The Reversal

It really does seem to come at us. The remark, the diagnosis, the empty account, the person who let us down — each one feels like it reaches in and sets the feeling off. Arrows, pointing inward. It’s the picture almost all of us live inside, and nobody taught it to us; it just seems obvious.

But there’s one thing the picture leaves out — the one thing we can never quite see, because it’s the very thing we’re seeing through. Thought. It sits within us, quietly turning the formless into the world we see and feel. And the moment that’s noticed — really noticed, not just agreed with — the arrows turn. Nothing out there had to change. We just caught which way our experience was flowing all along: from the inside out.

Nothing out there moved. Only the direction did.

You don’t have to force the turn, or believe a thing. It’s already working this way. The moment you glimpse where your experience is really coming from.