In this Facebook Live session, Mary Schiller, author and coach, examines the popular Three Principles statement that we "live in the feeling of our thinking." She argues that the phrase is limiting and challenges the possessive notion of "our thinking," suggesting that thoughts are impersonal, random, and not under our control. Through personal anecdotes—such as varying emotional responses on the New York subway and at work—she illustrates that circumstances do not dictate feelings, and that thoughts arise independently of the self. Schiller introduces the metaphor of the ocean, contrasting the surface waves of thought with the vast, calm depth beneath, and references Rupert Spira’s idea that we are the space between thoughts. She describes experiences of complete calm that exist outside mental activity, and points to moments of inspiration and creative flow as examples of life beyond thought. The talk invites listeners to notice these calm, spacious moments in daily life and to reconsider their identification with thoughts. Schiller also promotes her 6‑month "Living the Principles" program, designed to help participants move from intellectual understanding of the Three Principles to a felt, experiential grasp.
Chapters
Hello, hello, it's Mary Schiller, author and coach of MarySchiller.com, coming to you as always from Paris, France. I shouldn't say as always since I did do a few of these from Oxford a couple of weeks ago. I hope that you are having a wonderful day wherever you are in the world, and I am really excited to do this Facebook Live because it's something that has been on my mind for quite a while. If you've been around the 3 principles for any length of time, you've probably heard something along the lines of, we're always living in the feeling of our thinking, not our circumstances. There are some variations on that phrase, something like, you know, we're living in the principle of thought that is taking some kind of thought form moment to moment, things like that. And I'd like to take these next few minutes to— hi, Helen— to explore that phrase and see if it's actually true, because I personally look at it as a very, very limiting view of what's really going on here. And so I'm not going to be able to explore everything during this Facebook Live, but I want to at least kind of spark something in you, perhaps, to get you looking at this a little bit differently. Now, it's very easy to prove the truth that we're not feeling our circumstances. That was something that became very obvious to me when I first came across all this 4 years ago because For example, you've been listening to me now for a minute or two, whatever it's been, and you've probably had a few different feelings already going through you. Well, how could that be because— if your circumstances were causing those feelings? Because your circumstances haven't changed over the last couple of minutes. And this was something that I had fun experimenting with in the beginning. Was I would see that, for example, when I was sitting on the subway in New York, when I used to live in New York, and pardon me, still got a cold, I would sometimes feel extraordinarily stressed to the point where I felt like I was gonna jump out of my skin, and then other times I'd be sitting on the subway and everything was the same and I wouldn't feel anything. And I started going, well, that's kind of interesting, isn't it? Because it can't really be then that the subway is causing me to feel a certain way because it's exactly the same as it was yesterday and I'm having a very different experience. And so I would just experiment like that over and over again and see if I was feeling the same way in the same circumstance. I used to have a job in New York that I really didn't like at all. And some days I would go into work and feel just horrible. And other days I'd go into work and I wouldn't feel quite so horrible. I'd still feel somewhat horrible, but not quite so horrible. And I started noticing that going, well, that's interesting. Nothing's changed here. I'm the same person. These are all the same people. I'm doing the same work. Why is it that one day I'm feeling one way and the next day I'm feeling another? And it just started to become very obvious to me that a circumstance per se cannot transmit a feeling into us. And in fact, if you take this really to the nth degree, you start to see that circumstances themselves are a figment of thought. But that's a subject for another Facebook Live. Pardon me. So let's go back to this idea of we're living in the feeling of our thinking. Let's look at that part of the phrase. Now, one issue that I have with it is the word our thinking. I don't see thinking as mine anymore. If it were truly mine, it seems to me that I would have some say-so over what it is. And now I tried for decades of my life, literally, to change my thinking, to improve my thinking, because I saw even before I came into the principles that there was some kind of connection between my thoughts and how I was feeling and responding in life. But I couldn't change it. And I consider myself a pretty smart person, a pretty capable person in most areas of life, and there was nothing that I could do to change my thoughts. And I felt like a failure as a result of that because everybody was telling me I was supposed to be able to change the way I thought. I was supposed to be able to change my mindset. I was supposed to be more positive, less negative, you know, less judgmental about myself, and all these different things that we're supposed to take care of the problems that I was having. I couldn't do it. So even before I came into the principles, it started to seem very clear to me that either I was incapable of doing what people were telling me to do, or it wasn't possible. And after coming into the principles conversation, I now see that it's not possible to do anything with our thoughts. And I say our thoughts because they do look like our thoughts, but they're not actually our thoughts, are they? They are thoughts that come in. I almost see us per se as sort of these vessels into which thought arises or emerges or shows up. It really looks like they belong to us, But if we look at that possessive form, hi, Anne, it really doesn't seem that way to me at all anymore. They seem random, they seem uncontrollable, they seem to be coming from someplace that as yet I cannot explain. I've kind of been exploring that lately, but I'm not quite ready to go there in a conversation with anyone. So I guess what I'd like to say, just in