I have come to see that the most powerful realisation we can ever have is that we experience the world through our thoughts. It is a game of life changer of the hugest proportions.

This is what I have seen about the two inevitable outcomes when we believe the world has the power to make us feel good or bad.

And what I have seen happen when we realise it doesn’t.

NEVER ENOUGH

If I believe that my life circumstances determine whether I feel good or worthy or safe or valuable or even simply OK then I will continually look to the outside world to feed this need.

And it will never be enough.

There will never be enough of whatever it is I think I need to make me feel OK.

If I believe I need money to make me feel secure, I will never have enough money and the money I do I have, I will worry about losing.

If I believe I need someone to tell me they love me so I feel loved, they can never tell me enough times.

If I believe I need approval to make me feel appreciated, I will never have enough approvers. I will never have enough upvotes of my answer, likes of my page, shares of my post. (Feel free to share this blog by the way…)

If I believe I need people to defer to me to make me feel important, there will never be enough people deferring to me.

If I believe I need food in the cupboard to make me feel I won’t go hungry, there will never be enough food.

If I believe I need friends to make me feel wanted, I will never have enough friends.

If I believe I need to change how I look to be beautiful, I will never be able to change enough.

This is a life in which I feel that I need to force myself through obstacles and out of comfort zones. I need to make more effort, have more will power, force, charm, charisma, determination, strategy and expertise to secure what it is I think I require in order to feel OK.

From this place, I might well be expanding out in the world – collecting more money, property, promotions, friends, lovers, awards, food, fans, employees, plastic surgeries in order that I feel OK. It might look to other people that I am having a ball. It might look like I have life nailed down.

But I know in my heart that I am looking for something that I can’t seem to find no matter how much I acquire.

It is like building a mansion on a foundation of quick sand, adding extra wings and rooms and extensions in the attempt to feel OK. And it will never be grand enough, magestic enough for me to feel OK about myself.

It is never enough.

**

TOO MUCH

The other side of the coin is the belief that circumstances, things and other people can make me feel bad.

When I think things in the outside world have the power to make me feel bad, overloaded, fearful, insecure then I will embark on a life of avoidance or control. I will seek to manage and minimise these things, protect myself from them.

This is where the comfort zone rules supreme. And where it gets smaller and smaller until I am living on a pin head, barricaded off from anything that I believe has the power to disturb me.

If I think my to-do list is causing me stress then I will believe I need to have less to do. I will seek to avoid having things to do until I have nothing to do.

If I think that certain people can upset, annoy or offend me then I will either seek to avoid them or, if I have the power, seek to banish them from my world until my world becomes just me.

If I think that certain places can make me uncomfortable I will avoid those places until I am permanently trapped in one place that becomes smaller all the time.

If I think certain activities have the power to scare me or make me insecure, I will limit what I do to the most familiar repetitions.

This is the step by step shrinking of my world and of myself.  Believing that the world can disturb me and that I must not be disturbed I need to limit, narrow, reduce, control and minimise.

It is all too much.

**

ANYTHING. 

Then one day, I realise something about the nature of life. I realise that everything I experience is made of thought.

None of these things outside me have the power to make me feel worthy or valuable or OK.

None of these things outside me have the power to make me feel uncomfortable, disturbed, offended.

I look around me into the world and at the self. It all looked so real before. It all looked as though it had the power to make my life a heaven or hell. Now I see that everything I experience is generated from me, from what I am thinking in the moment.

I realise that, but for thought, everything is neutral. It is thought that provides the opinions, the likes and dislikes, the preferences, the fears, the desires. And that all of these come and go from moment to moment. Sometimes they seem to matter. Sometimes they don’t.

I realise that I am gazing out into nothing. Blank canvases that are brought alive, animated, given colour by my thought and consciousness. Nothing out there can make me worthy or valuable. None of it can make me sad or uncomfortable.

I realise that because of the power of thought to create any experience. I could choose anything. It could be any person. Any colleagues. Any job. Any house. Any climate. Any style. Any country.

Anything or nothing or everything.

The world is wide open.

Anything.

**

THIS. 

And then a strange thing happens.

The anything and the nothing and the everything give rise to something.

From the ‘any one’ comes a soul mate.

It could be the person I have been married to and arguing with for 10 years who I now see with different eyes. It could be someone else. In love with everyone, I choose this person.

From the ‘any job’ comes a calling.

It could be the job I have always done in which I now realise enormous possibility or something else altogether. From an infinite choice of jobs and careers, I find myself so compelled by something that I almost have no choice about what I do.

From the ‘any country, town or street’ comes the right country, town or street for right now.

It could be where I am living now that I come home to with a previously unknown appreciation or it might be on the other side of the world. In love with the whole world, my place is obvious.

From the ‘any way of life’ comes the perfect way of life for right now.

It could be exactly as I am living now or it could change in every single detail. Knowing I can live in any way I want, I live in the way that makes simple sense for me.

It is as though, having seen the power of thought to create an illusory world, we are now guided from within to create a real world beyond our wildest dreams.  We move and act with a freedom and a love and a whole mind, body and soul participation. We love with a full heart, the people we are with, the jobs we do, the places we live.

There is no meaning that has to be extracted. There is nothing in these choices that has to prove us or make us feel secure. We know we are OK whatever happens.

We are living, creating, experiencing and loving with an authenticity, peace, expansion and joy we never thought possible.

This.