frustrated with the pain.
But you know what? If I wouldn’t be in pain, I would get frustrated with something else. I can watch myself picking some kind of content to blame my frustration, anger or desperation on.
And I’m starting to question the truth of it. A lot of times I can’t fully believe in it anymore. I can see the changing nature of my thoughts. I can see my moods rise
and fall. I’m becoming more aware that I believe one thing about my life on one day and another one on another day (or even minute). It all doesn’t seem so solid and so real anymore.

I’m beginning to see that the more ‚urgent‘ something feels, the more convinced I am that something has to be done about this RIGHT NOW, the more likely it is that I’m just caught up in a thought storm.

And there are moments when I feel that this new found freedom, this new way of living my life is so amazing -
if I could exchange this for 'just' being free of physical pain, I wouldn’t do it.

So I don't know, if my pain will go away. I guess it is likely to change, simply because everything changes.
I’ve had some really cool ‚fresh thoughts‘ or insights about pain, I have moments when I can see that the pain
itself is just thought and it doesn't feel like a problem at all.
But every time I’m falling into the illusion that it shouldn’t be there, that the fact that it's still there must mean that I’m doing something wrong, I’m starting to suffer.

What I know now is that there is total freedom, happiness and peace of mind available regardless of the pain.
I think regardless of any circumstance really.
And that’s all that pain is: nothing more or less than any one of an infinite number of things we can experience and live through in this life.
Life is not only made of rainbows and pink fluffy stuff.
It encompasses all kinds of experiences and circumstances. It is infinite.
I can’t control it and I can’t protect myself from it.
And it’s not my job to try and do that! This is such a relief for me! It's not my job to fix it. Whatever 'it' is.

I can try and try and get very stressed out and frustrated... And I'm still doing that. But again and again there are these blissful times when I fall out of it. When I regain this sense of connectedness to something far bigger than me.
And I just know that I'm being taken care of.
And that there really is nothing to fear.

So what I hope to share with you is that this feeling of security and peace and love we are all looking for is always available, right in the middle of it all. In the middle of all the chaos and messiness und imperfection. It's really always just one new thought away.

❤️❤️❤️

I just realized that I don't have a single freaking appointment for the next 4 weeks 😮 No work (I'm still working a bit, but just 'background' stuff), no sport, no friends, no doctor, no nothing. The whole craziness of the situation put aside for a moment (and also my tendency to get bored out of my mind quite easily) this is pretty amazing. Must be the first time since I was about 3 years old... 😂

I'd like to share something, that has been a real game-changer for me. It's about moods. Of course, I've always known that I have moods, but I didn't really realize the implications of that. So, here is what I've learned from The Three Principles: Moods go up and down all the time. And with them, the quality of our thinking changes. Moods are like 'levels of consciousness' or 'states of mind'. When our mood drops, our thinking gets clouded It gets very narrow, caught up in problems. You can imagine a big building - when you’re in a low mood, it’s like you’re on the ground floor of the building. The view from there is very restricted, you can only see a tiny part of the scenery around. When your mood lifts, it’s like you’ve risen up to a higher floor in that building - suddenly you can see way more of the scenery around you, you got a better overview and you’re more likely to see new possibilities. The way we’re feeling in any given moment is an indicator for the mood we are in. Feelings of irritation, anger, sadness, anxiety, boredom etc. indicate a low mood/a low level of consciousness. They let you know that you’re not using your personal mind/your personal thinking in a healthy way. During these times it’s not a good idea to make big decisions or to try and solve problems in your relationship for example. You’re not so much in touch with your inner wisdom. Once your mood lifts and you get a more pleasant feeling, your thinking also becomes clearer, more compassionate, more loving. That would be the right time to look for inspiration or new thoughts about things that need to be sorted out. Feelings are like a build-in indicator to guide us in using our personal minds and personal thinking wisely. So how do we control our moods? We don’t. We can’t control our moods anymore than our thoughts and feelings. But what we can do is realize this connection. Realizing, when we are in a low mood - being conscious of it. Knowing no matter how real it feels, that it's not the circumstances that suddenly are so unbearable. It's just our own thinking that has taken a turn for the worse. We are only ever experiencing our own thinking - it's never the circumstances. We can do ‚being low‘ more gracefully (thanks for that Chana Studley, I liked that a lot ❤️).Not taking it so seriously. Not believing in the thoughts we have during these times. Not taking it out on others, doing damage to our lives and to ourselves. Once we realize that the way the world seems to be when we’re in a low mood, is not ‚real‘ - my job/my partner/my life isn’t really as bad as it seems to me in this moment… it gets easier. To not engage in our thinking, to trust that our inner wisdom and wellbeing is still there. It’s just clouded by a busy mind. And it will change again on its own. In my experience it seems like taking it less serious keeps me from getting caught up in it so much. And it’s also kind of ‚less unpleasant‘ - maybe just because I don’t make it worse by trying to ‚fix it‘ or ‚think my way out of it‘. Help or relief never comes from more thinking… It comes from realizing, that innate health is our ‚default setting‘ - the less we interfere (with our personal thinking) the easier we get back to our natural state.❤️

