3P Random Reflections Blog

Over the last couple of days, I got caught up in some seriously negative thinking.

For me, whenever my thinking heads south, it's often directed at myself... not doing enough, not being enough, and constant comparison to others who appear to be doing better, along with a general irritability that could arise over anything. The last couple of days were no exception to this personal thinking tendency, and this time it came with a degree of acute feeling of pain and hopelessness that I haven't felt in quite a while.

There was no change of circumstance, no terrible event, no devastating loss. It was just another couple of days with a random stream of thought passing through my head, and yet I was assaulted with periods of experience that were incredibly intense. Each time a new wave of insecure thinking-feeling hit me, I noticed how strongly it affected me, and how often I was momentarily drowned in the feeling as it struck. I'd be relatively fine one moment, just going about the activities of my day, some of which by the way were quite lovely... and then all of a sudden, another wave would swipe me off my feet.

In retrospect, even though I was experiencing a natural and continually shifting flow of experience within the general human range of somewhat good to somewhat NOT so good, it was like there was an undercurrent of despair just below me, ready to pull me under at the next slightest provocation... the prompt of a single statement from my husband, the flash of a single memory of regret, the sting of a single reflection of compared inadequacy, the peck of a single irritating circumstance. Thoughts that would otherwise float by unnoticed on other days, were instead gripping me in a whirlpool of supporting negative thought, swirling round and round in my head.

And so I'd be mindlessly treading water throughout the day, somewhat forgetting the precariousness of my current thinking-state-circumstance, when another wave would hit. And when each wave hit, it was incredibly "real". I genuinely believed whatever it was telling me, and experienced the genuine feelings of pain that accompanied it. And each time it hit, I wanted to get out of it. I wanted to get back to the surface so that I could breathe. And often the more I wanted to breathe, the deeper I went... Until...

Eventually, as each wave subsided, and the water calmed, and I somehow gave up fighting against it, and my body somehow rose back to the surface... I'd get a little clarity or perspective, or I'd remember "Oh yah, I'm OK", or I'd simply move on to thinking about something else, and get back to treading water, mostly forgetting what had been so significant and painful just moments earlier.

Isn't it amazing how absolutely nothing of apparent consequence can be happening, and yet the possibility for intense experience can be incredibly and convincingly real. How perplexingly powerful is this experience of Mind, Consciousness, and Thought, that it can take a formless thought and create a form-filled storm of experience? And how miraculous that I can wholeheartedly believe whatever battering winds of thought and feeling I may be experiencing, and then a few moments later be back to clearer sailing?

Right now, I can still feel the slight undercurrent of despair pulling at my feet. Fortunately, I've seen that although I am the temporarily suffering me, I am also the water, and I am also the wave, and I am also the amazingly miraculous buoyancy that keeps bringing me back to the surface. How incredibly lovely it is that I don't have to be at all concerned about any of it!

POST-BLOG NOTE: I decided to share this blog because it can often be believed that learning the Principles exempts us from having the human experience... that it exempts us from ever feeling any type of insecure thought, or having any type of negative experience. And that once we "get" this, we're never supposed to feel bad again, and there's something wrong with us if we do. For example, the first story of my 3P experience on the Home page of this website, can read a bit like the potential for a life of "rainbows and unicorns", even though it offers a disclaimer at the end.

And so often, in my blogs, I try to share some of the "negative" experiences that I can still have, but with the deeper knowing (for me) that I can have those experiences and still be COMPLETELY OK. Feeling bad is not a problem. It's just a temporary state of mind, that naturally fluctuates up and down, even while I'm in it, and always eventually re-sets to a wonderful, peaceful state of calm and wellbeing and humour and love.

So, on the day I wrote this blog, I was feeling pretty yucky, and I was curious to see what I would write, while I was "in it". And so I simply wrote what the feeling felt like.

What can be missed from this blog, without having had insight into the Principles, is this... The amazingly profound reality of this understanding is that I can experience ANY of the ups and downs of life, with way more ease and grace than I could ever have imagined before. And often, I can even see beauty in the human ability to experience every intense emotion of life from great joy to great sadness. With the gifts of Mind, Consciousness, and Thought, we get to experience LIFE! ... and with an understanding of how this all works, we get to "have the experience without the experience having us" - Linda Pransky, we get to be "grateful for the highs and graceful with the lows" - George Pransky, and we get to live with an awareness of our own innate human resiliency, no matter what craziness in life gets thrown our way.

May I wish for any of you reading this... the understanding that you have always in the past, and will always in the future, be beautifully, miraculously, wonderfully OK, even when your thinking may be convincing you otherwise.

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