It started out as simple light-headedness. Well I’d been doing pretty well on my diet up to now, cutting out sugar and putting plenty of time in at the gym, at least twice a week. I’d lost a few pounds and felt a whole lot better about myself, with renewed self-confidence and energy to spare. I had wanted to be a little lighter on my feet and it had happened without too much effort on my part. When those inevitable thoughts had come into my mind that I was too tired to push my body, or too hungry to miss out on that calorific treat, I had just ignored them.
This was different.
Something very strange was going on. I suddenly felt like a helium balloon about to drift away. I was at home, in the middle of the living room when I realised this was more than a sensation in my head; this was actually happening. I looked down and sure enough my feet weren’t so much planted on the carpet as brushing lightly against it. The next thing I knew I lost contact completely and began rising through the air, slowly at first but then more rapidly until I had to reach out to stop my head from bumping on the ceiling. There I stayed, halfway between too light fixtures, helplessly stuck like a fly on flypaper. Even so, in my panic and distress the one thing I was grateful for was that this was happening in the house. If it had happened in the garden I might never be seen again. I cursed myself repeatedly because I had no doubt in my mind that this was entirely my fault…
I’d forgotten how to use gravity to stay on the ground!
Sometimes when we exchange insights with each other, examining our understanding of the three principles of universal Mind, universal Consciousness and universal Thought, we innocently make the mistake of seeing them as tools to enrich our lives, concepts that we can take ‘off the shelf’ as it were, to influence and change our experience for the better. But it’s very important to emphasise that the principles are not prescriptive but rather they are descriptive of our human experience. They are just the way it is in this life, in this universe.
I told my little story about floating away – and by the way in case you were worried about me it never happened. I may have lost a few pounds but I’m still casting a shadow – to hopefully illustrate the point. We don’t use gravity! Gravity is a universal force – a universal Truth – that is simply part and parcel of our reality. That doesn’t mean that we are not aware of it in our everyday lives. Think of how you feel when you’re climbing one of those spiral staircases inside a tower or lighthouse and the ground is dropping away alarmingly beneath you.
We don’t use gravity, but we use our understanding of gravity to keep ourselves safe when we’re up high, or to put our glass down carefully so as not to spill red wine on the nice white carpet. It’s the same with the principles. Our understanding is all that counts, because that’s what allows us to steer away from the choppy waters of our negative thinking into that calm blue lagoon where clarity is restored.
That’s where the good feeling is to be found.
I’ve just spent a week in La Conner, coaching the principles with my good friends George and Linda Pransky, and as ever the more I taught the more I found I was learning. I’ve come home with many fresh insights that I’m eager to share. This ‘good feeling’ that we often hear about, ever since Sydney Banks had his extraordinary revelation back in the seventies, is not an absence of anything. It’s not merely the antidote to feeling bad, like my trips to the gym are an antidote to feeling unfit. The feeling is your birthright. It is how you are meant to feel.
I can’t say for sure because I only have my own experience but I think the feeling is probably different for each one of us. What I know is that it’s a loving feeling. Personally I have it watching my two young daughters playing a game together, in quiet moments with my wife, or when I’m sharing insights with a client and I see him or her transform before my eyes.
I know equally that this feeling is always there, like the sun that is always there behind the rain clouds. I don’t need reminding anymore. (And if I did, well, that’s what rainbows are for, right?)