a short summary of what I've said so far, is that if you are starting to see that your, your mind is filled with thoughts that don't seem like you have control over them, then that seems correct to me. If you can also start to see that those thoughts are not personal, they are not your thoughts, they're not my thoughts. They are simply thoughts, that is a huge relief because it really, for me at least, it really helped me to kind of step outside of myself and look at myself as this human being system. And I could see, okay, sometimes Mary has thoughts come into her mind like this, and that seems to bring a feeling of whatever. Other times she has thoughts that come into her mind like this, and that creates a different feeling. So I'm questioning the whole idea of our thinking, first of all, and I would love for you to do the same and start to pull the camera way back and see if you can see it less as your personal thinking and more like thoughts, impersonal, neutral thoughts. So that's the first piece. The second piece, and to me this is really cool to start looking at, for lack of a better word, is to me there's a whole lot more going on here than simply us living in the feeling of thinking or living in the feeling of the principle of thought. Hi, Ingrid. It's a lot more to do with what is going on outside of thought. I often use examples like the ocean because I love the ocean. And to me, if we look at our thinking, living in the feeling of our thinking, it's like we are comparing ourselves to the waves of the ocean, just the very tippy top of the ocean. And how that looks and what that experience is like. When in fact, there's an infinite depth below all of that, that makes up much more of the experience that we're having. You know, one of my favorite people to listen to on YouTube, he's not a 3 principles person per se, he doesn't label himself that way, but he has some very interesting conversations about thought, is Rupert Spira. And one of the things he says is that we are the space in between thoughts. And from where I'm sitting right now, I find it much more interesting to explore that space in between thoughts than to be constantly looking at, oh, I'm living in the feeling of all this thought. To me, that's like looking at the waves of the ocean and not realizing that there's life underneath that, so much life, you know, every molecule of the ocean is filled with life. Having just been to Hawaii, you know, that was so reinforced when I saw all the life that was under the waves, all the gorgeous fish and coral and all of the whales and dolphins that I saw and the turtles and, and then of course, all the things that I couldn't see because they were microscopic. Hi, Ingrid. How do you know what is going on outside of thought? That's a great question, Ingrid. And to me, the answer is actually pretty simple. We've all had, and we continue to have, experiences of complete calm. Complete calm. That is what's going on outside of thought. That is who we actually are. And I'm saying complete calm And that is a very sort of terse way of describing what we are. We are a lot more than that. But in terms of a feeling, that's a— that is one that resonates with me. You may have some other way of describing it. I have had many experiences, as I'm sure you have, where something was going on you were super stressed or you were scared or whatever. But underneath that, underneath the waves of the ocean, you were calm. You had a sense that everything was okay. Even though on the surface, you looked like you were going a bit mad. Helen, are thoughts then instructions from some higher mind? It looks that way to me. Because I wouldn't say, in some ways, yeah, I guess instruction is a good word. I have often spoken about inspiration as a mandate for mind, that when we feel the sense of inspiration, to me, that sensation of inspiration, of really feeling filled up by something, that is another example that seems beyond thought. When we are, for example, consciously creating something and we are totally lost, we're not even paying attention to anything going on, we're not listening to any thinking, that, Ingrid, is another example of what's outside of thought. And so those are great questions because they're ways of kind of pinpointing a little bit what is happening outside quote unquote, the feeling of our thinking. So what I would love to leave you with today, and I'll revisit this topic, is I would love for you to go through your day and see when you notice those moments when you're outside of the feeling of quote unquote your thinking. That's not really your thinking anyway. See if you can notice those times when even if your mind seems really busy, there's still something else that you sense that's beyond that busyness, that's outside of that busyness. That is the essence, I believe, of who you and I actually are, and that is what we can explore. Um, hi Brian. I would love to take the focus off of thinking and thought and put it towards, in Three Principles speak, I suppose, mind, towards who we actually are, what we actually are, what is going on besides thought. I've said in the past that to me, thought and thinking is like 0.1% of the experience we're actually having. I'm way more interested in the 99.9%. And the more I keep I'm sort of consciously looking in that direction and noticing that, the more, oh gosh, I don't even have a word for it, wondrous and incredible life starts to look to me. And it's not my life, but life with a capital L starts to look to me. So I want to thank you for joining me. And again, I'll revisit this topic because I think it's a really big one that deserves more than just a few minutes on a Facebook Live. And by the way, I do have a program that's ongoing. You can join at any time. It's a 6-month commitment on your part called Living the Principles. We meet twice a month for 90 minutes on Zoom and have very deep conversations like this. And the whole aim is to help you to have a more felt experience of these principles. A lot of people tell me that they get them intellectually, but they're not having an experience of the principles. And these Facebook Lives and other talks I give and the Living Living the Principles program are really designed to help you to have a more felt experience of this understanding. So I hope this has been helpful. As always, you can reach out to me, mary@marieschiller.com, and you can learn about Living the Principles on my website, maryschiller.com, as well. I'll talk to you again soon. Thanks so much for being here. Bye for now.
