Until about 14 years ago, I used to suffer terribly over the weather in New England.  I thought I had “S.A.D.” – Seasonal Affective Disorder, as I had all the symptoms.  After learning about the Three Spiritual Principles of Sydney Banks, I looked to have an insight about that, and eventually I did.  My relationship with the 4 seasons changed completely.  i will tell that story another time.

In the last few months, another version of that affliction came back.  I moved back to Martha’s Vineyard in April, after a typical Northwest winter – aobut 6 months of continuous light rain, grey, and an occaisonal “sun break” as they call them.  And I came to an  atypical New England spring – we’ve been socked in with grey and rain for two continuous months.

That’s a long stretch to go without sun.  About a month into it, I started to get very down.  Feeling claustrophobic, like I couldn’t breathe.  Desperate – the sun has to come out NOW!  Even frightened – did I make the wrong decision in coming here?  Will it ever change?

These are all thoughts that I would have had before learning the Principles – the 3 spiritual princples that explain all psychological funcioning.  But I was having them now.  And it all felt completely real.  Try going on facebook – 3 out of 5 entries the last few weeks are about the weather and how people are coping with it.  I was at the point where I felt like I couldn’t take another day.

However, then I remembered about thought – or Thought – the prinicple of thought, how it functions.  All my experiences come from Thought, no exceptions, not even this.

Remembering that always puts me in a reflective mood.  I got reflective about my experience with the weather.  I couldn’t see it as Thought, but I wanted to.  I began wondering, regularly, if this were Thought – and therefore only an illusion – what am I thinking that’s bringing me this experience?

Night before last, I woke up in the middle of the night.  My thoughts immediately went to the weather.  Oh no, it hasn’t changed, how am I going to cope…

Then the Thought popped into my head – completely out of the blue:  It’s not your responsibility.  Something or someone else is in charge of the Sun.

It was the oddest thing, but that very surprising and unexpected Thought completely cheered me up in that moment.  It’s not my responsibility.  I had no idea I thought it was my responsibility, but with everything else on my plate right now, it was enlivening to think that this wasn’t.  I wasn’t resposible for the sun.  Someone or something else was.

When I got up  yesterday, my thoughts again began to run towards down thoughts about the weather.  But this time I saw them running there, and when I saw them, they stopped.  There was a pause, a break in my habitual thought about the weather.  And then a new thought arrived – came in from nowhere – ‘its cozy.’

I breathed a sigh of relief.  Its cozy.  Could it be cozy?  It could be.  I relaxed, and began to enjoy the day, just as it was.

This is how the Principles work.  Thought is always in operation, and we have so many thoughts each day, most of them we’re not aware of.  But all of our experieces come from Thought.  ALL of them.  Even perception is governed by Thought. So whether you can see Thought or not in any particular instance, if you know whatever your experience is is coming from there, it simplifies things.  Only one place to look.

When you look in the direction of Thought – of seeing it, understanding it – you are brinigng Consciousness, or awareness, to Thought.  That opens you up to insight – to something coming from the spiriutal plane of life that cuts through the illusions you’re creating in the moment and gives you a  glimpse of something greater, of truth.

When that happens, everything changes.  These kinds of thoughts – insights, or fresh thoughts – are not thoughts that you can drum up through your personal mind, through analysis or positive thinking.  These are MegaThoughts – desigend to awaken and enlighten you, coming from a different dimension of life than our personal ones.  Sometimes they don’t even make sense on a rational level – why on earth would I think I was responsible for the weather?  But they’re tailor made for you and what you need in the moment.  They bring a sense of awe, and, often, of sacredness.  How and what just entered my mind and changed my perception completely – took away my suffering?  It’s like a little miracle, each time.

It’s another grey day today, and I’m so  grateful that its cozy!

I had the honor of doing a four day intensive with Annika in January of 2008.   My sister had success through working with Annika and she strongly suggested that I go to do an intensive.

I had been extremely depressed that previous year due to an impending break up and couldn’t seem to lift myself out of it.  I’m not one to ask for help.   I thought that I had enough tools in my bag of coping mechanisms that I could handle this.  But when I found myself thinking of suicide as a logical option—I finally called Annika.  I was physically and mentally worn out when I arrived in Washington.  I was very overweight as I was using food to medicate my feelings of loneliness and fear.

