“What the thinker thinks, the prover proves.”

Leonard Orr, Writer and philosopher

“It took a long time for my thinking to get this messed up, so it's going to take a long time for it to get sorted out…”

This simple piece of “received wisdom” echoes through the world of addiction-recovery, and it reveals a basic confusion about the mind: People tend to think, speak and act as though their thoughts have the same qualities as the material world. We all write down phone numbers, notes and to-do lists; because we recognize that our thoughts are fleeting and ephemeral. Yet we don't seem to remember that fact in other areas of our lives. Consider the following statements:

• “The company's issues are really deep-rooted. They won't be easy to resolve.”
• “This is a really big problem. It's going to be tough for our team to sort it out.”

These statements each contain false implications that arise from attributing material-world qualities to thoughts. For instance:

• “It took a long time for my thinking to get this messed up, so it's going to take a long time for it to get sorted out.”

False implications: Messy thinking is like a messy office or a garden that hasn't been cared for. The more time that elapses as it gets messy, the more time (and effort) it's going to take to sort it out. Like some enormous warehouse full of stuff, the more time spent on making it messy, the longer it takes to tidy it up.

Reality: THOUGHT is a creative energy, and the THOUGHT-forms we create using it have no substance; they're literally made of “the stuff that dreams are made of.” Have you ever noticed how fleeting dreams can be? How one minute you're experiencing a rich dreamscape, and the next minute you're wide awake and having trouble remembering what the dream was about? The dream is so fleeting because it's made of THOUGHT. And your thinking is made of the same thing. It can change instantly the moment you have an insight. Time is a function of the material world, but the principle of THOUGHT isn't subject to the laws of the material world. People can experience a moment of clarity, and see a situation (or their lives) change in a matter of moments.

Contaminated thinking (and the feelings that accompany it) is all that ever stands between us and the high levels of clarity, security and peace of mind we all have within us.

The river still flows

Imagine a river that starts to cool as winter comes. As the temperature falls, ice crystals begin to form along the riverbanks. As it keeps getting colder, the crystals start forming small blocks of ice that break free of the banks and flow down the river. At various points the blocks of ice cluster together, and the river begins to freeze over. Eventually, the surface of the river is a solid sheet of ice. But all the while, just beneath the surface, the river still flows.

Our habits of contaminated thinking are like a thin layer of ice on the surface of the river; the only thing that ever stands in the way of clarity, and a rich experience of life. But beneath that seemingly solid mass, the river still flows. Just as the ice was created from flowing water, our habits of contaminated thinking are created from THOUGHT, the formless energy behind our experience of life.

And behind all our contaminated thinking, the endless river of THOUGHT is still flowing, carrying the powerful resources of innate clarity, resilience and well-being to the surface of our awareness; bringing fresh new thinking to solve our problems and create new possibilities.

When we're locked in a mind-made prison of habitual thoughts, it seems ludicrous to think that freedom could be so nearby. At least, until you realize who has the key…