One of the great ironies of the human condition is that we seem most motivated to make dramatic changes at precisely the moments when we’re least equipped to do so. We get angry and want to change the world, but in our anger and frustration we alienate the very people who could help us to achieve our aims. Then we feel insecure and alone and think

Understanding that we’ll always get back online when our thinking slows down takes the pressure off – it’s not up to us to manage our state. This allows us to take advantage of our state of mind when it’s high, stay in the game when it’s low, and not waste much mental or physical energy trying to change, control, or ‘fix’ it in between times.

To put it another way, everything we experience in life is a function of three spiritual facts: we are alive, we are aware, and we think.

Yet the moment we see that every feeling is just the shadow of a thought, we stop being scared of our feelings and just feel them.

the brilliant Principles-based psychiatrist William Pettit.

What Syd Banks saw when he had his enlightenment experience was that we live in a world of thought. Not a world influenced by thought, where positive outperforms negative and gives us a ‘competitive advantage in the marketplace,’ but a world that is actually created from thought. And the moment we stop fighting with ourselves and others about what

At that point, something that Syd Banks once said about humility came to mind: ‘Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less.

recognizing the role of Thought in creating experience makes us less inclined to run amok when we’ve gone offline. Instead of blaming our job, our partner, our kids, or the universe in general for our problems, we recognize that but for our thinking, we’d be having a completely different perception and experience of our situation.

And in the end, that seems to me to be the core of all our desires: the freedom to be able to enjoy our life and be a contribution to the whole in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, as best we can for as long as we’re here. How things ultimately turn out isn’t up to us. It never was. But if we do our bit and play our part, it’s remar