The coaching I do is based on the principle that our reality is created from the inside out. That our moment to moment reality is thought brought alive in consciousness. That everything we experience, including ourself is only ever a creation within the changing energy of our mind.

And the minute we start to look at this in relation to what we actually experience then this theory completely falls apart.

“Yes I get how it is all created from the inside but…

… my boss really is a bully, everyone agrees – even HR.

…. people are actually dying of starvation, that’s not my thought.

…. my ex abused me. The police, my counsellor, the refuge – all said it.

…. I was mugged. This broken arm is not imaginary.

…. have a word with my doctor if you think I’m making up that I have cancer.

…. unless all the papers are lying – there are wars and terrorists and violence.

…. the bailiffs are banging on the door right now. I need money – real money – not bullshit about thought.

This is where a lot of people bail out. This is where coaches in this understanding lose clients or even where the coaches themselves no longer see how it can be true and go back to their old jobs. It is where the comments on an article or video post get angry and incredulous.

This is where it looks like denial or spiritual bypass or white-washing or fobbing off or head in the sky, skipping round with daisy chain necklaces la la la.

Because our ears, eyes, taste, smell, touch, memory that we have relied on for our entire lives are saying ‘This is real, real life, real world, that really happened and this is really happening’.

And now someone is saying that the whole thing is an experience of thought. And even worse that it is not just our thoughts about ourself or what we see in the outside world but that the whole entire thing is created within our consciousness. That none of it exists – not the mugger, the bailiff, the boss, the cancer, the abusive ex – outside of our experience. How can that be?

Well if we stick around a bit longer we might concede ‘maybe there is a tiny bit of truth in this’. We can see how other people create drama or problems or offence or anxiety out of thin air. We can be amazed at the reality that others think they live in, the things they think are frightening, the things they think are important, the things they have to do to feel OK.

But the stuff that is going on in our life. That is real. That’s no creation. It is just us reacting as any normal person would to the cards we have been dealt.

And that’s good. That means the design is working well.

Because that’s why we’re here, to experience life as if it were real.

The simplest, most fundamental point of life is to live it. And every time we get angry at politics or scared about a presentation or amazed by a sunset or turned on by our partner or happy about a present that’s what we’re doing. Living.

This experience of life is not possible without a self that experiences it and a body that senses it and a world and other people to create reactions.

And all of it (and, when we get real and quiet and simple, we know this to be profoundly true) is coming from within us. We know this because what is brought alive, what is vivid or breathtaking or wounding or vital or irrelevant or obvious or not even present within our consciousness is unique to us and unique to the moment in which it is experienced and unrelated to the infinite swirling mass of energetic information that is out there.

Then (if you are like me) you might say ‘So you’re saying that this scary world of terrorists and money worries and the shit boss and the health problems is my experience in consciousness. You are saying it is my projection. If that’s the case then how can I project more of the beach house and the sexy partner and the wildly successful business and great hair and world peace (in that order)?’

In other words: If it is all a projection then tell me how to stop projecting this crock of shit and project more pots of gold.

And this is where it gets really interesting. This is where we realise that we are a double existence.

I am the person angry at her husband and I am the observer of anger.

I am terrified of public speaking and I am aware of the experience of fear.

I am devastated by a diagnosis and I am witnessing devastation.

I am the thought and I am the space in which the thought arises.

I am and I am the observer of I am.

It doesn’t sound much but seeing even the slightest difference between the two, having even the smallest glimmer into the distinction is the difference between insanity and sanity, between incarceration and freedom, between desperate, needy conditional love and the soaring exhilaration of the unconditional.

The profound difference is in this shift:

From a self that needs a world and other people and its experience to be a certain way and which will do anything, hide, eat, inject, shop, lie, drink, work, fight, clean, save, compete, exercise, seduce, steal, help, whatever in the attempt to secure itself.

To an awareness of an experience of a self and a world and an experience of that self perceiving, creating and doing within that world.

There are no words for how enormous this shift is.

And all of us, because we are human, have the potential in every moment for both. Neither is better or worse than the other. One is living the full technicolour experience of thought. The other is living the marvel and awe at the power of thought.

But if you are really fed up with the ‘crock of shit’ (and it is this fed-upness that often brings people to this understanding – like the hook the instructors used to have in swimming lessons in the 70s to fish us out when we’d had enough) then hang out more in the space in which experience unfolds.

Because in this space all thoughts are OK. All pain is OK. All fear is OK. All anger is OK. All loneliness, sadness, desperation, insecurity, poverty, illness, rejection is OK because all of it is thought, transient, impermanent, insubstantial, lighter-than-air thought. There is nothing to resist. All of it is safe. All of it can take place within our consciousness. All of it is welcome.

All of it can be loved, because all of it is life.

And the love changes it all.

With the love and acceptance of our entire experience those thoughts that had been crying out for attention, that turned themselves into the glasses through which we saw the world, can settle down.

We spend less and less time replicating the 4 D reality of our thoughts and more and more in the awareness of the incredible creative power of thought and in the simple, unstoppable momentum of the body.

Because this awareness welcomes all experience, all brakes on the doing are released. Actions which before had only ever been an attempt to secure an unsecurable self now become the physical expression of simple awareness. We might still hide, eat, inject, shop, lie, drink, work, fight, clean, save, compete, exercise, seduce, steal, help but it will be coming from the truest, simplest, most heart-felt, rock-solid, clearest place.

There is no self to protect and defend. There is no world out there to correct. There is just the grace of perception and creation. The perception of everything and everyone is simply love reflected back. The creation of anything and everything is love turned into form.

Crock of shit or pot of gold?

It is our gift to see both out there.

It is our gift to see that neither is out there.

Nothing to change.