In approximately 2019, before Facebook decided to ban me from their platform, I got into a deep discussion with a friend from a poetry group I was in named Julian Mann. Julian is an outstanding poet and a kind soul. While the debate got a little intense a couple times, it remained respectful and I expect we were both able to expand our understanding from the discussion. Our conversation ranged from the laws of human nature to the creation of the universe. Such discussions are the crux of the solution I am suggesting to resolve the differences that divide us and as such, I decided to post the discussion here so it might be shared with others.

​

The discussion started when I posted the following poem:

​

​

Joy

​

As the wars continue, won't you force a little smile?
Have a drink of bourbon and forget them for a while.
As our people suffer from the violence and the war,
We'll just close our borders and security ensure.

As our prisons fill with every cat who's gone astray,
Let us praise our masters who lock them in there today.
As our streets are filled with those who cannot make their rent,
Let us pass them by and never give a lousy cent.

I am joy, it doesn't matter that you're all in pain.
I have found some shelter to protect me from the rain.
I can just ignore your pleas and cries and tears and wails.
I can just not think about our streets, our wars or jails.

Let us just be happy and ignore our fellow man.
Let us just admit that no one has a better plan.
Let's not face their pain and let's not try to understand.
Let's instead just bury all our heads within the sand.

​

Nicholas Blakiston We are all one and we are all connected. We can't say that because oneself or one's tribe is taken care of, there is no more work to be done. There is a tremendous amount of work to do if we truly want to live in paradise. Empathetic pain is real. Until we live in a world where our collective suffering is transcended, how can we find peace within ourselves?

​

Julian Mann I believe it starts within us. The illusion is that we must fix the world outside to find peace but the truth is that we must first find the love, wisdom and peace that we truly are within first. Then and only then can the world change. If we use the power within us to focus on what's wrong we can only further reinforce it and will continue to create it. That is not ignoring the problems it is looking inside where love and wisdom will guide us to the answers. Thousands of years of good people looking outside for such answers has had little effect. Waking up to the divine power within us is what will raise humanity's level of consciousness and when it raises just a little bit, theses problems will end. That's why I write about the love inside us. The answer lies within us. That is why the sagacious over the ages, have told us to look within.

​

Nicholas Blakiston They have advised us to look within and look at the good it has done us. We have a world full of people who are entirely self-reliant and it has resulted in a tragic, depressing, painful existence for us and the others living on this planet.

The solutions are not within ourselves, but within each other. The solution is not disconnection from one another, but connection with one another. The world will never change so long as everyone remains stuck in their own perspective and unaware of the perspectives of one another.

When we connect with others and gain their perspective, we enlighten our own perspective. It is once we have gained such an enlightened perspective that we might become enabled to effect changes that will be universally beneficial.

​

Julian Mann It's true, we all live in separate realities because we all have our own personal thoughts. One person might think a chair is a beautiful design whilst another thinks the chair is dreadful design. Same chair, the only difference is thought. But if we are all truly one then we are one energy, one divine thought in motion, we are the same, the same energy, the same divine thought. In the formed world we appear separate but we are all made of the same formless energy therefore we are all inextricably connected, we are one energy. It is only because of our separate thoughts and illusion of separate bodies (because everything is one energy) that we have any difficulty in empathising with others. But if we can go beyond thought we find what had always been there: pure love. In this love lies the answer. That is why the wisest people to have ever walked this earth, including Christ and Buddha told us to look inside. They did not mean inside our bodies, they meant into the truth of being where the wisdom of God lives as a part of us. The sad fact that so many are lost is because they pointed us within but in this world of form it so strongly seems like we must look outside. The answer is always inside.It's impossible to find the answer to the illusion (the outside) by looking at the illusion. You have to go in the opposite direction, to the source, that is what Inside means

​

Nicholas Blakiston We have different bodies and different personalities and those differences are real. Without such differences, we would all be identical and life would be boring. We'd all be attracted to the same people, like the same types of food, the same music, and have the same innate talents.

We also have different levels of understanding. Some people know how to fix a broken car, others know how to cook a delicious dinner, and others know how to balance a company's books. By connecting with each other, we can learn what others know, rather than having to develop such knowledge from scratch ourselves.

It is our differences that create the beauty and diversity in the world. Each individual, and other entity we encounter, is a tapestry we can explore as deeply as we desire to. When we do so, we stop relying solely on our own intuition to increase our awareness and gain the awareness of the other.

The more awareness we gain through interacting with others, the more building blocks of understanding we have to make our own intuitive leaps towards an even greater understanding.

​

Julian Mann Nicholas, I completely agree with you.

​

Julian Mann This world is real, I am sitting here in the UK typing. You are you and live in the US. Yet at the same time everything is made of one formless energy, the energy of God. It is an infinite field of consciousness. This is the meaning of oneness. I cannot prove what I am saying yet it is the one truth. Again, Christ directed us to look inside to the source of this truth.

​

Nicholas Blakiston When we are in tune with the full spectrum of our own emotions, we become aware of the emotions of others. The emotional connection between individuals is a medium through which this God consciousness field can traverse. Once individuals are completely aware of one another's emotional and rational perspectives, they become a unified consciousness.

Perhaps we can ultimately form a unified consciousness that includes all individuals on this planet.

