We Feel Our Thinking, Not Our Circumstances

"Most men spend their entire lives fishing, never realizing that it wasn't fish they were searching for"

If you've experienced any of my work than you know that I speak about the inside-out nature of the human experience more than anything else.  For some people I talk about it to the point of nauseam, but I assure you, there is a reason. Understanding how the human experience works, and the principles behind it, is the closest thing I've ever found to a magic wand. When people get even a glimpse of the truth, everything transforms, and their experience of life gets more and more wonderful in a very permanent way.

The societal "outside-in" myth is so pervasive, that simply seeing through that myth to the truth, leaves most people transformed forever.  So if you don't have a major AHA moment right away, stay with it, and keep looking in the direction of your mind and your thoughts. You'll know it when you see it, believe me!

Okay, let's get down to business. Possibly the most significant part of this Inside-Out understanding for me, is that we can only ever feel our thinking, not the world. In other words, our emotional, feeling experience of life can only ever come from thought, not our partners, our kids, our jobs, or our bank balances.

Every thought has a corresponding emotion or experience that comes with it.  They are two sides of the same coin, and you can't have one without the other.  Another way of thinking about it is, if we have a scary thought, we'll feel afraid.  If we have a sad thought, we'll feel sadness. If we have a stressful thought, we'll experience stress... and so on.

This is probably the most difficult part for people to grasp; there are no scary, sad, or stressful circumstances.  The world can't makes us feel those feelings.  There are no inherent feelings in the world, they can only ever come from thought.

Now, when I say that, most people say "wait a second, I don't think I really believe there are ZERO scary, sad, or stressful circumstances!" After all we've been taught all of our lives that our lot in life has a huge impact on our quality and experience of life... does it not?  Well, fortunately, we have all been innocently deceived.

It's the blind leading the blind. Our parents didn't see that the source of our experience was thought, therefore, they passed it on to us.  We're all blindly trying to improve our circumstances so that we can have better feelings.  Never actually stopping to consider... maybe that's not how it works.  Maybe it's all being created from the inside-out.

This conversation always makes me think of one of my favorite quotes by Eric From who said "Just because millions of people share the same form of mental pathology, does not make those people sane." In other words, simply because 99% of the world acts as if this is in Outside-In universe, does not mean they are correct. It does however give us a reason for why very few people bother to investigate for themselves; it is just too pervasive of a myth for most people to question; much like the old saying "whoever discovered water, it wasn't fish." However, that pervasiveness is exactly why it is so worth questioning.

Now, while some people will just flat out disagree with me, other people will hear me talk about this principle of only feeling our thinking, and they will nod in agreement.  But what most of them are actually hearing me say is, "I mostly feel my thinking" or "My thoughts have a big influence over my feelings."

That's all well and good, but it's not what I'm saying.  I'm actually suggesting that the world cannot cause us to have any emotional experience.  The source of all of it is thought. 100% of our experience of life is being created through thought.

Another way of looking at it is that, in the absence of scary thought, you will not feel fear... regardless of the circumstances.  Without a sad thought, you will not experience sadness.  Without a stressful thought, you will not experience stress.  It is that simple, and when you truly see it, it is profound.

As it so happens, this is ridiculously significant.  When we don't understand this, we human beings spend 99% of our time trying to have a better or more wonderful experience of life; and our main strategy is trying to get better circumstances.  All the while, we don't see that our experiences and emotions can't come from the world outside of our heads. Most people never see this, they just keep trying their whole lives to get better and better circumstances.

You may have noticed that one of the problems with this is that you can't get better feelings from circumstances, and circumstances are often really difficult to create exactly the way we want them. In other words, not only are our circumstances not the source of our experience, but we also don't have that much control over them.  That's why so many people have the experience of achieving a long time goal that they struggled and sacrificed to accomplish, and they end up saying to themselves "This is it? This is all there is? I don't feel any different. Why was any of that worth it?"

Alright, let's switch gears and look at why this inside-out understanding is so hard to see, because there is a reason, and it's completely innocent.  The reason is that it's so much easier to see the world outside of our heads.  The world in front of our eyes is big and bright, and colorful, and feels solid. Everything going on behind our eyes is not as clear.  If we aren't used to looking in that direction, it seems fuzzy and dark. So it just doesn't occur to most of us to look there, even though that is actually the source of our experience of life.

What happens is that things happen in the world, and then we have a feeling.  Because we see the circumstance much more easily, we naturally associate the feeling with the circumstance. The missing link however, is thought.  It's invisible to us, but it's always there, and we are always feeling it.

Some of my mentors who are practitioners of this work, speak about our lack of seeing as a Trick of the Light.  Consider you see something that looks an awful lot like a monster and so you get scared.  You might try all sorts of strategies to attack the monster, or avoid the monster.  Or you might try to ignore the monster and simply cope with it by drinking, or smoking, or eating.

Now consider that upon closer examination you realize, the monster is simply a shadow of a stuffed teddy bear.  The light was simply projecting around the edges of the bear and creating a shadow image on the wall.  The moment you see this, all of the strategies and coping mechanisms you engaged in before become meaningless.  When you understand the nature of light and shadows, you will know that it would be silly to try to do something to change it; because it's just a shadow.

Well, our feelings, emotions and experience of life are all a shadow of our own thinking. All of those outside-in strategies for trying to change how we feel don't makes sense any more the instant we see that we are only ever feeling our thinking.

Once we begin to actually see that our feeling experience of life is all going on in our heads, it gives us a more useful direction to look in. Because if you think your experience is coming in large part from outside us, then, when we don't like our experience, that's the first place we are going to go to try and change it. And when it doesn't work, we think, "well, I just have to get MORE money, or a BETTER partner, a FULFILLING job, or a BIGGER house." Many people play this game for their entire lives.

When we are looking in the right direction we have an opportunity to see how things really work, and then take that into account.  The truth, in this case, is our most valuable asset. And the first truth to notice is that we feel our thinking not the world!

Tune in to my next article to learn more truths about the Nature of Thought that will set

Wishing You Great Love and Joy,

Coach Ty

P.S Don't forget to check out my new Video Coaching Series to develop a deeper understanding of the Inside-Out nature of life!