Hi Groovers. Last Thursday we had a little fun with an article called - Twenty Three Things You Ladies (Probably) Won't Hear From Your Bloke. Anyway, I forgot to award the promised prize for our best reader contribution. Oops. After much reviewing, deliberation and heated discussion among our extensive judging panel (Johnnie and I), we've gone with Suz from Sydney for her amusing additions to our list. Well done girl. Contact the bald bloke via email and let him know if you'd prefer the trip for two to the Bahamas T-shirt, book, CD or DVD. And thanks to the rest of you for getting involved - you guys are pretty funny.

Today's post...

Today's instalment may be a teensy-weensy bit weird for some of you; it's almost weird for me - and I wrote it! So if you've arrived here at me-dot-com today in search of a traditional butt-kicking, motivational-type article, you may wanna come back Monday. Or Tuesday. Wednesday perhaps. Anyway, if you're weird brave enough, strap in and hold on.

CJ's Mum

I'm having some fun this week exploring the concept of a life beyond the cerebral chaos - and apparently, so are many of you. Cool. The other day we received a very interesting comment from one of our readers - 'CJ' - regarding all this getting-out-of-our-thoughts stuff.

Here's part of it:

"2 years ago my mum suffered a breakdown of sorts and lost all her memory, she woke up with just what she had, she could still talk and write etc but she had no history. I have honestly never known my mum happier in my life time, there had been so much negative in her life it affected her each and every day, when there was none of that to bring her down she literally seemed lighter, she smiled all the time and was just so happy being in the moment."

"I'm not saying we should all have breakdowns, but I am mentioning this because she was still the same body, same life, same base personality but the change in her thoughts made an amazing difference to the woman she was."

Thanks for sharing that story with us CJ, it's a perfect illustration of the impact our thoughts can have on, not only our overall level of happiness, but our entire reality. In an instant your mum went from being an unhappy prisoner of her thoughts (the painful past that lived on in her head) to, in your words - "I have honestly never known my mum happier in my life time"

Letting Go

"Never been happier"; that's a significant statement isn't it? Imagine that, moving from misery to happiness in one day. And the only change was an internal one; letting go (completely) of her past. Or should I say more accurately, letting go of her destructive (fearful, anxious, painful) thoughts. Of course we wouldn't recommend the method (a breakdown) but what this story teaches us is that sometimes, happiness has nothing to do with our current external reality and everything to do with the reality we create - and continue to inhabit - in our head. Once CJ's mum stopped dragging the pain of her past around, she walked out of that emotional and cerebral prison and into calm, joy and freedom. Nice.

As I have shared a few times before...

Happiness doesn't come from desperately chasing it, but rather from letting go of that which makes us unhappy

... just as we saw with CJ's mum.

Okay, here's where it may get a little weird for some of you...

In his book The Power of Now, Eckart Tolle suggests that the past doesn't actually exist, but rather that it's merely a mental concept we have created. All that exists and all that will ever exist, is the now. The only place you and I will ever live (live being a verb), that is - do, be, create, interact, communicate, breathe, laugh, touch, love - is in this present moment; right here, right now. Think about it... you and I can't do, be, create, interact, communicate, breathe, laugh, touch or love in the past, because we can't exist there - because it doesn't exist. And when you had that argument with your partner last Wednesday, that wasn't the past, that was the now. Every event in your life has always taken place in the now. The past is merely our mind's way of replaying a series of events (in the form of mental images) that all happened in the now.

Our version of 'the past'

The only place that the past - what we commonly understand as the past - can have any influence, control or power over us, is in our mind - because that's the only place it 'lives'. The past can't make us unhappy, only we make us unhappy - because the past is no more. Neither can events of the past make us miserable in the now because they simply don't exist. The pain (of what we understand as the past) is no more - unless we allow it to become a permanent resident in our mind. Just ask CJ's mother; "She smiled all the time and was just so happy being in the moment" - because for the first time, she was living totally in the now.

Okay, I kind of get it - so what 's the point?

Well, there are several truths and insights that we can take away from this:

1. By living in the past - you know, the one that doesn't exist - we are missing out on the now - you know, the one that does exist!

2. Too often we hand over power, energy, joy and precious time to those destructive thoughts that pull into our petrol station (see Monday's post). Then one day we wake up and we're five years older, just as miserable (or worse) and still 'inhabiting' the same place.

3. Knowingly or not, intentionally or not, we create our own reality. And in doing so, we create our own misery... or happiness.

4. Misery isn't the result of situations, circumstances or events but rather our thoughts about (internal response to) those things.

Thought isn't you... it's just thought

I'll finish with a quote from Eckhart:

At the heart of the new consciousness lies the transcendence of thought, the newfound ability of rising above thought, of realizing a dimension within yourself that is infinitely more vast than thought. You then no longer derive your identity, your sense of who you are, from the incessant stream of thinking that in the old consciousness you take to be yourself. What a liberation to realise that "the voice in my head" is not who I am.

Then who am I? The one who sees that. The awareness prior to thought, the space in which the thought - or the emotion or sense perception - happens. (Taken from A New Earth)

I already know that this subject is one which will continue to elicit a wide range of responses and reactions; that's okay. I also know that, while it's not always a comfortable, easy or conventional exploration, the journey to discover who we are and what we can become beyond our thoughts, is not only an exciting one, but potentially, the most important 'trip' we will ever take. Over the next few months we will periodically come back and chip away a little further at this topic. I'll do my best not to give you a brain-ache. Promise.