​

Julian Mann I really want to carry this discussion on but I have to put my little girl to bed. To me she is the one formless energy manifested into the most beautiful illusion I could ever have imagined!😉

​

Julian Mann Ok, so we already are a unified consciousness but as individuals we have the gift of freedom of thought or free will. This allows us to see life as we wish. As well as being a beautiful gift it is also our biggest problem because it allows us to follow our own personal ego based thinking and as this has it basis in the illusion of separation and the resulting sense of fear and lostness, this rarely results in anything good or helpful. It is only when we find the courage to release our ego based thinking and follow the will of God that our lives, and ultimately the life of all humanity, can come into balance. On the illusion versus real thing, what I am trying to say is that on the one hand, we are all individuals, there is a world filled with trees and objects and air etc and in the world of form all of these things are real separate things. Yet if ultimately everything is made of one formless energy, then all these things must also be an illusion. So must all of our perceptions of the illusion be illusions themselves, energised and made to seem real by the power of thought. Everything we feel and experience comes from thought. Our thoughts create our reality yet they themselves are not reality. We energise some thoughts and make them real, we discard other thoughts and forget about them. They are given to us from the one universal source to choose how we see life, just as this source beats our hearts, controls the weather and makes planets revolve around stars. Our emotions are the by product of thoughts we chose to energise with our free will. The thoughts themselves are a neutral energy. We have to let go of our intellect to feel the deeper truth. That's not so easy when all our lives we have learnt to rely on our intellect for everything. The intellect has its important role but there is a greater power, the power of wisdom. If we can relax and slow our minds, just letting thoughts pass us by without engaging them, the wisdom that is always there can bubble up to the surface and make itself known. Geniuses like Einstein had their moments of great revelation not when they were fiercely engaging their intellect and personal thought systems, but when they were in a quiet mind so that they could tap into the greater, universal intelligence (we could just say God). Again this wisdom is found by looking inside. Within where we are all the one energy of all things, the energy of pure love. We all know this love at a deep level because it is what we all are before innocently misguided thinking caused the troubles of the world.

​

Nicholas Blakiston If our perceptions trigger emotions that we feel, then does it matter whether those perceptions are real? They create real feelings. My emotions are as real as anything because my own emotional experience is the only experience that I have.

Thoughts are problematic when they form conclusions without a proper understanding of the emotional and rational perspectives involved. But it is not the thought itself that is the problem, it is the ignorance of the thinker.

I agree that we can gain awareness during the times that we are free of thought, but this is only one method of gaining awareness, and is of limited benefit on its own. We can also gain awareness by interacting with others, and by using our thoughts to analyze the experiences that we have.

Our bodies, our thoughts and relationships are parts of ourselves, and they are divine. We do not need to discard these parts of ourselves, but become in tune with the emotional parts of ourselves that can complement them and help them operate optimally.

​

Julian Mann There's a lot of wisdom in what you are saying. Thoughts themselves are not problematic as such because thought is a neutral energy. It is what the thinker does with his thoughts that count. As long as our thoughts seem real to us we are in trouble. Thought is neutral. It doesn't seem like it but we choose what thoughts we engage with and what thoughts we leave behind. It's a very beautiful thing when you realise that you do not have to react to a thought. When you see that insecurity is only thought and not actually real, you are free for life. Thus is not to say you won't forget, you will forget, but once you see it, you can't lose it. The important point is that it is not what you think that counts, it is the fact that you think. It took me years of understanding this at an intellectual level before I was finally able to break through the illusion and realise that you can surrender into total trust and then life will take care if you. You don't need to take everything seriously, especially your thoughts! In light heartedness and play our true nature is revealed. At first I became aware that I was simply lost in buying into insecure thinking as though it were real, but I made the transition to knowing and being able to choose love and joy, who we really are. There is a river of thought constantly flowing through your head Let insecure thoughts pass by down the stream, you can't stop them but you can leave them alone. Our whole reality is created from thought.

​

Nicholas Blakiston Thoughts are not reality, they are just thoughts. We can entertain whatever thoughts we desire. If they are good ones, perhaps they will inspire us to action.

​

Julian Mann Yes exactly right.

​

Julian Mann Our emotions come from thought, our perceptions come from thought, everything comes from thought brought to life by consciousness.

​

Nicholas Blakiston Our thoughts are obsessed with fulfilling our desires. They are our greatest ally, but we have to become aware of what our desires truly are. To do so, we must be able to feel the full spectrum of our emotions.

​

Nicholas Blakiston Our emotions arise from the fulfillment or lack of fulfillment of our desires.

​

Julian Mann Thought is a fundamental principle of our psychological experience. Used well thought brings us into wellbeing, used wrongly, thought creates mental illness. We are all healthy before the innocent misuse of thought. Understanding this brings us into our wellbeing.

​

Nicholas Blakiston For thought to be effective, the thinker must be emotionally aware. When we heal our emotional body, our minds are able to access greater information from our bodies and our thinking becomes more effective.

​

Julian Mann Where do you think your emotions come from? Where do you think desires come from?

​

Nicholas Blakiston The body

​

Julian Mann How can the psychological experience of emotions (this includes desires) come from the body?

​

Nicholas Blakiston My body tells me I want food, warmth, pleasure, etc. My emotions are a physiological response to whether I get them.

We also feel empathetic desires for others. In this way, the bodies of others are like an extension of our own.

​

Julian Mann Yes but the vehicle through which your body tells you these things is thought. Can only be thought.

​

Julian Mann Thought I'd the divine gift through which we experience life.

​

Nicholas Blakiston It's not a thought that tells me I'm hungry, it's a feeling. The thought "I should get food" is a response to the feeling of being hungry.

​

Nicholas Blakiston Thoughts function to fulfill feelings. Feelings function to direct thoughts.

​

Julian Mann Thought creates feeling. Thought is the way the invisible intelligence behind everything enables us to experience life. Thought, brought to life by consciousness, is how the we become aware that we are hungry, that our body needs food. Our body cannot create our thought

​

Julian Mann Can you see what I am trying to say?

