“The mind exists so we can listen to God.”
– Syd Banks
There is a wonderful moment on nearly every course that I run where the people attending have their first insight into the inside-out, spiritual nature of life. This insight is often characterized by a quieting of the mind, a feeling of peace and wellbeing in the body, and a light from somewhere deep inside showing up as a twinkle and a smile.
In fact, this happens with such regularity that the first question my wife asks me when I come up for tea from a coaching session is ‘Have they “popped” yet?’ in the same way that popcorn will reliably yet unpredictably pop whenever it’s heated.
When they’ve popped (and even if they haven’t), it’s not uncommon for people to imagine what it will be like to go back into their busy lives and take their new insights and sense of clarity and wellbeing out for a spin.
The problem with these daydreams about the future, as I have come to learn, is that when you experience a fundamental shift in your understanding of life, there’s no way to predict how a situation will seem to you the next time you come upon it. Things that in the past might have appeared as ‘difficult’ or even ‘crises’ may now not even seem significant. I’ve even had clients complain that they couldn’t tell how impactful our time together had been because the ‘difficult people’ in their life had become uncharacteristically helpful or that they had had an unusually quiet and low-key month at work or at home.
This makes sense when you consider what a spiritual life actually is:
A spiritual life is a life infused with spirit.
How might that look? It might look like a lot of time spent in prayer or meditation or on long walks in nature. It might look like a lot of time spent at work with a quiet smile on your face. At times it might look like the epitome of success; at other times it might look like the fresh start of bankruptcy or divorce.
In other words, because spirit infuses our lives from the inside out, we can live a spiritual life without anything having to change in our circumstances or behavior. Changes will happen, but they will tend to happen of their own accord, without any particular act of will or effort on our part.
I once had a conversation with an incredibly sincere student who took exception to the idea that waking up to our spiritual nature and living a spirit-infused life was a more highly leveraged shift than directly helping someone with their apparent problems.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but if someone comes to me with a broken leg, I’m going to fix their leg before I talk with them about their spiritual nature!”
“I’d like to think that I would too,” I replied, “but I can tell you that in my experience, once you start to see the world through the eyes of spirit, you’ll notice a lot fewer people have broken legs than you thought.’
I hope you’ve enjoyed this “basic course” in the inside-out understanding, and that it’s helped you wake up to, simplify, and deepen your experience of what’s on offer in your one and only precious life.
If you want to learn more, here are a few recommendations:
The Advanced Course
As you’ve probably realized by now, the basic course in the inside-out understanding is simple:
Our experience of life is 100% thought created, moment by moment and thought by thought.
The advanced course is equally simple, if harder to see:
No, really!
Once a year, we offer
The Advanced Course as a three week light-hearted deep dive into what it is to go from theory to practice and from concept to realization.
The Inner Circle
We created the Inner Circle as a “next step” for people new to the three principles and a simple way to stay in the conversation for anyone. You’ll get the chance to join me for monthly “Ask Me Anything” webinars, exclusive early-access to our monthly “A Whole New Way of Thinking About…” video series, instant access to hundreds of additional hours of audio and video, and a 20% discount on many of our live and self-study programs. (Most Inner Circle members save far more than their $99 annual membership fee each and every year.)
Going Deeper in the Inner Circle
Have you ever noticed that when you know, you know?
I created “Going Deeper in the Inner Circle” for those of you who know this is your path forward in life and would like to have me as a companion and guide on your journey. I think of it as a kind of secular “Satsang” – a Sanskrit word that means “gathering together for the truth” or, more simply, “being with the truth”.
And that is the primary purpose of this community – to gather together to be with the the truth of life and rest and revel in our own divine engineering.
It includes all the benefits of the Inner Circle, but adds in an exclusive “Going Deeper” video and webinar each month and a 100% free place on every single program we offer under $500.
