How to Heal A Relationship From the Inside Out (And what a record player has to do with it.)

​“You are already that which you seek.”~Ramana Maharshi

The old, familiar tape in my head started playing again. On repeat. Loudly. Like when you can’t get that song out of your mind and you ask your friend to sing something else in the hope that that damn jingle can be laid to rest. 

It’s pesky and all too familiar but doesn’t cause too much harm. Or does it? Maybe not the song. But perhaps the belief in the tape of the mind does.

I bet my tape is similar to yours. I’ll share mine. Then let’s compare notes. 

“I wish he would put his arm around me more or play with my hair and touch my face like they do in all those Reece Witherspoon, Julia Roberts and Kate Hudson movies. I wish he would walk back into this room the second I wake up with my coffee just like I like it. I wish he would have already showered today so that we could have sex as the moment arises.” I wish. I wish. I wish. 

If you can relate, read on.

This “I wish thinking” is just as familiar as the jingle stuck in your head. It could sneak by like no big deal. Unnoticed. Harmless. Like that extra cup of coffee you knew you shouldn’t have had. 

Here’s the thing I’m so excited to share with you. 

The “I wish thinking” is not actually true. 

The content of our thinking that is. 

And I’m still kind of amazed at the fact that I wake up to the illusion of my thinking every day. And the more I hear about others waking up to the Illusion of their thinking too on the daily, the more it helps me “see” mine.

First, here’s some really important background knowledge 
about how the mind works.

We are fish in water to our thinking. Fish say, “What’s water?” and we say, “What’s thinking?” 

As humans we have the creative gift of Thought. It’s how we have experience. Period. 

But instead of seeing Thought as subjective experience, we innocently see it as Truth. We grow up and we think, “Wow, these things in my head are all real and true.” Then we call that our “reality”. We pick certain ones that float into our head as “right” and others as “wrong.” Then we see proof of our wrong and right “beliefs” everywhere. This creates our version of “life”. 

But is this the only way? Is this truth?

I feel so lucky to have caught on to the fact that it’s not. 

Is a peaceful life beyond our beliefs available to us?

The way I see, it is.

Let’s go into more detail.

We have a thought and we feel our thought as an emotion. They are one and the same. That creates our experience of life. 

Life is constantly coming to us from the inside out. Not the outside in. 

Thought is infinite, creative potential. In any moment we have the ability to have an infinite amount of possible thoughts float through our heads. And they do! But if we have certain beliefs and also think that the outside world is making us feel a certain way (i.e. “My boyfriend’s behavior is disappointing me.”) then we can be innocently and temporarily “stuck” in our current thought reality. 

But you can “unstick” at any time. 

The key to freedom is not in trying to change other people, circumstances or outside life things. It’s in always looking within our own Mind for fresh, new thought about the outside thing you feel “stuck” about. 

I envision this like a record that is spinning and playing a beautiful melody and the needle happens to get stuck momentarily and this weird sound comes out and repeats itself. Until someone comes along and lifts up the needle and puts it back down and the song continues to play. 

There’s still a beautiful song wanting to be played. And we get “stuck” on a note and think that’s all there is for us. That one awkward note. 

But… 

There’s. A. Whole. Song.

A whole album. A whole bunch of albums. A whole music industry. Musicians and instruments and singers and producers and well you get the idea! 

And we think we’re the stuck note. 

Until one day we wake up and realize that even though we may be fish in water, we’re not the water. 

Even though we are thinking humans, we’re not our thoughts. They are an experience we are having.

At this point, you might be wondering why and how what I’m explaining relates to the story I shared at the beginning of the article.

How do we catch on to the skipping record notes and deeply change our experience?

This is refreshingly different than what most share. 

Listen closely beauties.

We have an Intelligence built into us. We might not know to look for it . Once I started to look in the direction of this Universal Truth, I could see the Truth of it. This intrigued me, so I kept looking. I noticed that we have a barometer built into the system.

No matter what is happening on the outside world of our lives, we have a peaceful inner center. We always have this home base that we come back to time and time again. We might not feel this always because we innocently get in our own way when we don’t know this about ourselves. 

The nature of human beings is always to be pulled back to this center. 

Life looks like this: 

We have a wild thought experience. 

Which is normal and human by the way. Then we eventually, naturally settle back down to our inner home base.

Look at young children. 

Wild thought experience. Settle. Wild thought experience. Settle. 

We are designed like that too but we get really caught up in thought. We think it’s really true and informative, instead of the fact that it’s just an experience that we have and then we settle.

So, we have this center. And our center feels calm and peaceful. Like a still pond. It’s like an “ok-ness”. You probably knew this place more as a child before all the thoughts and beliefs came in which you started identifying with. 

When we start traveling left of our ok center in our mind, we feel it. Strong emotions that hang around mean that we are just caught up in that thinking. You’ll start to get a feel for all of this as you learn this new way of being. A learning curve is completely normal.

The good news is that all of the “anxiety thinking” and the like that you might be having doesn’t mean life is scary. It just means, “I’m caught up in afraid, emergency thinking so my reality looks as such.”

When I’m feeling really disappointed by my boyfriend’s behavior because I’m caught up in “disappointing thinking” that’s traveling in and out of my head, it doesn’t mean my boyfriend is disappointing me and needs to change his behavior per se. It means that I’m humanly and innocently caught up in “disappointing thinking.” 