I just had a 'light-bulb' moment about feelings 😃

They are nothing more than an indicator that shows me if I am using my mind wisely in this very moment. A little bit like an alarm clock - when I start to feel irritated, annoyed, down etc. - it's telling me to take a break from my personal thinking.

This is really funny to me - when I think about how much time I've spent analyzing them, trying to find out what they mean, where they came from, when I first had this particular feeling, giving them a name, giving them a color, trying to 'feel them through til the end'... doing all kinds of things in an innocent attempt to somehow find out what I could do to feel better ❤️

I just had a funny thought 😊 You know about the 'room of requirement' in the Harry Potter movies? It's a 'hidden' room in Hogwarts school of wizardry. It presents itself every time it is needed. Once you know it's there you can always find it. And, it offers you every thing you need at that moment - it could be full of treasures, or just a safe place or present to you, the very thing you are looking for.
It dawns on me, that we all have this room right within ourselves - this place called 'inner wisdom' or 'innate well-being' ❤️

I was always wondering about the question, if we can control our thoughts (or even the not-engaging in our thoughts). Sometimes I hear Sydney Banks say you don't control which thoughts come to in your mind, sometimes I hear him say it's our free will (what we are thinking or if we are engaging in the thoughts). This question has accompanied me for about 25 years... Now I saw something interesting: I think it depends on my level of consciousness. There are times when I easily see a stressful thought come up and just let it pass. And other times - even though I can still see it - I'm just not able to disengage from all the thinking. Until I can... Since I can't control the ups and downs of my level of clarity / consciousness / mood I'm back to not being able to control it. But: It seems the more I get into this understanding and experience some 'light-bulb-moments', the less time I seem to spend in an obsessive state of thinking... it's a very funny and mysterious thing to me! 😃❤️

A little story about ‚doing nothing' 😊

I have a big trip coming up in a few days, the first one in 5 years. Because of my pain issues I didn’t dare to go on a longer journey for a while. It all felt way too exhausting and insecure. And, there would be a lot of thinking and planning ahead involved. Even in very short trips, thoughts like ‚what will I do when my pain flares up?' and 'will I find a possibility to lie down and relax?’ and on and on...

So this morning a thought came up, ‚If I would feel like I’m feeling right now, would I be able to manage the long journey?’
And, you know what, I realized it was the first time in weeks for a thought like this to even come to my mind. And instead of engaging in a whole lot of thinking about it, I ‚saw‘ this thought - and it seemed kind of unreal and absurd to me. I didn’t have any motivation to engage in it. And so, it just passed.

A few days ago, I listened to a talk by Dr. Dicken Bettinger.
Something he said really got to me and so I’d like to share…

He said something like this: 'If you’re getting caught up in your personal thinking, and you start to feel stressed (or experience pain), it’s like ‚a call to prayer‘.
It’s telling you that it’s time to fall out of your
personal thinking, and let yourself fall open to your inner wisdom, to God.'