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More about Breaking Habits and a Three Principles perspective.

Fixing Shadows
       by Michael Neill, author of
  The Inside-Out Revolution (2013)

When people first begin learning about how everything we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell is made up of Thought, there’s an interesting thing that happens with remarkable consistency.

The first is that some problem they’d been suffering with in their life “pops”, in the sense that they either find an easy solution, make their peace with it, or it disappears completely as a problem.

It may have been a relationship conflict as it was for me and I wrote about in The Inside-Out Revolution; it may be the elimination of a habit or even something to do with their physical or mental health. The sense of relief and wonder that accompanies the disappearance of their problem prompts a normal and predictable reaction – the desire to “apply” these magical principles behind life to other outstanding issues.

After all, if learning about an intelligence behind life and the thought-created nature of reality can take care of your marriage, surely it can fix your money issues; if it can stop you from biting your nails, then maybe you can clear up your habit of procrastination or even take care of your eczema.

That’s why one of the more common questions I get on public talks and seminars is some variation on “how would I use this with (fill in problem or situation of your choosing)?

After years of struggling to answer that question, or putting people off with somewhat lame rejoinders like “well, it doesn’t really work that way”, or “just stay in the conversation and you might be pleasantly surprised”, I’ve come to an analogy that seems to make sense of the apparent paradox of something that can change absolutely everything but can’t be applied to fix anything in particular:

Imagine visiting a planet of engineers who are continually trying to fix, upgrade, and improve everything in their world. The moment your spaceship first arrives, breaking through the dense layer of cloud cover that surrounds the surface of their planet, a miracle occurs. One of the most evil and notorious criminal engineering masterminds on the planet, a thorn in the side of law enforcement engineers everywhere, completely evaporates and can no longer be found.

With the best of intentions, you set out to help them, but you quickly notice that every problem on their list is only the appearance of a problem, made out of the shadows that lurk everywhere due to the heavy presence of the cloud layer surrounding the planet. 

In an effort to be kind and helpful, you try to help them “fix their shadows” by shining a light on them until they disappear, but after a time you realize that this just gets them more deeply stuck in the illusion, holding you in higher and higher regard while feeling more and more victimized by the unresolved shadows in their lives.

So one day, it occurs to you to share a simple principle of the physics of light with them:

MORE LIGHT = LESS SHADOWS

Some people are deeply moved when they see the truth of this, and they report both a sense of relief that they no longer have to spend all their time fixing shadows but also that as they see it as more of a universal truth, the cloud cover seems to dissipate a bit more wherever they go, allowing in more light and leading to the disappearance of ever more shadows. They also admit to a rather curious feeling that they’ve always known this to be true, even as they spent their days fixing the shadows that surrounded them.

Others are excited about the potential of this principle, but attempt to “use it” as a magical incantation to fix the particular shadows that concern them. They add it to their toolbox of shadow-fixing tools without ever really seeing the truth behind it.

Some people become frustrated by your unwillingness to help them fix their very important shadows, while others still dismiss you as an ignorant if well-meaning fool. After all, if it was that simple, somebody would have told them that when they were younger or taught them that in school.

But you carry on regardless until the day you return to your home planet, knowing that no matter how stuck in the shadows they may feel, the moment someone sees the truth of this simple principle, their life will never be the same…

Today I am reading …. and thinking about …. the book, “Crazy Good” by Steve Chandler (2015).  I became interested in learning more about this author’s viewpoint after reading the article below.

One drink is too many for me,
but a hundred is not enough.
               by Steve Chandler


The problem in my life starts when I think I have to add something to this present moment to make it better.

Addition is seductive. It’s a lot like addiction. The words look a lot alike. Look too quickly and you'll mistake one for the other.

How much addiction comes from the lure of addition? The myth that tells you…whispers to you…that you have to add something to your life to make it a happier experience.

Let me add this strong drink to the chemistry in my brain and body. Now let me add more drinks. (One is too many, a hundred is not enough.)

It’s simple addition! And it leads to misery.

What if I were brave enough to turn my addicted life around? What if I were strong enough to experiment with subtraction? Subtraction! People fear it. What would be left? Just me?

Adding muddies the water. . .subtracting makes it crystal clear.

Some people have what they call food addiction. Carb addiction. Addiction to bread and sweets. Emotional eating, they call it. But what if I subtracted flour and sugar from my diet? (Versus the addition of a dangerous amphetamine diet pill that races my heart and speeds up the already-circular thinking in my brain...and soon turns into an addiction.)

What if I subtracted my drug, my alcohol? What if I were brave enough? Subtraction leads to freedom. It takes these chains from my heart and sets me free.

Addition: addiction.

For the word addition to become the word addiction, I just have to throw a “c” in there. You know “c.” It stands for cocaine, or cannabis, or cognac, or cookies, or catastrophe, or chronic alcoholism.

I’m not enough. I have to add something to me…something from the outside world.

Byron Katie talks about being addicted to love and approval. There are clinics for sex addiction and romantic love addiction.

Yes I have a happy marriage but I myself am not happy so maybe if I just added this one adventurous romantic love relationship to my life.

I read the tabloids to keep up with what addiction can do to people. Famous people in celebrity rehab. All of them. Adding like crazy. Look at Oprah’s five beautiful homes!

Ben Affleck has a good marriage to Jennifer Garner (I’m putting my groceries on the conveyor belt slowly now so I can read all of this) and he decides to add to that a romantic relationship with their nanny. In the following weeks and months I read all about custody, betrayal, heartbreak, financial penalties, bitterness…..in other words a major life hangover. So much for adding.

The famous beat generation author and drug addict William Burroughs killed his wife playing a William Tell game at a drugged-up, drunken party. He was the author of the books Naked Lunch and Junkie. He was actually a brilliant man, and never so brilliant as he was in his later years when he was clean and sober and said that there wasn't anything, any feeling, any high, that you could get on drugs and alcohol that you couldn’t get without drugs and alcohol.

And that’s because that treasure of good feelings is already in you. The drug (and I always include alcohol as a drug) just breaks down the barriers. It releases what’s already there. It took me awhile, some years clean and sober to find out that he was right. But you can go faster than that. Through meditation and working with others and an ongoing spiritual practice you can find out faster than I did that you can have an even happier life than you did at your best drunken moment.

I used to believe I had to add drugs and alcohol to my system to feel the things I wanted to feel. If I wanted to feel more relaxed or more courageous or more confident in a crowd of people, it was never going to happen unless I added something to my system. I did get (most of the time, at the beginning, until it turned really dark and desperate) the feelings I wanted. But they were all-too temporary.

But as Burroughs found out, the drug itself doesn’t directly produce the feeling. It just removes the barriers in the brain to the treasure that’s already there. And there are other ways to remove those barriers, thank God and the people who will help you.

Steve Chandler is a formerly suicidal, now recovering alcoholic; an adult child of alcoholics.  At age 71 he is now the author of more than 30 self-help books.  He is also well-known as a master success coach, and public speaker.