Just One Look Forum Archives

It was about 4 1/2 years ago. Life seemed to get quite hard after I had chosen a challenging topic for my exam and didn't make any progress for months. It was then when I read lots of books in order to get my mind working. One day I found a book about positive thinking which triggered an experience that seemed to turn the world upside down. It's hard to describe in retrospect. In any case, I suddenly was free of all anxiety, looking forward to life, knowing that life would bring about all that's needed in time. This experience was very impressive, and at that time I thought I knew exactly what it was about.

It was about choosing thoughts. Why should I think all these negative thoughts? For a few days I ran around feeling very free and happy beyond words. But slowly but surely all the life stuff came back and my view of things turned out not to be true enough. It was very hard to monitor each thought and to focus on "good" thoughts and leave out the "bad" ones. And so anxiety came back, and actually it seemed to be much worse than it was before. My exam still had to be done and it still was hard to move on there. And that was not in alignment with what I seemed to know, that life was meant to be easy. So this contradiction kept me going. I read a lot of different books in order to understand this experience and to get it back, and one day in 2007 I found John on YouTube.

I guess it was his suggestion to look at that which never changes that got my interest first. It really felt like I was on to something big, and so I did it as often as I could, even though there were great doubts as to whether I was doing it right or whether there was something to it at all, but strangely these doubts were always accompanied by an unshakable faith in the looking. I listened to every single podcast several times, trying every pointer John was suggesting. And now, about 4 years later, I'm doing this report, knowing only that looking at myself is the best thing to do for me, above all else. I even don't exactly understand why this should be so, and there is no hard proof for that. In any case the search for an answer to what this experience was all about stopped pretty much the day I found John, although the looking didn't bring it back permanently. And there are no doubts left concerning the looking. The rest of my life is the same as ever. Sometimes challenging, sometimes sweet, but it feels more and more soft and more and more right, just as it is. My view of things seems to change slowly, and I seem to understand people better. All in all rather small things. But this is what I know to be true for me: John and Carla are the best that could have happened to me. So thank you, so much.

Jan (Düsseldorf, Germany)