1 metaphor to help change your thinking right now
I’d like to share a metaphor with you that was recently shared with me. This metaphor was simple yet so powerful that it has completely changed my outlook on everything and I hope it will do the same for you.
As human beings, we like to feel in control but if we live our life on the theory of the “outside in” model, we believe that someone or something external to us is creating our experience and because it is not possible to control the outside world, we will always be at the mercy of the outside experience. If we live in that understanding as human beings, we try and control our outside world which is a really exhausting and hard thing to do.
Imagine trying to control other people, what they think about you, controlling the boss, how they speak to you, look at you, their tone of voice etc. As a human being, if we can see that this is not how it works, that we are out of kilter with our thinking, then we can instantly become hopeful.
Thoughts are neutral. They do not enter our minds with an agenda. They do not have any power. They are like bubbles…
You’ve heard of a bubble machine right? Do you have a bubble machine or have you ever seen one? It’s a universal experience and something that everybody has heard of. When you’re a child, you enjoy blowing bubbles, you’d have a wand to dip into the tub and you’d blow bubbles.
Have you ever seen an automatic bubble machine? You plug them into the mains, keep the liquid topped up and as long as the machine has power, the attached hoops move around and bubbles are created by the machine, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as long as there is power and the liquid is kept topped up.
Like a human being, to be alive, to have experience, we need energy. Your heart needs to beat, it does not have a power source, we’re not plugged into the mains. Energy is what we’re made of, our heart beats without a power source. The bubble machine would be plugged into the mains, switched on at the plug to give it power. It works as long as it is turned on, as long as it’s alive.
Human beings are always going to get bubbles and they are going to be thoughts. As long as we’re alive we’re going to have thought and thought is neutral, thought is transient. Here’s the thing, the principle of mind is that universal force energy that’s keeping us alive. That’s the intelligence of all things, the bubbles of thought. Bubbles are like thoughts and our experience comes from those thoughts that come into our mind and the thinking that we do about them. They’re coming out of a bubble machine, it’s always happening, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week even when we are sleeping and they’re called thoughts.
Bubbles are neutral, some are small, some are large, some come and go, others hang around for longer, they’re all transient — they come in and they leave. That’s the nature of the human experience. We even have thoughts at night. The machine never switches off. At night, the bubbles are called dreams, sometimes they are really powerful and they can wake us up.
Have you ever had a dream that woke you up? It’s not real, it’s just a dream, a nightmare perhaps. We can have similar experiences during the daytime…day mares. We can have really scary thoughts, insecurities and so we have day mares. Insecurities about money, worries about getting a job and being successful, worries about being good enough etc. They’re just day mares but human beings seem to have forgotten that.
All problems are created in the same way. External experiences happen, bad things happen and then they are over. The problem is as human beings, we re-live that experience, but it’s voluntary, we do not have to suffer no matter what the external circumstances. If we give our attention to those thoughts within our mind that we cannot control, some people will get a lot more worrying thoughts than others, but it’s still just that…thoughts.
The bubbles come in and then they leave, the problem is that we’ve forgotten how to use our gift of free will. The gift to be able to use our critical faculty, the ability to think about those bubbles that float in any way we like. The problem is we forget, we get wrapped up in the content of the bubbles and the minute we do this, the bubble expands and so does the feeling because all bubbles of thought have feelings attached to them, that get activated when we start engaging that thinking.
Our thinking directs us to a destination and some of us will engage in the content of the thoughts and will take ourselves somewhere unpleasant by giving ourselves a hard time. Human beings are always creating bubbles in their minds but you can choose not to feel the feeling attached to the thought, as this is an illusion.
Quieten your mind…let the thought come in and then leave.
People create their own experience…from the “inside out”.
