February 1st, 2011
Some of you may be surprised to know I spent most of my life a huge and vocal sceptic of all things spiritual or self help. It makes me chuckle a little that others may now look at me with the same contempt I once had.
To be honest it wasn’t that I dismissed it all without thought! Quite the opposite! I had literally spent most of my life researching everything I could get my hands on, and simply found that most of it just didn’t stack up to basic fact based scrutiny .
I had seen my fair share of hypocrites, charlatans and plain gullible idiots! And I did not intend to be one of them.
It used to piss me off that the ‘faithful’ would ignore such blindingly obvious facts rather than admit their belief system was WRONG! I just didn’t get it!
BUT WERE THEY WRONG? Or had I just missed the point.
Most of my life I suffered depression and a gnawing sense of dread and un-fulfilment. My inner dialogue reminded me daily that:-
I had done nothing with my life, I was usless!
Let down my parents and friends. Not lived up to expectations,
Let myself down by wasting my chances and being lazy and un motivated
Was a failure in the eyes of society, and would be humiliated, if I even tried to step out of my comfort zones and make more of my life. – Sound familiar?
One day in a mess of booze and misery I tried a thought experiment. I ran through all the things I knew to be 100% TRUE about myself and the world around me.
To my amazement I realised (from the literal scientific perspective) VERY LITTLE is 100% PROVABLY TRUE or FALSE. It ALL depended on where you were standing and your perception at the time! Einstein new all about this paradox. .
In that moment I GOT IT! The quality of our lives is based on the perception we project onto our world, rather than the so called ‘facts.’
Suddenly i realized, happiness and misery have NEVER been provable ‘facts’ any more than love, right, wrong or worry are. They have only ever been perception based belief system I had CHOSEN to implement!
WOW!! That changed so much of what i had ‘always thought’ and allowed to colour my life!
I realised that all these multitude of new age, spiritual or self help belief systems I had dismissed because they couldn’t be ‘proven’ were not there to be proven.
It was the ‘experience’ of ‘believing’ that counted and changed lives, and that could only ever be proven, by the individual, too the individual.
SO HOW DOES THIS WORK? – Well one explanation is, like Movies, Hobbies, Sport, Sex an emergency and other situation that focus the mind and cut out intruding thoughts – Strong beliefs do the same. Giving us hitherto unrealised strengths and courage to move forward relatively unhindered by our usual whinging, fearful subconscious!
That’s how a die hard sceptic no longer has a problem with discussing the more ‘enlightened’ side of life. If its true to you then, just maybe that is all TRUTH is!
At the end of the day I realised, since the thoughts that made me unhappy were no more ‘real’ than the ones that would make me happy, I really shouldn’t give the bad ones so much power to determine the quality of my life.
WHAT ARE YOU PROJECTING INTO YOUR WORLD TODAY
Hope this helps. It utterly changed my quality of life almost overnight 
SO ENJOY messing with your preconcieved beliefs a little this week!
Im looking fwd to expanding my understanding of this, as we meet and experience other people’s belief systems on this Life Change Experiment. – Love to hear your thoughts!
7 Comments on "THE SCEPTICS CONFESSION"
WoW u r a GURU even though u might think not its so,It Is So 4 me!!!
your words mean a great deal 2 me at this moment in my life as it seems like 1 step forward 2 steps backwards,like going in reverse until u made me see that everything is relivent in some way wether Pos or Neg!
I will bee looking ahead instead of back,I hope.
THANKS THANKS THANKS as usual.
Grasshopper Mace.
Like you I spent many years of my youth not "believing" in spirituality. Then I read a book called The Alchemist on the recommendation of someone who said it changed their life. And yes it changed mine too and it also made me realise that many things I already believed were actually spiritual. I hope you guys realise there are a great number of us out here who are currently believing in you and your journey.
It would seem, the tighter you hang on to things, the easier they can fall away.
To "trust" in the unknown, may seem absurd, but in actual fact, is probably more secure than collecting "the riches of society" From one point of view, if you are at the bottom, you can't fall far, BUT, if you are happy and content where you are, everything that comes your way is a blessing.
