More from “Thriving in the Eye of the Hurricane, Finding Your Innate Resilience in our Challenging Times.”

I wanted to share something with you today, my wife Michael got an email from one of the guys who went through the Beyond Recovery program in the UK.

He had a life of severe alcoholism. Matter of fact, he’d just got out of the hospital two weeks earlier, suspecting cirrhosis of the liver. He was inspired by one of Michael’s poems in my book to write his own poem and he wanted to share it with us.

“For years, I tried to extinguish the light inside of me, not knowing it was my spirit, trying to burn brightly. 

Now my spirit lights up the world where I stand. Once I was a lost, empty, lonely man,

now I am a beacon of hope and inspiration for others to see my light and help guide them to their true spirit.

Once where my heart was so black, like a piece of coal on a cold fire, now, so full of love, my heart glows with a richness of all that’s good.

I feel the life run through my veins, the same ones I tried so hard to tether. My heart, my soul, so full of joy, of peace and love. I now feel at home.

Thank you for inspiring me. 

What we are all looking for…

I was so touched by that man and the love he shares with so many now. A while back he had sent me his story. And it is quite a story. You know, someone on Skid Row, someone who had lost marriages and other relationships.  He lost his business, really everything to alcoholism. But what he discovered was the light inside him. What do we mean by that? We could call it our resilience, could call that our spirit or soul, our true self. But that is our Essence. That’s who we are. That’s what we’re all looking for. 

Feeling trapped in the wheel of thought

And, you know, we’ve been in this COVID thing for a long time here. We’re going on a year now. And every day, it seems like the same. Oh, and not another day of this! How and when is this going to change? When are we going to get out of this? Those of us who don’t understand how our experience is coming from our own mind from our thoughts in the moment, feel trapped in this wheel of thought.

There was a movie called Groundhog Day many years ago, Bill Murray, the comedian was in it. I don’t remember exactly all the plot, but the gist of the story is that every day he would wake up it would be the same day over and over and over again. And the alarm would go off exactly the same time and he started to dread it because he was trapped in this nightmare.

Getting off the treadmill

But I thought that we’re kind of like that when we’re stuck in the ego of our own habitual thinking. We don’t know how to tap into that light that Peter shared in this poem, When we don’t know that the answers that we seek are inside when we don’t know we have this source of creative insight, transformation, and change within, then we get on that treadmill and just go over and over again, hoping for a different outcome in our life– trying harder and harder, thinking more and more, but getting the same result.

How do we tap into that source of change?

How do we create the new world? How do we create our new world? How do we create the new world around us, is when we tap into that light when we tap into that source of wisdom, common sense, the guidance system that’s there for all of us. So that’s what the Three Principles is about. That’s what my new book is pointing to giving stories about is how people have discovered that because it’s the best-kept secret in the world. It is what will give us freedom, even if we don’t leave our homes for a while. Even if we’re still trapped in the same physical reality, we can use it as an opportunity to regenerate our lives and recreate our relationships and our careers. There’s so much so richness within that we have yet to discover.

Thanks, and have a great day, Joe.