Insight creates change. This I know for sure. Not willpower. Not restriction. Not even information. Insight. But what happens when we get tired of waiting for insight? What if we want to change and just…aren’t? Can we cultivate insight? Is there a way to seek out insight without layering more thinking onto a situation?

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.

Show Notes

• Struggling with being in the back of the spiral for 5 months
• Looking for answers in universal intelligence in an active way
• Are spirit guides the same as universal intelligence?
• Is there a way to access guidance when we need it?
• Not wanting to share what I’m not embodying
• Is unresolved trauma causing what I’m experiencing?

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• George Pransky’s new book The Secret to Mental Health
• Episode 22 of Unbroken with Maryse Godet Copans

Transcript of episode

Hello, explorers, and welcome to episode 52 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m happy to have you here today with me. Thank you for joining me.

I’ve got a couple of housekeeping items before we launch in here.

The first is – and probably no one cares about this but me – I’m going to change the numbering system of the podcasts. Again, I’m sure nobody cares. I used to number them like q&a Number five, and then regular number five for the interview episodes. But now that there’s just one episode per week going out, I’m just going to number them sequentially. I’m not going to break them out, like they were being broken out before. So if you’re wondering about that, and I’m sure you weren’t, there you go. Now you have an answer.

The second little bit of housekeeping I wanted to mention is:

George Pransky has a new book out, it’s called The Secret to Mental Health.

I haven’t read it yet. So this isn’t a review or anything. But I wanted to mention it in case you were interested in picking that up. George Pransky has been around this understanding for a very long time. He was one of the very first students who worked with Sidney banks. He and Roger Mills and Elsie Spittle were people right at the very beginning hearing from Mr. Banks, way before he started calling it the Three Principles. It wasn’t really called anything then.

He has specialized in relationships, he has a really good book called The Relationship Handbook.

That’s one of his earlier works. And so this one new one is called The Secret to Mental Health. I’ve downloaded the sample to my Kindle app on my iPad. So I’ll be starting in on that very soon. When I get finished with the mystery novel that I’m reading, that I’m really enjoying, that I couldn’t put down last night.

I just realized as I hit record, I haven’t figured out what the title of this episode is officially going to be when I put the little illustration up, and the blog post and everything.

What I want to talk about is universal intelligence and universal wisdom and whether or not there’s a better way, a more active way, to access that.

And here’s why. As I mentioned, for the last few months, I have felt like I’ve been in the back of the spiral. And if you don’t know what I mean by that, if you go back a few q&a episodes, I talk about what that means. How our learning and growth is like a spiral, like a corkscrew shape, like a corkscrew lying on its side. And it’s always moving forward. But we have these times where we’re in the back of the of that curve. And it can seem harder, and things get tougher.

And yet, when we know that when we know that that’s just a natural part of growth, and learning and change and life and our progression through life, then it’s a lot easier to deal with, because we don’t think it’s a problem, or a something to fix or that we’re broken. It’s just part of the way stuff works just like winter is part of one of the seasons. We might not like it, some people love winter. But some people don’t but that doesn’t mean that winter is a problem or that it’s a broken part of mother nature or anything like that.

I’ve been wanting to explore or I’ve sort of very recently come to touch on this idea of exploring different ways to connect with universal wisdom because I’ve been in the back of the spiral for really for about five months. I think it started in October 2023. And this is Leap Day 2024 as I record this and put it up. I’m late recording and I’m late recording because there’s because of being in the back of the spiral.

I just feel like I’ve lost a lot of momentum in my exploration of this understanding.

I don’t feel very motivated. I feel kind of like depressed except not quite as deep and dark as I’ve been depressed in the past. I just feel a little blech. And normally, I really enjoy my work and enjoy everything I do. And feeling that way has really got my attention and it’s got my attention, then it’s been going on for quite a while.

The other thing that’s been going on for quite a while is that my eating habits.

They were so great last year but they have slightly gotten worse since October. And I’ve been doing and I’m going to give you an analogy about that in just a second. But I’ve been doing all the things I talked about on this podcast in order to sort of manage that or deal with it. I’ve been approaching it is that the right word? Receiving it, receiving that unwanted drive to overeat as feedback, not as a problem. It’s feedback, it’s universal wisdom, and the wisdom in my body, trying to get my attention. It’s telling me about my state of mind.

