The Sacred Relationship

This week’s topic emerges from my conversations with clients about the relationship that we, as human beings, have with our thinking.

In Theory

The whole notion that our thoughts are our own, that they have an almost tangible form to them, is pivotal to how we make sense of the world we live in; from the horizon and the rising and setting of the sun, to the way people are talking to us, to the potholes in the roads, to a delicate fragrance or the taste of a lemon, to a hug or a kiss, to our fears or worries, to our work or play, and so on … it is the endless list of experience.

We rely on our senses to provide us with the raw data – and that includes ALL our senses, not just the usual five. The phrase “the sixth sense” reminds us that, in our culture at least, we most times just have an awareness of THE five senses.
Yet there are others such as time, balance, humour, even awareness itself, leading us all towards “the big one” … SELF.

Our sense of self, our sentience, is the overarching umbrella sense of all the others. It takes all the raw data provided by all the other senses and processes the data.
And how it processes the data determines how we experience the reality of the world, and our place in it. And this entire processing faculty is driven by the power of Thought.

The difference between “your world” and “my world” – what differentiates your experience from mine – is embedded in the how of our thought processes.

All our individual HOWs are part of the relationship that each of us has with our own Thinking.   

Now “your world” and “my world” may bear some resemblance to the “true world” – yet we’d both agree that “our worlds” are not the “only worlds.”

Except when we Don’t!

When THAT happens then the scenario is that “My View of the World” is right and yours (or theirs) is wrong.

All of this is just Thought driven of course – and is merely the difference between what is produced by the HOW of your Thought Processes and what is produced by the HOW of my Thought Processes.

It is The Sacred Relationship we all have with our Thinking.

It is that relationship that helps us to answer the question, “What is it like TO BE?”

It is also that relationship that distorts THE world the more we believe our thinking.
And the more we believe OUR thinking to be RIGHT, the more our mind is set in that one place. Set there, in stone, until we CHANGE our mind.

The moment that we change our mind, about anything, is the moment that Sacred Relationship is tweaked and morphs into something (even only slightly) different.

We sometimes process that change, by getting shown from externally sourced data. We might call this “learning.”
We sometimes process that change, by getting shown from internally sourced data.
We might call this “intuition” or “wisdom.”

Yet we can only ever change our mind, about anything, if we allow our mind to first be open – to permit ourselves to be “shown.” A closed mind can never change.

To understand the Inside-Out nature of reality, is to have an open mind.

We also need to relieve ourselves of the pressures we place on our human frailty – by acknowledging that in our minds there will be those moments of temporary closure. There is always the reset button that will open our minds once again.

In Practice

In a practical sense, this is what happened for a client who I had worked with earlier this year for her fear of flying. 

She had an open mind – and in our conversations she changed her perceptions by having some light thrown upon that fear. She processed that change from both the externally sourced data as illuminated by me, and from internally sourced data from her own intuition. 

She “got” what I was saying about her fear of flying. She got a felt sense of the change. We both questioned the evidence of that felt sense, and she was reassured by that questioning and testing of the evidence. She maintained her open-mindedness.

I checked with her a few days later and she was still of the same (open) mind. I wished her well in the anticipated experience of her upcoming flights.

Just this week I checked in with her again, to find out how things had been.
She reported that everything was good and that she was looking forward to further flights next month.
She ALSO reported that she had experienced some frailty, in the moment. The moment was a period of air turbulence on one of the flights – where the stimulus had caused her to follow her previously held pattern of response. She had the sensations of the onset of a panic attack.

Part of the work we had done – which I’ll describe again as her “learning” from externally sourced data – was for her to have resources to point her (in the moment) to that RESET button.
She didn’t freeze, nor was she caught like a rabbit in headlights. She used the resources and alleviated her experience. She “saw” where the RESET button was, hit it, and returned to the grounded state she had been in prior to the ‘plane encountering the air turbulence.

Conclusion

We can all understand theory, because we are thinking creatures, imbued with the facility to gain knowledge through varieties of cognitive logical thought processes.

Yet, amusingly, this quote often applies -
“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice – in practice there is!”

Except when it doesn’t, when we understand the Inside-Out nature of reality enough to trust the fusion of our intuition with our learning.

My client trusted her understanding enough to deal with her stimulated sensations in the practical moment they were happening, and not just in the theory moment when we were talking together in our one session.

You could say her outcomes were sensational!