​

Nicholas Blakiston Feelings are a response to the experiences we have. They cannot be controlled by the mind. They can either be accepted or ignored. But when the mind ignores these feelings, it is operating without a full range of inputs. The individual never attains happiness because the individual's desires are never fulfilled. The desires are never fulfilled because the individual is ignoring the critical feelings that would give that individual's mind the information it needs to fulfill those desires.

​

Nicholas Blakiston If someone puts a flame to my hand, I pull it away because it feels hot. It doesn't feel hot because my mind has declared it feels hot, it feels hot because it's hot. My thought of "I should pull my hand" away is a response to the feeling of pain.

​

Nicholas Blakiston Jesus suffered on the cross to the point that he cried out to God. Even Jesus's mind was unable to control the feelings of pain that he experienced.

​

Julian Mann Yes feelings may well be a response to the experiences we have but these feelings are not created by the experience, they are a response to our thinking. Thought created feeling. We cannot control what thoughts pop into our heads but as we awaken to the fact of thought we can learn to consciously choose the thoughts we engage and consequently the feelings we experience we certainly do not have to engage every thought we experience and we don't, otherwise we'd be in chaos. Happiness is our natural state but for contaminated thinking. If our desires (which come from the ego and are not needs) are causing us unhappiness then it is best to let go of that desire. It is only our thinking that robs us if our peace. If we look to the outside we will never find what we are searching for. We must look inside as the wise throughout time have tried to tell us. Joy is right there for everyone right now the only thing preventing us from seeing it is personal thought. It's getting late but I will say again, you will never find peace by looking outside, you will never find wisdom by engaging your intellect. You have to let them go if you want things to change for the better.

​

Julian Mann Yes the flame is hot but how can you be aware that it is hot without thought brought to life by consciousness. This is how you are able to be aware that the flame us damaging your hand.

​

Julian Mann And Jesus became aware that he was in pain by the power of thought brought to life by the power of consciousness. Anyway thus has been fascinating. You may be one of the most intelligent people I have ever known, but it's late and I am going to bed. Goodnight

​

Roger Blakiston (Nicholas' father) This has been so enlightening. Nicholas is definitely more intelligent than his father. I hope other members get to read this fascinating human discourse. :)

​

Nicholas Blakiston If we have a thought, it is a response to a desire that we have. We would do well to explore that thought, and figure out why we are having it. If we want to live a life of joy, that means a life where our desires are fulfilled. Desire is not bad...the fulfillment of desire is the end of suffering, and we should do everything we can to fulfill the desires that we have.

What's bad is when someone seeks to fulfill themselves at the expense of another. When this happens, the individual is ignorant of their own desires, because they see harming another as fulfilling them. This is impossible, because we are empathetic beings. It simply means the person is ignorant of their own desires, or how to fulfill them.

I've enjoyed the chat also, although I haven't gotten much tax work accomplished at the office today. I'm glad we had a chance to explore this.

​

Julian Mann Right, here's what I agree is completely true: When someone chooses to harm another they do indeed do so in ignorance although I prefer to use the word innocence. This is because we can only make what we think is the best choice at any given moment. We are incapable of doing otherwise. Even if we 'know' it is wrong, fundamentally we think it is the best choice and that is why we make that choice. All any of us can do is respond to the thinking that seems true for us in the moment and in this we are innocent. I also agree that desire in itself is not bad. Of course not. I want to eat a delicious looking apple, I eat it it, it tastes great, I am fulfilled because my desire was satisfied and I can enjoy that satisfaction. But that feeling can only come from thought. it is impossible to feel anything without thought brought to life by consciousness. This is simple logic. A thought is not necessarily a response to a desire. That is not the nature of thought. Thoughts come into our heads as a gift from the divine intelligence we are all part of and using our free will we choose to energise them. If I see a hummingbird and think 'that is pretty' this is not a desire, it is an observation about the world and as a positive thought it makes me feel good. If, for some strange reason, I think 'Hummingbirds are a nuisance pest' then I will feel a negative emotion such as annoyance. It may be a strange choice but I have the freedom of thought to choose to go that way. An important thing to consider is where do our thoughts come from? Because they do not come from us, realizing this can be very freeing. Thought comes from the divine intelligence in all things. Just as our pancreas is regulated by divine intelligence, and everything else, so our thoughts are put there by power far greater than any of us as individuals. When you go deeper you start to see that, yes we have free will, but at a deeper level we are being lived. After all what makes us decide to choose to go with one thought over another? That choice is yet another thought, so where did that thought come from? It comes from before form, from the infinite field of formless energy that is all things. Thought is the mystical bridge between the world of form and the formless. Thought does not come from outside elements in the world of form such as desires or our bodies or the weather. Thought is a fundamental principle of our psychological experience. We go through life making assumptions about where thought comes from, and we mistakenly conclude that thought is a consequence of our experiences however if you really think about it, this cannot be true. Thought creates our experiences. It cannot be any other way. It can be hard to accept this when we are heavily invested in our own personal ideas and concepts about reality. Our ego's have to let go of such concepts if we are to see the one truth. However all we are letting go of is suffering. Its a cosmic joke, we say 'God I want to be happy' so God says, 'OK then look inside, there you will find all you need, there you will find me' but then our ego's get in on the act and say 'No, no, I want to be happy on my terms, I like my concepts, I like arguing, I like my painful past experiences, I worked hard for them!'. So God tells us, 'Those concepts, and past experiences are only illusions of thought. Just let them go and find you are already home'. And normally our ego's say 'No, I will stay as I am. limited, stuck and afraid because I am terrified of the truth because if we are all one, where does that leave me as an individual?' So God says 'Your true self cannot be lost, cannot be destroyed and is already who you are before this world of form distracted you with personal thought, quieten your mind and find you are the one mind, you are pure love and you are eternal.' The God waits for us to find him within where the true self is waiting and God will wait as long as is needed.

