Episode 180: Accountability and Change vs. Intellectual Understanding

Psychology Has It Backwards

It's true that the only "reality" we experience is created by our thoughts. But it's not an excuse for acting on any and every thought we have. We've heard people who have exposure to the Principles say things like, "Yes, I probably shouldn't have done that. But when it came to mind, it was so real and compelling to me." We can't forget we have free will to act or not to act on any thought that comes to mind, and we have wisdom to guide us towards or away from our thinking moment-to-moment. It's important in the understanding of how the Principles work to see deeper than "our thinking becomes our reality." That alone bypasses the fact that if the reality we're experiencing creates bad feelings, or doubts, or compelling but uncomfortable ideas that might be hurtful to ourselves or others, we can let those thoughts go and see the feelings they're creating as information that tells us we need to quiet down and wait for a clearer head and wiser ideas to come to mind. Our feelings are a navigational system that guides us to turn away from low mood negative thinking and use our intuition (common sense, judgment) to make choices about thoughts to ignore and thoughts to follow.

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