I stayed for the 4 days and learned so much about myself.

One of my biggest insights was how much I judge my emotions.  Fear is a huge one for me.  When I felt fear,  I was so busy freaking out about feeling fearful that I would then do anything to avoid the emotion—eat some cookies, call someone etc.. Now, through learning the principles, I have so much more awareness.  I realize that I’m often frightened, and pretty soon that its only Thought that makes me feel this way, and thoughts are changing all the time.  Just seeing this has helped so much.  I am much more accepting of all my emotional states. AND they do pass more quickly now and I return to my normal state of feeling good.

Emotionally and spiritually I am on a much more even keel.  I have my ups and downs but the roller coaster ride is done.  I trust when I am in a dark place that it will pass and it always does.  The principles taught me to make friends with the unknown.  I feel a strength and confidence in myself that resonates from me,  Where as before, anxiety and fear ruled me.

What appealed to me the most about working with and learning from Annika is that she is teaching us to learn from our own wisdom and insights.  She teaches us to look inside for the answers and to trust that we know the answers.  I felt very empowered by the principles that she taught me.

Physically, I am much improved.  I have lost 55 pounds since the intensive in 2008.  I feel amazing and enjoy high energy.

How can I get to a place of being okay with  fear and shame?  I’m okay with anger and sadness I know they are illisionary thoughts .  I’ll just remember that shame and fear are rooted in illisionary thoughts and when I get good with them, they won’t have a hold on me.

I have a visual of my fear and shame being behind a brick wall around the corner of it hiding and I am practiced at pretending its not there. I want to get good at acknowledging it’s presence and seeing what is. Pretending its not there doesn’t work!  When I acknowledge it / it melts away.

Wellspring of Wisdom
A Women’s Retreat

March 12 & 13, 2010

In a safe, supportive environment and the company of other women, come learn about your innate capacity for well-being, wisdom and joy.  Working with the three spiritual principles of Sydney Banks, you will learn how to become free of mental habits that cause stress, anxiety and depression, and begin to have lives of spiritual freedom and joy.  As you begin to experience more of your own innate well being, you will discover your wellspring of wisdom – knowing when to trust your thinking and when you’re on track with your life’s purpose.

When:  Saturday and Sunday, March 12  13, 2010
Times: 6:00-8:00 PM Friday; 9-00 AM-4 PM Saturday 

Where: The beautiful, historic Ashingdon Manor, on Whidbey Island, near Seattle
Cost:   $150 includes:

• Seminar
• Workbook

Rooms at the beautiful Ashingdon Manor are available at the reduced rate of $100 per regular room or $130 for a jacuzzi suite.  Most rooms have two beds and can be shared if desired.  Contact Ashingdon Manor to book your room and mention this seminar.

The Facilitator:  Annika Hurwitt Schahn, Ph.D. is Founder and President of Women Take the Lead, a consulting group designed to help women become better leaders in their fields.  She is also Founder and Presidnet of the Center for Optimal Living, which specializes in  Relationship Counseling and Organizational Consulting that  helps people gain lives of psychological freedom.  Working with the 3 spiritual principles of Sydney Banks,  Annika helps people awaken to their inner resources for well being and wisdom, and clear away the mental habits that get in their way.  Annika has been counseling people, consulting with organizations and offering retreats since 1987, with Centers based on Whidbey Island, WA  and Martha’s Vineyard, MA.

Though this happened 15 years ago, I told this story at a women’s seminar over the weekend, and the women there found it so helpful I realized I should post it on my blog.  Here is my story of how I got married for the first time at the age of 43:

My father died suddenly and unexpectedly when I was 10, and though I am told I cried a lot at the time, I did not get over it.  My mother went into a deep depression, which lasted for the rest of her life, and my brothers struggled with it in their own ways.  I grew up and started dating, but things didn’t go very well.  When I fell in love, the man left me, and when a man fell in love with me, I left him.  With every break-up I would experience a terrible sense of abandonment and loss that would shake me to my core.  I would be frightened, feel like my world was coming to an end, and feel very unsafe.   In retrospect I realize that these were many of the feelings I experienced when my father died, though that didn’t occur to me while I was going through it.   This would last for several months, and then I would begin to get over it, and the merry-go-round would begin again with the next person I dated.