​

Julian Mann All insecure feelings are simply the result of the wrong use of mind thought and consciousness. All mental illness is simply the result of the wrong use of mind thought and consciousness. Drop the thought and it ends. It's mindbogglingly simple but our egos don't want to let go and accept that we are God because ego thinks it will be destroyed, yet ego, like everything else, can only be a part of the one energy of all things, an energy that cannot be destroyed. The true self cannot be destroyed and everything else is illusion, just the energy of thought passing by in breeze, until it is used for something else.

​

Nicholas Blakiston If the hummingbird inspires feelings of pleasure, those feelings should be accepted. If the hummingbird inspires feelings of annoyance, those feelings should also be accepted. Both feelings are valid. All feelings are valid.

Thoughts are a tool, they are not in control. I see no logical explanation as to how this is not true. I just thought about a nuclear bomb destroying the city I live in, but it did not happen, because my thoughts have no power.

​

Julian Mann Whether we experience feelings of pleasure or feelings of annoyance or any other feelings, those feelings could not be experienced without our first bringing a thought to life via the power of consciousness. The thought itself, however, is a neutral energy and we certainly do not have to accept every thought that comes our way. In this we have the power to choose how we experience life, and that is the power of thought. Thinking of something random, such as your example of a nuclear explosion is just you using your imagination which also could not exist without thought. Again, thought is how we experience, all feelings could not exist unless we first had a thought. So yes, thought us indeed a tool, although I prefer to call it a gift but certainly should not validate every thought. Yesterday I got cut up by a young driver whilst I was driving a van and trailer in very wet conditions. For a little while I was furious and thought for an instant I would go up to his car, pull him out and punch him. Of course I soon woke up to the inside out nature of that experience and let that thought go. Should I have validated that particular thought or should I have dropped it? We use our free will to drop thought all the time but until we wake up to the fact of thought we see some thoughts as more real than others. In fact no thoughts are real as such until we choose to believe them and make them real. Thought itself is a neutral energy, we can choose to be serious, we can choose to be light hearted. We have the power to create our experience by using our free will and the power of thought.

​

Nicholas Blakiston Thoughts are indications of real emotions and we shouldn't just cast them aside. Your reaction of being upset when you got cut off is a valid reaction and shouldn't be dismissed as some lower urge. All our feelings are a part of us.

We should express pain when someone does something to injure us. If we do not do so, they gain no awareness of our perspective, and will continue ignorantly/innocently causing us pain.

Your thought of approaching his car and punching him was based on a false idea that doing so would alleviate your own pain. Thoughts can be misguided, but the feelings that inspire them remain valid.

​

Julian Mann How many times do I need to say this? It is impossible to experience feelings without first having a thought. Feelings do not create thoughts. Please just stop trying to debate with me and think about this. You cannot have a feeling without first having a thought. This is a spiritual fact.

​

Nicholas Blakiston If someone, through meditation, quiets his mind completely of thought and you reach out and touch him, he will still feel it.

​

Nicholas Blakiston Thoughts do not create feelings. Feelings create thoughts.

​

Nicholas Blakiston The feelings we have are the love that we are.

​

Nicholas Blakiston We think of some emotions as negative like anger or sadness. But anger is simply a desire to understand and sadness is simply a desire to be loved. These are desires that should be expressed, for doing so gives other people a chance to teach us and to love us. They can't do so if they don't know what we desire

​

Julian Mann Ok so first the Meditator: He feels the touch on his body as a physiological response. But he could not be aware of it without the thought and consciousness bringing his experience to life. This is how life is designed to work This is the same response to the point about feeling a flame from earlier. Again and again: you cannot experience a feeling without first having a thought, tell me how this is not so, you can't because it is a fundamental truth. Saying black is white does not make black white. If we can let our personal thoughts flow by without engaging them we will experience the pure love that is the truth of being.

​

Julian Mann Sadness is not s desire it is a feeling experienced through the use of thought and consciousness. These are fundamental principles of experience. Desire is not a fundamental principle. It is a response to the fundamental principles of thought and consciousness.

​

Nicholas Blakiston Desire is the driver of all human behavior.

​

Julian Mann Everything is created from mind thought and consciousness. Understanding these principles can bring more joy and peace than you can currently imagine, because they are the one truth. As long as you stubbornly hold to personal concepts and beliefs that the outside world is what is creating your experience, you will suffer because you will be at the mercy of what is beyond your control. As long as you believe that desires must be fulfilled in order for you to be happy you will suffer whenever what you think your desire is remains unfulfilled. If you can tell me your ideas and concepts are enabling you to live a happy life then I will withdraw from this discussion. I respect your intelligence greatly but intellect is a tool of the ego and yours is causing you a considerable amount of trouble. I hope you will somehow gain a glimmer of insight into the truth of this.

​

Julian Mann Not at all, thought brought to life by consciousness is what creates behaviour. Go with positive thoughts, and you behave well, go with poor thoughts and behave poorly.

​

Nicholas Blakiston I don't see the outside world as beyond my control. I am capable of using reasoning and empathy to manifest the outcomes that I desire. If I am hungry, this is not an uncontrollable circumstance. I just need to figure out how to get some food.

