A Beautiful Mind

Last night my daughter and I watched the movie A Beautiful Mind, the story of the late John Nash, starring Russel Crowe. I saw it many years ago and loved it then, and now I know why.  It points to the Three Principles of Universal Mind, Universal Thought and Universal Conciousness.

John Nash was a brilliant man who also suffered from schizophrenia, and for many, many years suffered from delusions. He  had 2 imaginary characters in his life for many years who he did not know were imaginary… Until one day when he was on the brink of getting committed, he had an insight.,,, He realized that the imaginary little girl that had been in his life for many, many years,  never got older; she always stayed the same age!
He knew then that she could not be REAL.

He tells his wife this, and she puts his hand on her heart and says….THIS (LOVE) IS REAL…..

He doesn’t get committed. He lives his life knowing that those delusions are only figments of his imagination and he does not have to act on them.

Years later, when asked if he still sees the imaginary characters, he says:

“I still see things that are not here. I just choose not to acknowledge them. Like a diet of the mind, I just choose not to indulge certain appetites; like my appetite for patterns; perhaps my appetite to imagine and to dream.”

“I’ve gotten used to ignoring them and I think, as a result, they’ve kind of given up on me. I think that’s what it’s like with all our dreams and our nightmares, we’ve got to keep feeding them for them to stay alive.”

Amy Johnson compared thoughts to busses. So the latest metaphor I have been using with clients and friends is that when you wait at the bus stop for a particular bus…lets say you want to go to Boulder….do you get on the bus that goes to downtown Denver? How about the one going to Greenwood Village? Colfax and Wadsworth? A bad neighborhood?

NO!  You would let those busses pass right by, until the one that will take you where you want to go shows up. You don’t yell at the bus to go away, you just let it pass. Even if the wrong bus stops in front of you and sits there for a while….you don’t get on and you don’t push it away. You know that it will eventually leave and your bus will show up at some point.

Same with our THOUGHTS!  We, as humans, are visited by thousands of thoughts everyday. That IS what makes us human!  Some thoughts take us where we want to go (and they bring a settled feeling), and many, many, that take us to bad places (and they bring anxious, fearful, angry, resentful, jealous, etc. feelings). And trying to push bad thoughts away doesn’t help…in fact, that is a recipe for keeping them around, “feeding” them as Nash says.

I have personally always had issues with body image. It goes way, way back. It occured to me today that my body image issues are just like the little girl in the movie who never gets older! It CANNOT be real!

I been innocently feeding these thoughts when they visit me, either by believing them or trying really hard to get rid of them. Both ironically make them stick around.
This new insight has shifted everything for me.

Only LOVE is real.