In my early thirties I went into therapy to get help with these constantly failing relationships.  I wanted to get married and have children, and by this time I knew something was wrong.  My therapist thought I hadn’t grieved the death of my father enough to get over it.  So we began that grieving process again.  I cried non-stop for several weeks, then off-and-on for months.  After a while, the crying stopped.  Unfortunately, it did nothing to change my dating pattern.

Another decade went by.  I was  40, and my dating pattern had not changed.  I was beginning to lose hope about the possibiity of ever having children.  That’s when I attended a seminar where the 3 spiritual principles of Sydney Banks were being taught.  These principles – Mind, the spiritual energy that is formless and has a diving intelligence; Thought, the mental activity all human beings have from birth until death, and Consciousness – how we experience our thinking - provided a huge awakening for me.  This was in 1993,  and I’ve been learning from these principles ever since (for more on the Three Principles see www.Sydneybanks.org and my website, www.optimaliving.net).

I soon became a much happier person.  I saw how much thinking I did that created worry and stress for me, and as I began to understand the illusory nature of thought,  my innate well being and wisdom had more room to surface more of the time.  But several years went by, and my relationship pattern STILL did not change.  However in looking toward wisdom, and less through the lens of my personal thinking, my life changed in so many other ways that I had hope that somehow it would change this too.

Then one day another break-up happened.  I wasn’t really in love, but was trying to be – that old biological clock thing.  Still the man I was dating betrayed my trust in a way that took me by surprise and really hurt. As soon as I discovered this all the mental and emotional alarms began to sound.   I was barely into my familiar nightmare of feeling betrayed and abandoned when suddenly I heard a voice say:  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

The voice was in my own head, but it was so unexpected, and so loud and clear, that it startled me.  I knew I had just had an insight, as it came with that unmistakable feeling of something coming from beyond myself and gifting me with an unexpected perspective.  It stopped my emotional roller coaster in its tracks.  With that Thought I suddenly had the presence to be with the thoughts and feelings about this break-up as they came.  That presence began to heal those thoughts and feelings.  Rather than going into memory as I had done time and time again (without being aware of it) of previous break-ups and, undoubtably, thoughts about my father’s death, which amplified the experience I was having way beyond what it actually was, I was able to be with what was happening.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t a very big deal!   To my amazement, I found that within a matter of days I was feeling fine, and by the end of the week I was over it.  This was an an entirely different experience with any break-up I had ever had before.

After that, I was reflecting on my experiences with relationships.  A thought occured to me, one of those brought by Mind to initiate a process of realization.  I realized that with my learning the Principles my life had become exgtremely rich.  I was very happy, had far less worry, was sleeping well, had more and better friends and was experiencing an outpouring of creativity.  Still, my relationship pattern hadn’t changed.  So it was a moment of decision:  Date, and get abandoned, or don’t date.  I thought about it for some time, as neither seemed a good option.  Finally I decided on the the first option – date, and get abandoned.  Rather than fearing that anymore, I would lean into it, even expect it.  But I wanted to keep dating because even with these endings it was more fun than not dating at all.

The next person I met was from the west coast, and I lived on the east coast, so I was sure it would end quickly.  Given my decision, that was fine with me.  But he kept pursuing me, and we got along wonderfully.  Within 6 months we got engaged, and were married one year later.  We had our daughter a few years after that, and we have now been happily married for 14 years.  Thought had been getting in my way all those years – memory thought that I wasn’t even aware of, and that was healed by the power of the understanding that the  principles of Mind, Consciousness and Thought brought into my life.