​

Julian Mann What I am talking about are not my personal beliefs and concepts but simply my limited understanding of the fundamental truths of life. Feel free to ask me how this understanding has affected my life

​

Nicholas Blakiston It is easy to look at the suffering in the world and to say it is beyond our control. It is difficult to consider the magnitude of that suffering and understand the perspectives of the people involved in that suffering. But it is necessary, if we are to ever solve it.

No, I'm not at peace, because the world is not at peace. To claim joy now is to deny the part of myself that hurts for the others who are suffering in this world.

​

Nicholas Blakiston The very idea of using thought to manifest our desires acknowledges the fact that desire exists. Why should we think about one outcome more favorably than another? Because one outcome will make us feel better.

If feelings don't matter, then thoughts don't matter because we don't care about anything except how we feel. There is no problem worth solving with our minds aside from how can we feel better.

​

Julian Mann At no point have I said that feelings are unimportant or that desire does not exist. All I have said in as many ways as I can think of is that thought brought to life by consciousness creates our experience.

​

Julian Mann Let's talk about feeling good because that is indeed what is really important.

​

Nicholas Blakiston I agree that we want to feel good.

The thing that has helped me feel good is going through emotional healing. I've had to visit the dark places and feel the pain of the losses I've suffered. Many unpleasant thoughts have arisen during that process but at the end of it, I am filled with a great sense of self worth. I realize that those who have hurt me have simply been innocent/ignorant and that I myself have been those things when I've hurt people.

I've forgiven myself, forgiven those who have hurt me, and my heart is open to receive whatever blessings lie in store.

I still feel saddened at times by the state of things around me. When these feelings come, I accept them and allow them to flow through me. I feel the pain but eventually, it passes. Each time it does, I feel more in tune with my own emotions and those of the people around me.

So far, the effects of this approach have been quite dramatic

​

Julian Mann Nicholas, before I learned about what I am trying to share with you I was in a dark place. I was trying so hard to make it work, but I can tell you openly that without this understanding I would not have made it because it was too much. Then, as fate would have it, I was given a second chance at life, I was given hope. I was woken up to the fact of thought, mind and consciousness. As a result I suddenly discovered I was a poet. I left my job and started my own business. In short my life changed dramatically for the better. Now I am not saying it is all roses because life is a contact sport and as such you can't avoid getting knocked about sometimes. But my resilience and my innate sense of well-being see me through any challenge way better than my intellect ever could have. I am more and more able to join life's flow. This is why I know what suffering and despair are and I also know how the truth set me free. Just as I know the concepts and ideas you hold to are a road to nowhere that will create needless suffering for you. And based on the sense of lostness in your recent poems you would do well to try and quieten so that you might hear what I am trying to point to. As long as you are focused on finding an argument, you have little chance of hearing something that could help you.

​

Julian Mann Nicholas reading your last comment is wonderful to hear. Understanding the innocence of those who have trespassed against us is immensely valuable.

​

Nicholas Blakiston Doesn't life's flow include the flow of our own emotions, and the flow of our own thoughts? Why should we be resistant to either?

​

Nicholas Blakiston Isn't fulfilling our own desires the greatest act of self love?

​

Julian Mann However do not confuse your insight into forgiveness and the healings this has helped you to achieve with the revisiting the past approach. Spiritual healers and psychologists have tried this approach for a long long time and it is not effective in creating lasting helpful results. A past event exists only as a memory which is a thought anchored in time. Revisiting such events serves only to revisit the trauma it is very unhelpful. The past does not exist except in thought. Once again we are back to thought. Now if you can let those thoughts/memories go, you are free. You see that only now exists. I worked constantly, again and again digging up one painful memory after another and then revisiting the ones I thought I had healed because my life was still a mess. Then in a flash of insight I left all my past traumas behind me and I was instantly healed. There really is no value in revisiting past trauma. Please stop doing it

​

Nicholas Blakiston Healing is required when a past trauma is unresolved because then it is not a past one, but a present one. If a loved one has died, I feel the pain of my separation from them in the present, until I have healed. This is the pain that I need to work through.

​

Julian Mann On your previous questions, by following life's flow I mean going with natural thought which always feels right, as opposed to trying to force everything with our personal ego based thinking. Natural thought could be called wisdom or intuition or even holy spirit. it's always there and as people begin to understand the true nature of thought, do they are better able to distinguish natural thought from personal ego based thought and so they can join life's flow.

​

Nicholas Blakiston I'm with you on that. 12 years ago, I surrendered my will and my life to God. I began to ask that he direct my thoughts and my actions. When I did so, my life improved and I happily started to embrace the flow of life.

It was later that I underwent my extensive emotional healing, which has allowed me to form a loving relationship with myself, by acknowledging my own desires and becoming willing to pursue them.

The key aspect to this enhanced experience is that I have remained in a state of surrender. I have surrendered not only to God, but to other individuals, in the sense that I do not attempt to control them through force.

This means I must seek the fulfillment of my own desires by gaining an understanding of others. To gain an understanding of others, I have had to become empathetic to their emotions, which means I've had to get in touch with my own.

With my newfound understanding of others, I have discovered that their desires and my own are frequently in alignment. This means I can manifest a desirable reality, without encroaching on the autonomy of others. This, I believe, is the ideal state of existence.

​

Julian Mann To be honest the idea of self-love is a bit of a concept. There is nothing wrong with wanting nice things, a good lover and do forth. There is nothing wrong with having things. Nothing wrong with having a massage and so on. For me the greatest act of self love us to let go of any ideas of who we think we are and so allow ourselves to be the love that we are.