My 'here nor there' belief is in the sharing.
Being open to receive and to contribute – bouncing "fact","rights" as well as "wrongs" and "misunderstandings".
a constant dialogue and vibration with those around.
hehe in this late night hour – reminds me of a David attenborough doco.
The silver back gorillas.
They live in communities, in dense forest habitat. The leaf cover is so thick that they are unable to see one another. They are unable to know 100% that their loved ones and community are just a matter of meters away.
So they verbally check in very frequently with one another.
Just imagine what those grunts are?
The questioning. The fear. The want for stability and to not be alone??
Perhaps the grunts are:
You there?
Is that you? Is it really?
Yes, I’m here too.
What are you doing?
Where are you?
How long will you be here?
These questions.
How does this translate into our human existence?
Maybe I have missed the point?
Maybe tired rambles?
Maybe hearing a different grunt?
but then again who could answer these questions 100%?
night guys. sleep has become me.
Reassurance and community.
The magnitude of what you guys are doing has hit me tenfold…. you literally have nothing now… no house to come back to nothing…. Here i sit wondering what would happen if my husbands work stopped coming, how are we going to afford to get our lemon car back on the road, even how much my weekly grocery bill is rising… and here you guys are, stepping out into the world … with nothing… for me, watching you embark on this journey will tell me,,, would we be ok if we lost everything? can we survive with whats on our backs if the worst happened?… these are daily worries in our houshold and many other families in the world.
So please keep posting on your way around the great land we call oz… and feel free to drop by and tell me honestly…. would we be ok.. if we were left with nothing.
If i lived near by i would have to give you guys a great big hug just because what you are doing and what you are letting go of…. AMAZING!!!
i dont think i could…. but then i ask myself,,, why couldnt i?
hmmm
The power of positive psychology is being researched and validates the kind of rhetoric that self-help gurus, and genuine guru masters have been saying for years:
Your thoughts are often more powerful that the mind, and the mind is more powerful than the body. Hence so many cases of people self-healing by using their will power. And it is through our every day thoughts that this will power comes about.
This is the will not to be defeated. And, more powerfully, the belief in being able to bring about change and the belief in ourselves. It is surprisingly easy to succumb to self-destructive saboteur thoughts when it comes to our own power and ability to make a difference. But we all can. In many ways.
The Alchemist is a great novel/book/treatise in the power of thought and, as Geoff points out or alludes to, the power of 'attending' to our thoughts and what goes on around us. This is not to say we need to give our life over to fate. On the contrary, it is about taking greater ownership and responsibility for our lives and the outcomes our thoughts create. Another useful author in the line of exploring ourselves is Caroline Myss, who discusses the roles of 'archetypes' in our lives. Famous psychologist Jung talked about the collective unconscious and the power of 'listening' or attending to our dreams. Psychotherapists are more pragmatic and will ask you about the role of your family and environment in growing up and the power of those early experiences to (negatively) influence the way you think and feel about your life right now, and the outcomes they create.
All I am saying is, those negative thoughts are having a negative influence on your life. Replace them, any way you can. Daily mantras, affirmations, catching yourself and correcting those negative thoughts, creative visualisations; any way possible that works for you.
Your decisions determine your direction, and your direction determines your life outcome/s (or fate). Isn't it better to make the empowering decisions that produce and outcome you are happy with?
The depression you felt, I truly understand. I am going through a bad phase at the moment. I am trying to see the light at the end of tunnel and see every day as a new beginning. But as soon as I get to work, my good feeling disappear, replace with dark clouds and negative thoughts.
You would probably say – leave your job. Not that easy, the job has pretty good pay and conditions, the section I work in has lost moral and confidence in management. I have a mortgage, family and pets to provide for. My car is heading close to the car graveyard – therefore I must work to try and save for another old car. So no, I cannot contemplate leaving my job at this point of time.
Anyway, I apologise for showing you my ‘bah humbug’ mood, however I just wanted you to know that your feeling of depression are understood.
I do look forward to reading your blogs and how you are all faring, and I hope this experiment is just what you all need. Good luck.
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