Debt Collector Madness, and Owning the Infinite, Creative Power of Thought
Life is an illusion, but we play it as real. — Sydney Banks
I randomly picked up an envelope in the large pile of mail I had waiting for me upon returning from my trip. It looked innocuous enough, and as good a place as any to start. However, when I opened it, I was stunned. It was a letter from a collection agency stating that I owe thousands of dollars in taxes to the State of Colorado.
I have neither lived in Colorado nor worked in Colorado. I have been a happy, tax paying resident of California for over twenty years. Given these facts, I knew intellectually this must be a mistake, but even with this intellectual understanding, my heart was racing, and I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I felt scared.
I was aware of the discrepancy between my intellectual understanding and my emotional experience. I knew my body does not respond unless my brain tells it to. For example, if I want to lift my right arm, my brain needs to send signals to my arm to get it to move. This is a fortunate arrangement, because I would hate for my arm to have a life of its own.
So, if my heart was beating faster than normal and my stomach was tense, my brain was communicating signals to my body. My fight, flight, freeze response was activated while I was standing in the middle of my kitchen, perfectly safe with a piece of paper in my hand. Even if the collection letter were accurate, I was still not in any mortal danger.
With this clear discrepancy, I was aware I had irrational thoughts, invisible to me, below the surface of my consciousness. They appeared true enough for me to have this physiological response. Thoughts like: I am in trouble. I have done something wrong. I am bad. I will be punished. My world is going to fall apart. I am not going to survive.
Fortunately, the intensity of my emotional experience passed quickly. I was clear enough not to add fuel to my fearful thoughts and keep them alive for long. I stabilized enough to call the collection agency and advise them of the mistake. They asked me if I had ever done 1099 work for a Colorado headquartered company. I confirmed I had. They explained there must have been a error in recording my address, and was given a number to call at the Colorado Department of Revenue to straighten it out.
My reaction to the letter left me curious. I recognized I was creating the experience of danger even though my rational mind knew I was completely safe. My emotions made me keenly aware that my thinking was off track. As I reflected on this, I recognized how this is a symptom of a more generalized experience. Despite the financial success I am experiencing with my work, my feelings around money have been fearful.
Even though I am completely fine, my feeling state related to money had been anxious. I had the perception that no matter how much money I have, I am on the brink of ruin. I know this is irrational. I remember Steve Chandler drumming into my head, “Money is not oxygen.” This has been helpful.
Understanding these thought are insane helps me to not to give them much conscious attention. This means I spend much more time free from worrying about money, and when I do get caught up in my anxious thoughts, I spend less time there. However, this experience with the collection letter helps me see something new. I see beyond simply dismissing thoughts and not bringing them to life. I see how I am the creator of those thoughts.
This rocked my foundations. I no longer see my thoughts as being randomly generated outside of myself. This changes everything.
How can I continue to live in a perpetrator-victim relationship with my thinking, if I am the creator of these thoughts. It is no longer me versus my thoughts with my only choices being to dismiss them and see them as not true. It is only me.
I see the story I was generating about not being safe in the world. The narrative of me having to always work hard and fight to survive. Where I am the protagonist having to do it all alone and not being taken care of. Knowing I am fallible, and will, therefore, screw it up, so my world falls apart. This fits the genre of tragedy perfectly. As freedictionary.com states, tragedy is “a drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.”
Why would I choose the genre of tragedy with which to create my reality? It does make sense based on some of my life experience. However, it is not a requirement, and purely made up. It is a self-created illusion I have been buying into and fighting against. I have the image of me wrestling with a villain, only to see I have been wrestling with myself all along. All the while complaining about how hard it is, and how exhausted I am from the fight.
As I see this, I have compassion for myself.
I know the timing of me getting this insight is perfect. It would be nice to have all the insight, understanding, and wisdom at once, but I do trust the perfection of my awakening process. I appreciate the glimpses I get into my authentic self and the magical feeling I have when I see beyond the limitations of my ego. I also love my humanness and all of the imperfections and blind spots that includes. There really is no separation between my humanity and my divinity.
I am the dreamer, living in the dream, and seeing the dream as real. How amazing to have this creative ability no matter what the content of the dream is. I may still create a woe is me story related to money and security at times, butexperiencing myself as the creator does not leave me feeling disempowered. I cannot be a victim even if that is a role I play.
I love the paradox of this! It makes sense when we are living the mystery of waking up to the fact that we are already awake.
Chip Chipman – The Simplicity of Syd’s Teachings
Spiritual Facts 
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
Rohini Ross
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
Clare Dimond
Scott Kelly
Barbara Patterson
Barbara Patterson
Michael Neill
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