​

Julian Mann Ok well bereavement is different to past trauma. Past traumatic events no longer exist except in memory. However in bereavement we need help accepting our loved one is no longer here. A deeper understanding of spiritual principles also helps here because we become aware that death is an illusion. The infinite energy of all things us ever present in us and cannot die, we are all the same as true self which cannot be lost. Seeing this helps bring peace but of course people who have lost a loved one are wise to seek help in coming to acceptance. Spiritual understanding will also help us to see that we cannot control fate and the time we spend here, when we arrive and when we leave is down to a power far greater than us. It is part of the kindness of the design in fact.

​

Julian Mann It's hard to keep up with each thing we are discussing isn't it? My only question as to what you were saying about what you believe is our ideal state of existence is 'Are you happy?'

​

Nicholas Blakiston Sometimes

​

Julian Mann Just consider how what I am saying could turn sometimes into most of the time and even when you are down you are still at peace. I know it sounds contradictory but it's a reality for many who understand.

​

Nicholas Blakiston I enjoy experiencing different emotions. It keeps things interesting and fun.

​

Julian Mann I enjoy experiencing pleasant emotions, I do not enjoy experiencing unpleasant emotions. Therefore when I experience an unpleasant emotion, as soon as I remember that emotion is created by my own power of thought brought to life through my consciousness, I let it go and it is gone and I return to my natural state of wellbeing.

​

Nicholas Blakiston No pain, no gain. Emotional strength, like physical strength, takes work to develop. Hiding from and denying our emotional and physical desires is an imperfect solution that every isolated monk living in a cave has used, while the world burns around them.

I'm not going to isolate myself from an emotional connection with myself or with humanity.

To love someone is to act in a way that is beneficial to them. If we can't emotionally connect with people, we cannot know what they want or need, and cannot love them.

If we aren't in tune with what we ourselves want and need, then we aren't loving ourselves either.

It seems like what you are suggesting is nothing more than a cheap tactic to deny the fact that we are emotional beings in physical bodies. Our bodies and our emotions are divine, and should be respected as such.

​

Nicholas Blakiston It seems like we are at an impasse. I feel like I have stated my case and it seems like you have stated yours, yet neither of us appears to be moved.

I believe that we can create a Paradise on Earth, where violence does not exist. I see the path to creating such as one in which we all become emotionally connected with one another. Once we fully emphasize with one another, we will develop solutions that fulfill the desires of all of us.

It is not good enough for me to discover a mechanism whereby I no longer experience personal pain, because I know others around me still suffer. The methods of isolating oneself from one's mind, one's body or one's emotions have been attempted by countless masters, and yet we remain in a world of suffering. My tactic is not to isolate myself from unwanted thoughts or feelings, but to fully immerse myself in them. Perhaps you are correct and my path only leads to personal misery, but I have no faith in the alternative.

When I offered myself to God, I did so because I lost faith in my own ability to manage my life. I now surrender to my own emotional body, because I have lost faith in the ability of emotionally isolated individuals to effect meaningful change in this world.

​

Julian Mann No pain no gain may be true for weight lifters but there is nothing to be gained from focusing on emotional pain other than more emotional pain. What we focus our thinking on becomes real for us. I don't believe I said anything about hiding from my desires, only recognising that my desires are simply a product of my thoughts. I did not at any point suggest you isolate yourself from emotional connections, again I have tried to point out that emotions are the result a thought brought to life by consciousness. It is not unloving to the self to not be aware of the self's needs, it's just a lack of awareness. It is not untrue that we are emotional beings in physical bodies but a more true or pure way if saying that is to say that we are thinking creatures in this world of form. Yes our bodies and emotions are divine because everything is the one divine energy of all things both formed and formless. However it is not logical to suggest we must pay attention to every thought that comes up for us (emotions being the product of thought). Thought, as you said, is a tool. We can use it wisely or we can use it unwisely. This has nothing to do with denial, it has to do with understanding that we are free to choose how we experience life in every moment through the powers of thought and consciousness. it's quite common for people who have not yet understood these truths to see it as some kind of denial but there is no logical basis for this. I am not denying that there is suffering in the world, clearly there is. What I am saying is that there is one solution to all problems and that solution lies in understanding the principles of mind thought and consciousness. Entire crime ridden communities have been healed, schizophrenics who had been ill their entire lives have been instantly healed. These are facts. There is hope for the world because truth is coming into the light. A guy was tired of telling his friend that the world is round. His friend insisted it was flat. So the guy takes him up in a spaceship, flies him round the world and shows him what is true. And his friend, having seen the truth, cannot go back to his old way of seeing things.

​

Julian Mann As I said before there is nothing to be gained from focusing on painful thinking other than more pain. Your sentiments, whilst noble are misguided. You cannot alleviate suffering through suffering. This is only logical.

​

Nicholas Blakiston When we have emotional pain, we must allow ourselves to experience it. We cannot deny the pain. It is real and it is there. There is everything to be gained from experiencing it.

When people have discussions, they emotionally trigger each other, because they have unhealed wounds that are triggered. Once you go through the pain of healing these wounds, you are not triggered emotionally by the discussions and can focus on gaining an understanding of the other.

My heart was completely broken last year and feeling the pain of that experience has healed me and allowed me to experience a state of existence that I didn't know existed. I have become highly sensitive to the energy around me and find myself able to engage in deep and profound conversations with people from all walks of life and ideologies.

It is by gaining empathy for one another that we can see other people as the same as ourselves and develop solutions that are mutually beneficial.

This is what this divided world needs.