Now, thinking is sly my friends. 

And I feel like if more people knew about this natural barometer we all have, many a relationship would be saved and suffering would lessen. 

We have a deep wisdom within that says whether a relationship is suited for us or not. It’s good to know that’s something we can get quiet and listen to. But, if there’s this quiet voice of wisdom that says to stay but you are huffing and puffing internally wanting to control the other person (like me), then maybe you are caught up in an old program of the mind. 

That irritated feeling you are having is your barometer saying, “Hey child you are innocently caught up in your thinking and believing it’s reality again. I know it looks so real but that’s what thought does to humans. It gives you a very real experience. Experience is fleeting, temporary and transient by nature. It moves. You have infinite thought potential. And there is this almost magic that happens when you start to see this and look in this direction. When you wake up to the fact that you were the one caught up, the thinking has a chance to move and clear like it was designed to do. You can make room for new thought to head your way. You don’t need to put the thought there. It’s already there. Just make space. Be willing to be wrong about your boyfriend or your (fill in the blank.) Based on the way your own brain was wired, your brain just learned to go there. This is normal, impersonal and human. Your hurt ego learned to go to disappointment thinking. That’s it. It learned to go there. But it’s one perception out of infinite perceptions to be painted on your neutral outside life.” 

Do you see how sneaky the mind can be? I could have easily been disappointed instead of realizing it was the intelligence of my system alerting me to the fact I was left of center in my thinking. I needed to be open to hearing, “Jamie, let this go and see whats under there. What else is there? Open to some fresh new thought around this.”

Here’s where it gets good.

At this point I envision you screaming at the television episode version of this article, “How are you starting to see your boyfriend differently Jamie? How can I see my situation or person differently too?”

Pause that tube and listen up.

As I was writing the first half of this article I was in the phase where I had the insight into the nature of my “disappointment thinking”. That it was being internally generated within me and that it was my barometer telling me I was off from my peaceful center by the large amount of it I was feeling. I was able to see it instead of being tricked by it as truth.  

So at this point, I had a new awareness. I was suspicious about the validity of what I was feeling. There was space around it now for new thought to happen. 

What was the rest of my day like after this insight and how did it unfold?

It was night and day from what I was feeling before.

My day was pure softness and love. I felt free. I felt like myself. I was dancing on street corners waiting for the light to change. I was picking up toys in the shops on the street we were walking down and pretending I was in the marching band. I was talkative and kind. Life was easy and good to me. 

And I was in the love. 

Deeply in love. 

I couldn’t keep my hands off of my man. I was scratching his back at lunch. I was staring at him. I was laughing with him. I felt a softness between us. There was even a secret, romantic-grab-and-kiss as we crossed paths in the dimly lit hallway. As the night went on and we were with family talking about raising kids and the like, I was looking at him from across the room thinking how handsome he is and how he’d be a really good dad and that one day I’d want to have a family with him. And if you know me at all that thought is a miracle because raising a family doesn’t cross my mind often. 

There was no disappointment in site. Just the opposite. It was simply pure gratitude for him and our life together. 

I had space from my old, inner experience. Thoughts from Jamie’s Inner Essence, from Source, from my Divine Center aligned with my innate space of Well Being.  Well Being is our default so my default came through. I didn’t have to try. I didn’t have to control. I didn’t have to be more positive. I didn’t have take a 10 step program on how to be silly, happy, sweet or kind. Or how to get your boyfriend to make you coffee every morning and make you happy. I let go of the junk of my mind when I saw it wasn’t real and space was created for truth. 

I was happy. For no reason at all other than the fact that I was tapped into the true source of happiness. My inner well being.

Experience changes from the inside out. I’ve heard it my whole life but being able to experience it in real time is awesome.

Let me be real with you. We are human. And we have human thought experiences. While my day was grand and peaceful we had a small normal, human argument that evening because one of us was having old, inner thinking that came up that was innocently believed in, which took us momentarily away from our center. But we eventually bounced back.

I’m telling you this so that you know that our human experience is meant to be an ebb and flow and changing experience. Just because you sway away doesn’t mean it’s wrong or bad. It just means, “Whoops. Look at that. That’s where my mind learned to go. I’m just going be open to seeing something new about this. Something softer.” 

Then someday at some point you will. You’ll keep seeing more and more internally and get more space and more freedom and more peace which will bring more of the Real You to the table.

Because at the end of the day I was never craving his attention or even disappointed in his behavior or needing him to be a certain way so that I could feel better. 

I was craving my own inner essence experienced by me projected outward. We all are. Because when I’m happy, it spreads outward and the neediness goes away.

Now instead of seeing my boyfriend as doing something “problematic” (which at first I still sometimes do), when I catch on to what my mind is doing, I’ll realize it’s my barometer. So instead of it being a problem that I feel that way. It’s a gift. The kindness of the design. “Oh wow, I’m feeling really bummed about something he’s doing. That must mean I’m caught up in my thinking again.” Because if there was a talk to be had between or something to be done, that would come from wisdom. And wisdom doesn’t have a bummed feel to it. 

How can you heal a relationship from the inside out too?

Just look in the direction of what I’m talking about in this article, experiment with your barometer and know that as Ramana Maharshi so smartly put it, “You already are that which you seek.” 

And watch your whole world transform from the inside out.

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