I recently had a couple in for a weekend retreat. Two women who had been together for 8 years. they had come because they were having trouble connecting with each other. As they began to work with the principles, or natural laws of how the mind works, they both began to settle down and become more present to themselves, to life and to each other. A. saw how her thoughts of being responsible kept her always in her analytical, personal dimension of thought, which distracted her from being in the now. She saw how that level of distraction not only interfered with her relationship – as having a sense of genuine connection arises when we’re truely here – but it acutally interfered with her capacity to be responsible. People are most responsive when their minds are calm and clear, not when they’re busy and distracted. It’s much harder to know what’s really going on, what the real priorites are when you’re running habitual thought through your brain.

For M., it was fear that kept her out of the present. I thought it would be helpful to review the Naural Laws that govern psychological functioning, which are: Mind, the source of all experience, a formless energy with a divine intelligence; Thought, which is what we do continually as human beings, and which governs all our experiences including perception, feelings and behaviors; and Consciousness, which is the capacitiy to be aware of our experiences. As M. reflected in these principles, she too settled down and became present. Then what arose in her was grief. M. had been struggling for a long time with chronic illness, and waves of sadness were arising naturally about the losses that illness has caused for her. She cried for some time, and then became quiet. After a break and a rest, her sense of well- being returned and she was ready for what would come next.

This event raised questions for her partner. “If learning about these Natural Laws allows us to become more present, and if being more present puts you in touch with feelings of calm and well being, why did M. get sad when her mind settled down?”

This is a great question – one that comes up a lot for people, as they confuse presence with positive thinking. It’s true that when you become calm and come into the present, a sense of well-being naturally arises. If we live there enough of the time, we regularly experience some of the deeper feelings in life – gratitidue, joy, creativity and love. It’s also true, however, that life brings us many experiences, some of which are sad. When those experiences happen, people often have sad thoughts and feelings. When those feelings pass, your mind will settle down again. Usually you will have a sense of peacefulness, and eventually with a calm mind that innate sense of well-being will arise once again.

This is very different from positive thinking, which implies that people are supposed to be happy all the time. Being present does mean that you will have much more calm, and common sense, have a feeling of purposefulness and being on track with life, and often feel secure and happy. But all of those feelings are reflections of the thoughts that arise naturally when our personal minds move into the background and we become receptive to this other, more universal dimension of Thought.

You can feel it when you begin experiencing this other dimension of Thought – it’s qualitatively different from personal thought It has a sense of ease, a flowing quality, a calm feeling to it, whereas personal thoughts do not come with these deeper feeilngs. When we’re in personal thought our feeling state is usually neutral, but if we stay there too long, without touching in to calm and well being, feelings of stress usually occur, and these can lead to experinces of anxiety and eventually depression.

Positive thinking, on the other hand, is in the realm of personal thought. When people’s thoughts are uncomfortable orcausing them pain, they think of positive versions of those same thoughts. Your personal mind is using its memory to come up with better versions of what its thinking. This is why positive thinking is limited in its applications: personal mind is limited, whereas universal mind is not. More importantly, you’re thinking on the same level of consciouness that you started with. Sometimes it works for while, but usually not for very long, and most people experience it as a lot of hard work, especially if you’re using it to try to deal with a mental state that is painful for you. You are using your limited, personal mind and will rather than allowing this larger, deeper dimension of Thought to do its job.

M. and A. found that as their minds settled down and became more quiet, it became more clear what they had been thinking, without realizing it, that was causing stress and keeping them from being calm and settled in their minds. They saw how that kept them from connecting with each other – not so much any of their issues, but their lack of natural connection due to their mental distractions. As they became more calm and setlled with themselves, they naturally began to feel a stronger sense of connection wtih each other. From that place of calm and well- being, many things that appeared to be obstacles to intimacy melted away, while at the same time solutions to problems began to arise naturally out of their conenction with each other.

Intimacy and connection are easy when people are able to really be with each other, rather than in the many stories, habits, complaints and other stressors brought on by too much personal thought. We don’t have to think positively to have a good life or a good relationship – in fact ultimately manipulating our thinking only adds more stress and a feeling of a lack of genuinness. Everyone has the capacity to tap into a dimension of Thought that is unlimited, full of wisdom and insight, and the deeper feelings we all long for in life. Learning about these Natural Laws will bring you there.