​

Julian Mann We are at an impasse in the sense that you are unable to let go of your personal beliefs and concepts which will inevitably change over time, thus is just your personal truth and there are as many personal truths as there are people on the planet. I, however, am talking about the one universal truth. This is a constant that can never change. Because of this I can go on as long as I feel inclined to because the truth just is. You can stubbornly continue to debate with me but it does not matter how vastly intelligent you may be, personal truth cannot stand against the one truth.

​

Nicholas Blakiston Any truth that does not incorporate all personal truths is not the truth.

​

Julian Mann We do not have unhealed wounds other than in thought. There is nothing broken and nothing lacking, before thought. One magical thought can change everything. This has been my experience.

​

Julian Mann The one truth includes all personal truths.

​

Nicholas Blakiston There is something lacking when people have to train themselves to deny the emotions that would otherwise be occurring. Why would God create a world where we have to fight against our own desires?

​

Julian Mann There is nothing lacking and no training is needed to be love and wellbeing because it is what we are. This is about awakening.

​

Nicholas Blakiston We need to unlearn the falsehoods we have been taught. Things like "men shouldn't cry".

​

Julian Mann I really hope for your sake you can get past this obsession with desires, I have not said anything about desires except in response to your comments. I wish you happiness, I truly do. You seem to think we are having a debate of some kind. From my perspective I am responding to a poem you wrote that caused me concern for you. Also it almost certainly seemed to be a response to a poem I wrote about how we are joy. What I see is that you sensed the truth in it and it terrified your ego enough to prompt you to write a cynical and critical poem. So for me this is about trying to help you see something helpful. Ultimately I know what I know and my life is becoming ever more beautiful. I know that you know it too, I am just trying to help you remember who you really are. I have put considerable effort into this and now it must come to an end. I wish you happiness suggest you let go of your intellect. You cannot see truth via the intellect. You have to go deeper, wisdom is found before form and it is waiting for you to listen in the silence.

​

Nicholas Blakiston All human action is based on desire. We cannot have a discussion about human nature without mentioning desire.

Emotions are our response to the fulfillment or lack of fulfillment of our desires.

Yes, I expressed some concerns about your refusal to experience emotions other than joy to my father, and he suggested I respond in poetic format.

What we have experienced is a human connection. It is the type of discussion we should be having if we are to get to the root of where we find disagreement.

I have put every effort I have into understanding your point of view on this. We grow as people by having such discussions and attempting to gain an understanding of the other.

Thank you for engaging with me and I will listen to some silence tonight in your honor.

​

Roger Blakiston This has been a truly enlightening conversation between two beautiful souls. I hope the result is that you have both grown in wisdom. I know I have. Thank you for allowing me and others to have a ringside seat.😀

​

Julian Mann I wasn't going to continue with the discussion but I am moved by your earnest response. So I am not going to say I am right. I am just going to say that this is how I see things. To me you cannot have a desire or an emotion without first having a thought. Thought comes first, it is the foundation principle that governs all experience. For me thought is a neutral energy, we make it positive, negative, serious, light hearted by using our freedom of thought and our consciousness. You can't be aware or even exist without thought and consciousness and the ultimate source of it all which is (Divine) mind. I can run my business and be very serious, and this will bring all the accompanying emotions from choosing to think seriously such as stress, anxiety and all the resultant insecurities, so generally not a very pleasant experience. Alternatively I can choose to run my business in a light hearted and joyful frame of mind. I can do all the same things, make the same choices for the business, yet I will experience all the accompanying emotions from choosing to think joyfully - joy, happiness, excitement - so generally speaking a pleasant, beautiful experience. However because I am relaxed and in a positive state I am likely to ultimately make much better decisions for my business because I am able to hear the whispers of divine mind, I can be in the flow of life and this power is more than capable of living my life for me and doing a beautiful job. This is truly surrendering my will to God's will. But I have freedom of thought so I can choose to go with ego that loud, insecure voice that insists I figure everything out on my own and gets all het up and generally terrified of imagined possible disastrous outcomes. So I choose to make my decisions with God whenever I can consciously do so. I realise it might seem like denial but there is really no reason to take a negative thought ( and the consequent emotions of negative thought) any more seriously than a positive thought. It's all ultimately the same energy. You wont be grasping this with your intellect but if you can quieten and connect to wisdom you will gain a sense of the truth of it. Because we are all part of vast, infinite field of formless energy, we have more power than we can possibly imagine. It's about finally accepting that you are home, that you are God. God does not need to feel insecure by reacting to insecure thinking, but he is free to do so any time he wants just as he is free to experience joy. At a personal level I experience negative thoughts and consequent emotions all the time, I have a negative thought and feel negative emotions and it seems like it is coming from a source outside of me. But it never is,it can only come from within. The world outside is created from the inside. We look to the outside world, it seems like this is what creates our experience but it always comes from the inside. It looks like the Sun moves across the sky during the course of the day but the truth is not what it looks like, it is the celestial movement of the earth that make the position of the Sun shift in the sky. We know this now because we have the information we need to understand this, but based on what we see with out eyes it looks like its the Sun than is moving. Anyway the reason I tell you that I experience negative emotions all the time is because I exist on this planet in a human body and the outside looks real and as though it is the source of experience. But then I remember the truth, sometimes in an instant, sometimes it takes a lot longer, but I cannot lose what I have seen. I know it seems like it is courageous and real to submit ourselves to negative feelings and then go out there and try to solve our problems from this distressed state by thinking about it harder and harder but this is an illusion. Its inside that the answers lie, in the silent space, beyond personal thinking. We make life so hard when it can be so easy. We think we must react to an outside world to events that we cannot control when in fact we create our reality, it doesn't seem like it but we are choosing all the time, but we are asleep to this. I know my negatives are illusions because I know I am love, I can't help that i forget this and fall into the illusion of negative experiences but I am not going to focus on it and expound on it because it is just a bad dream and there is noting to be gained what so ever from giving the negative any attention. Slowly I am learning to choose the love that I am. The energy from which everything is made (both formed and formless) is the energy of pure love. However it may seem, that is all that exists. The only reason it ever seems otherwise is because we have a fee will and a freedom of thought and we are innocently choosing to experience something we made up using the power of thought. I don't expect to live a life free of troubles, but the more you can learn to let go of painful, negative thinking, instead of sticking with it, the more life will take care of you.

