"Our lives are written in disappearing ink" -Michelle Cliff
I had a fascinating conversation with Amanda Jones on my IC show this week. We talked about how she first came across the Principles when she searched on the internet for help with an eating disorder she was suffering from. Her search led her to the work of Dr. Amy Johnson and Michael Neill. Once she began delving further into the 3 Principles Understanding, she began to see the illusory nature of thought and how beneath all our perceived problems, habits, or addictions, there is one issue: we innocently believe our insecure thinking.
I loved her analogy that all thoughts are written in disappearing-Ink. One minute you see them, the next minute they've gone. She extended her disappearing-ink metaphor to how we see ourselves and our personas. Like "thoughts," our "image of ourselves" changes day to day, hour by hour, minute by minute. We are not these fixed entities living in a fixed body. We are fluid, ever-changing, ever-evolving, depending on our state of mind and our thinking in the moment.
The conversation evolved into whether there is a separate-self or not. I believe we are spiritual beings having a human experience, and as such, we are all connected. I see our humanness as a unique expression of our spiritual nature in the world of Form. Our humanness and our spiritual nature are all one and cannot be separated. So, no matter how different we might look in our human bodies, we are all connected, and as such, all one.
As Amanda delved deeper into the subject, I found myself getting all tangled up in trying to follow what she was talking about. I asked her if we were talking about non-duality, and she said there was no such thing as non-duality. That's when I completely lost the plot. This has happened to me before when the conversation has felt esoteric and intellectual to me. I lose the connection and find myself lost in thought, trying to make sense of what I'm hearing.
In the past, the feeling of confusion would have overwhelmed me, but now I am grateful for it. It's my internal alarm system letting me know that I am looking in the wrong direction. It wakes me up to the fact that it is okay for me not to fully understand with my conceptual mind and that the Principles can only be really understood by following the feeling anyway. So, I let go of trying to understand what Amanda was talking about and gently fell back into the beautiful feeling between us.
And this is what I love about the Principles. Before coming across this Understanding, I would have been embarrassed, especially while on camera, that I didn't fully understand what my guest was pointing to. Secondly, I would also never have admitted to it! I would have panicked. I would have felt stupid and thought to myself, "Oh no, I don't know what she's talking about. I don't get it. I must be stupid. There must be something wrong with me." Or even worse, I would have gone into judgment and thought to myself, "there must be something wrong with her; she's speaking nonsense."
These days, I don't feel stupid for not seeing the world through Amanda's eyes, and I don't dismiss her as speaking nonsense because I don't see what she sees. That's the beauty of understanding our Separate Realities. We each see our world through our own unique lens. Neither view is more accurate than the other. And neither view is better or more advanced than the other.
I am so grateful to say that I am at peace with where I am at. I don't feel that I am missing out on something. That there's something more that I need to see. I'm reminded of what our teachers tell us. Only share what you see and know for yourself.
If one day I see something different, then so be it. But until then, I am happy to have seen what I have seen. And that is that all thoughts, stories, concepts, and ideas are all written in disappearing-Ink anyway. How freeing is that!
With love and appreciation, Del 💕