3P Random Reflections Blog

After I came across the Principles, it opened up lots of opportunities for conversations between myself and my husband about our thoughts and our personal perceptions of the life we experience.

One day, we were having a conversation about fears, and I was saying how my entire life was directed by so many of them, big and small. When I asked him what fears he had, he said he didn't have any. At first I thought he was just kidding or in denial. This couldn't possibly be true, because everyone has fears. But then I realized he was completely serious.

With many of my experiences of not wanting to do something, I would identify them as something I should be doing, and determine that it was my fears that were blocking me. With most of my husband's experiences of not wanting to do something, he just didn't think much about them. They appeared to him as something he wasn't interested in, or something he didn't like to do, and he had nothing more on them than that. He never labelled them in his head as “shoulds” and “fears”.

From that discovery, I gained an even greater respect for the INFINITE nature of thought, and how we all think we're perceiving the same world around us, but instead are actually living in completely different worlds in each of our heads.

Whenever I consider this difference in our perspectives, I'm reminded how easy it is for people to NOT get along. How easy it is for any of us to be incredulous whenever someone else sees anything in a particular way that is so different from our own. We can't make sense of it. We're sure that we are right, and they are wrong.

Because our own personal experience of thought and feeling is so compelling to us, we can’t rationalize how someone else's interpretation of life could be so different. And so to try to make sense of this in our minds, we come up with all the reasons why someone else believes or behaves differently… They don’t understand, they’re stupid, they’re lazy, they’re evil, they’re thoughtless, they’re rude, they’re insane, they’re uninformed, they’re stressed out, they’re hicks, they’re elitists, they’re too young, they’re too old, they’re whatever I come up with that helps me understand “why” they think differently than me.

But there is only ever one reason why, and it is so incredibly simple, that we just can’t see it.

What we don't realize is that the world we're personally living in, is not out there, but instead, is created entirely in our heads. We think we're living in the same world as everyone else, but we're not. Let me say that again. We think we’re living in the same world as everyone else, but we’re not.

Despite whatever happens in the world around us, our experience and understanding of what it is, and what it means, is unbelievably different for each of us based on the personally unique thoughts and feelings that have been popping up in our heads, every second of our entire life. That invisible stream of nonstop thought and feeling that no one else can see, except us.

And those differences in thought and feeling and perception, and our belief that our personal experience couldn’t be anything except the truth, are the source of every challenge, problem, war, political disagreement, argument, misunderstanding, and miscommunication that any of us will ever have.

And despite our personally made up beliefs otherwise, each of us actually lives in completely different worlds.

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