​

Julian Mann So all this has happened because of Roger eh? Hmm, I might have known!😂

​

Nicholas Blakiston All thoughts are worth taking seriously. We don't just get thoughts for no reason. They are indications of our true desires.

If I know a hurricane is coming, I evacuate. I don't wait it out and hope my positive thinking will control mother nature.

I don't see any of my thoughts as negative. They are all responses to real emotions that I'm feeling. If I am afraid of a thought, it is because I am unhealed in that area.

There are outcomes that are more desirable than others and it is impossible to receive only desirable outcomes simply by having the right mindset. Disasters happen, injuries happen, death happens. When we recognize the potential of a negative outcome and take action to effect a more positive outcome, we are using our thoughts effectively.

If someone on Earth has the power to manifest the reality around them through simply the power of thought, that person is pretty evil for manifesting the world of wars, prisons, poverty and environmental destruction that we live in.

The inside that you refer to, where the answers lie, is in our own emotional bodies.

​

Julian Mann Earlier in this conversation I asked where thought comes from. I was hoping to help you see for yourself that thought comes from beyond us as individuals from the great mind, the same power that regulates the function of our organs and governs the tides and the movement of galaxies. The ever present divine intelligence in all things. If you could see that thoughts do not come from you then you would realise that you are off the hook and you do not have to react to every thought (and consequent feelings), because they were never your thoughts in the first place. Then you would see why you don't have to take every thought and consequent/emotion/ feeling to heart and you would be free of a lot of suffering. But we got stuck on the first hurdle which was to demonstrate thought is what creates emotions and all experience because it is a fundamental principle of our psychological experience here on earth. I tried to explain it in as many ways as I could think of but we don't seem to have made this connection, even though it seems so obvious to me. I think it is because you already have strong (and brilliant) ideas about how everything works which is preventing you from seeing the simple logic that it is impossible to have experience without first having a thought.

​

Julian Mann How about we just forget about thought. And just ask the question, where do our experiences come from?

​

Nicholas Blakiston If thought comes from the great mind beyond us, why should we not react to them?

​

Nicholas Blakiston If they are messages from God, then we should listen to them

​

Nicholas Blakiston Our experiences result from the behavior of the beings and elements around us.

It is possible for us to control the behavior of those beings and elements, to the extent we understand the laws that govern them.

​

Julian Mann We are free to react to thoughts or not. We cannot expect to understand the deeper reason why we have certain thoughts with our puny intellects, that is an innocent arrogance based on an overinflated sense of self importance. We are here to find ourselves. We look outside when the answers lie inside. How God orchestrates the process of finding ourselves or why this divine dream called life exists at all is not something we can hope to understand, it just is.

​

Julian Mann Ok so back to what creates our experiences. Where do the beings and elements around us come from? And where does the behaviour of these beings come from?

​

Nicholas Blakiston As far as where the elements came from, the big bang seems like a sound theory to me. I do not know why or how the big bang happened. It seems likely to me that it was orchestrated by a divine intelligence. Perhaps we ourselves are the ones who design it, in the future.

The behavior of sentient beings is based on their rational responses to their emotions. In other words, they are attempts to fulfill the desires of that being.

​

Julian Mann Ok so I don't need to ask where the big bang came from because as you said it came from God. If we designed it in the future then I would ask where did we come from and the answer eventually would have to be God. On behaviour, if emotions and desires cause the behaviour, then where do these emotions and desires come from?

​

Nicholas Blakiston They are physiological responses our bodies have to their environment. They are a part of our physical beings.

​

Julian Mann Ok, so I'm just trying to explore this. In your view, where do our bodies come from and where does the environment come from, even, where do our physical beings come from?

​

Nicholas Blakiston Our bodies are grown, first within the womb, and then without it. Our environment is a product of the elements and beings around us that act in accordance with natural laws. These laws are perhaps part of the design of the original architect of the universe, who I refer to as God.

How did life begin? This is one of the great mysteries of the universe, because it is extraordinarily unlikely that elements would naturally arrange themselves in such a way as to create a biological organism.

I don't have the answer. Did God step in and create life, or was life a natural result of the elements that were in place? Did it originate on this planet or was it transported here through the cosmos? These are unsolved mysteries for me.

​

Roger Blakiston Wow....just Wow. Catching up on this thread, and it is quite brilliant. I am actually wondering if the entire conversation should be included in your Human Discourse book Nicholas (with Julian's permission of course. )

​

Nicholas Blakiston That doesn't really fit with the structure of what I'm trying to do with the book. I am attempting to cover a wide range of areas, in a concise manner. While I've had many incredible interactions over the past couple years, the book cannot include each of these interactions. It will be the product of many interactions I've had with many different people, and about many different topics.

​

Julian Mann Ok so our environment as a product of elements, comes from God or divine intelligence. Our bodies are grown in the womb, so where does the womb, which is just a part of the body, come from, in other words we are still at 'Where does the body come from?' isn't the body composed of elements taken from the environment, in which case the body come from God. Life and creation are not things we can hope to explain, they just are. So wouldn't it be fair to say that life also comes from God?