Thousands of people have now gained this new understanding and have seen their lives improve, many dramatically.
You could be next.
The only requirement is an open mind.
Wait! Before you start. I know many of you live with feelings you’d rather not have. I used to too. We live with worry, with stress, with frustration, with anger, bother, anxiety, sadness, depression, jealousy, guilt, with minds too busy, with addiction, and on and on. None of this is necessary. These feelings do not have to rule us. The secret is to understand where these feelings come from, and I don’t mean from past events. I mean understanding how all feelings are created within us. I also know from experience you will be able to see this best if we ease into it gradually. Why? Because the information itself means nothing; only your own insights about it make any difference. The mind has to be prepared to take in the new. Don’t worry about not seeing it right away; by the end of the book it will have crept up on you and will make complete sense. Then you can read the book again and see even more the next time. We begin with the story of Lisa…
Lisa had never climbed a mountain. She wanted to but was a heavy smoker and afraid she’d never make it. She feared not having the wind or stamina. Over her 39 years others had asked her to go hiking with them. She refused. She was filled with trepidation, and not only about mountains.
As a baby Lisa was abandoned. At 39 she still had never met her real mother. She was brought up by a stepmother, whom Lisa believed hated her. When she was a child her uncle, whom she loved and trusted, sexually abused her. Through such experiences Lisa picked up habits of thinking that at the time helped her survive but as the years went by proved less and less helpful. For twelve years she needed depression medication to get her through the day. She became involved in a series of misguided relationships, at least one physically abusive. She felt stuck. Many things in her life seemed like mountains.
Lisa attended a Three Principles-based course called Health Realization* that I taught at the New England School of Addiction Studies. In the class she heard something that touched her deeply. On her way home she realized she actually saw the colors of the trees for the first time. In awe she stood and cried at the beauty. Sporadically over the next few years she counseled with me and attended a longterm professional Health Realization training. She began to see the only thing keeping her stuck was her own thinking.
Through this training Lisa came to realize that she used her thinking in ways that inhibited her, that kept her in fear and longing for a better life. She realized the only thing in her way was how she used her power of Thought, and her thoughts could change. With this realization Lisa’s life improved dramatically. For the first time she began to experience well-being. She no longer felt the need for depression medication. Her psychiatrically diagnosed “seasonal affective disorder” no longer had the same grip on her. She volunteered to teach what she’d learned to correctional center inmates and began to affect their lives.
Because Lisa’s life had changed so, I asked her to co-teach the next Three Principles course with me at the New England School, held that year in southern New Hampshire. During the mid-week afternoon break, for my 56th birthday, I decided to hike Mount Monadnock. I hadn’t hiked it since I was a kid. I asked Lisa if she wanted to join me.
“I want to,” she said, “but I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it.”
“Lisa,” I said, “this is the most climbed mountain in the world. People in far worse shape than you have climbed it.”
With all Lisa’s other insights about her life she was stuck on the mountain. Why could other people climb mountains and not her? What made her so different?
With mixed trepidation and excitement she decided to try. “If I can do this,” she thought, “it would be a huge accomplishment.”
So off we went. Lisa spent the entire first part of the climb, which was more like a gentle walk through some pretty woods, grumbling about how unpleasant it was. She wanted to stop and have a cigarette.
“Is this wise?” I asked.
She agreed it wasn’t. “But if I have to stop and have one, I’m going to!”
Before we arrived at the steep part of the climb Lisa wanted to quit. She grumbled some more but managed to push on.
After trudging along a while, both of us sweating, we arrived at the steepest part of the climb—solid granite. Suddenly Lisa saw it as a challenge. Her experience of the hike changed. She pulled herself up steep boulders.
“This is fun!” she laughed.
After climbing steep rock for a while both of us were tired. We came to the first beautiful overlook. Lisa had never seen a view like it. She loved it. She thought we were at the top.
“You mean we’re not there?” she asked with a pained expression.
“Not yet. It’s up there. See?” I pointed.
Lisa became discouraged. Her experience of the hike changed again.
“I don’t know if I’m going any further,” she grunted, sat down, pulled out a cigarette and lit up.
“Lisa, look, we can see the top! Do you really want to quit now, when we’re almost there?”
Lisa grunted again.
A couple of Puerto Rican women, also attending the New England School, appeared on the trail. They didn’t feel like going farther either. We chatted a few minutes until some athletic-looking hikers passed by on their way down. I asked them how far it was to the top. They said, “Oh, probably about ten minutes.”
“It’ll probably take us twenty minutes then,” I joked.
For some reason the Puerto Rican women thought that was the funniest thing. They couldn’t stop laughing. Amazingly it jazzed everyone up, and we all got up for the last leg.
Grudgingly Lisa put out her cigarette and stood up. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
Twenty minutes later the four of us stood on the peak. Lisa witnessed her first 360-degree spectacular view. Again she stared in awe. Lisa had climbed her first mountain. She had made it to the top.
Lisa made it because she stopped thinking she couldn’t.
Most of us don’t realize how our thinking controls us. We are at the mercy of our thinking—until we see and realize how it works to create our experience of life.
Thought is the greatest gift, the greatest power we have. It is our creative power—the power to create anything with our own thinking. This is the first spiritual Principle. It is a fact. We can have any thought. We generate it. We create it. We make it up.
The second Principle is the fact that we also have another awesome gift: the power of Consciousness. Consciousness allows us to experience life. Without consciousness we would not have any experience because we would have no awareness of whatever is happening out there.
Contrary to the way it appears we can never get a direct experience of the world out there through our consciousness. Our consciousness can only give us an experience of what we think is out there, of our own interpretation of what is “out there.” Our consciousness can only give us an experience of our thinking. The only experience we can ever have is of our own thinking.
This statement can be baffling. To truly understand this changes lives.
I’ll state this in a different way.
We