The Answer To Everything

Ok so I'm now halfway through When Everything Changes Change Everything by Neale Donald Walsch, which I started talking about in Room for Change. Well, things are hotting up and I feel compelled to share some of the wisdom I've learned so far.

The book is about changing the way you experience change and I find it so fascinating. One of the important techniques he talks about is Noticing The Moment. This seems to be a philosophy that crops up in so many different approaches, i.e. living in the present, being in the now, etc., but it's so much easier to say than do!

The core of the book focuses on the Line of Causality:

event + data + truth + thought + emotion = experience = reality

So, an event happens, you add to it your past data (judged or factual), then your inner truth (either Imagined Truth, Apparent Truth or Actual Truth), which produces a thought which leads to an emotion which creates your experience which gives you your reality (either Distorted Reality, Observed Reality or Ultimate Reality depending on which inner truth you apply).

So, basically, if you can change your inner truth, you can change your thought and therefore your emotion. Which means - we choose our emotions!! And that's hard enough to get your head around but I think it's true. And of course the line is actually a circle because your reality feeds into events and it just keeps going round and round.

All of this information is looked at in great detail within Part 1 of the book, The Mechanics of the Mind. I've just started reading Part 2, The System of the Soul, which will apparently give me the tools to put these techniques in place. I've also just discovered the 2 most important sentences of the book (apparently), which are The Life-Altering Question and The Answer to Everything. But I'm not going to tell you what they are, as you should read the rest of the book if you want to find out! I'm not on commission (honest), I just don't think they'll have quite the same effect unless you've read the book first. So, get reading!

Room for Change

Change. It's such a simple word. Just one teeny tiny word. And yet it can mean so much. SO, SO much.

Yes, it can mean little tiny changes, like changing your socks, changing your brand of breakfast cereal or changing which route you take to work. But it can also mean big, scary, life-altering changes, like losing your job, ending your relationship or becoming seriously ill. According to a book I've just started reading, "When Everything Changes Change Everything" by Neale Donald Walsch, these are the Big Three: Relationship; Money; Health. "If one of these things is changing, it can be very challenging. If two of these things are changing, it can be incredibly difficult. If all three are changing at the same time, it can be utterly devastating."

Whatever changes we are going through in our lives (and we are all going through changes all the time), it's worth remembering that it's simply change. And change can be positive. Neale Donald Walsch tells an interesting story about a woman going through huge turmoil in her life. She explains that she wouldn't have identifed what she was going through as 'change', because when everything around you is falling apart it just feels like The End and there is nothing after. But when you realise it's simply change, that means the end of one thing but the beginning of another. Although it's still scary, it can give you a whole new perspective, as it indicates that something new is coming.

Neale warns that "The changes in your life are not going to stop....Change is what is and there is no way to change that...What can be changed is the way you deal with change, and the way you're changed by change."

So as I contemplate all the changes that have happened in my life over the last year or so... falling in love, moving house, leaving my job, losing my livelihood, changing my career, finding Ashtanga Yoga, altering my entire lifestyle... I am comforted by the fact that these changes are not going to stop, that they are the natural order of life, and that change is the only thing we can really count on.