I’ve been looking upstream rather than downstream about that.

Trying to as much as I can to look toward the nature of our experience as human beings. Look toward the nature of thought, rather than downstream, which is looking at how can I control this? How can I change my habits with willpower and structure and lots and lots of rules about what I can eat and candied? Because my experience tells me that that way madness lies.

There’s just no relief in that. I’ve tried that for 30 years, it didn’t work. It just made me unhappy and feel even more broken than I already did. So I don’t want to have anything to do with that. That’s just not where I’m going to look. So I’ve been doing all the things that I talk about. And really, it hasn’t shifted, it’s been five months. And that’s too long. According to me, according to this right now, it’s just been too long.

I’m suffering, and I don’t like that of course, none of us do. And so here’s what I’m also doing, which is something a little wacky, and you can decide whether you want to stay on board with me or not.

A friend of mine got interested in mediumship recently.

I was into all those sorts of things when I was in the cult. We talked about all that kind of stuff, channeling and spirit guides, and all those things. I had really shut that part of myself away because of the associations that I have with the cult. But when my friend started exploring, and I got interested as well, and was listening to some podcasts and it was a good distraction, actually, from the suffering that I was experiencing, about overeating.

I started to think and this is very recently, like, within the last week, we talk about and I talk about universal wisdom, and universal intelligence, and the intelligence of the universe that is within all of us and within everything all the time. And it’s never separate from any of us. And so that got me thinking, well, the other thing I often talk about is that insight has its own timing.

In my personal embodied experience, insight has been the thing that has created change in my life. And yet I felt at the mercy of when it would arrive. And it has done a lot. And it has created tremendous change in my life, which is fantastic.

What if there was a more conscious, more mindful, more active way of tapping into insight of tapping into that universal intelligence?

So then, when I started to think about the subject of spirit guides and the way that mediums talk about spirit guides. And it’s always struck me as kind of this magical mystical thing that maybe some people have access to, and some people don’t, or some people have a talent for, and some people don’t. And or some people rely on that guidance and others don’t.

I started to think given that we are all one, we are all made of stardust, and the trees and the flowers and the earth, everything we are made of stardust with, the universe is made of stardust, and we are as well. And that’s a physical representation. Or way to say that we are all connected, we are all aspects of the universe that has come to this world to have this experience. And we’re all connected in that way, inside that Universal Intelligence. And we’re all connected by things like love. What if this opened a doorway, this idea of spirit guides, and I’m using finger quotes, Not to disparage them at all. But just to point out that, this new idea that I’ve it’s not a new idea, it’s an old idea, but it’s something new that I’ve stumbled across.

What if there was a way to access our guidance, and to initiate insight or receive insight, be more open to it when we need it?

In a more active way than I’ve learned about with the three principles. So that’s what I’m exploring lately. I don’t know if that’s if this is going to be a thing, if it’s going to help or if it’s a distraction. I suspect there’s a way to go into this in a very head like way, with a lot of thinking about it, and trying to force things to happen.

And then there must be a way to go about it, which is what I’m trying to do, in a very heartfelt way. In a very calm, quiet, not needing to add more thinking to a situation, but listening. And that that idea of listening, came about via one of the mediumship podcasts that I was listening to. The host talks about how there’s that in meditation, this is her approach her practice, that it’s meditation is really about listening. And of course, she’s talking about listening to her guides, or angels or whatever. And so I translated that into what if it was a practice for listening to universal intelligence, especially around when we’re having a challenge with something like an unwanted habit.

I don’t have any answers to those questions today, or to all those what ifs, but I’m here to tell you that that’s what I’m exploring.

I’m doing it out of a bit of a sense of frustration with this, spending so much time in the back of the spiral at this point in my life. Because I felt like, I really felt like last year, the my overeating habit was gone. And now it’s back, it’s back in a very small way. And it’s very specific, in that at supper time, I’m just eating a little too much. I’m eating, as I’ve talked about rice and potatoes, and I’m having wine with those things. And again, not that there’s anything wrong with any of those things with any of those foods. We don’t want to look in that direction and demonize wine or rice.

But I very clearly know the difference between when I’m eating in a way that’s healthy.

That’s not a response to the drive to overeat. And right now at supper time that’s not happening. I am eating in response to the drive to overeat. There’s a real need in me at that time of day to comfort myself with those types of foods and again; not a problem. And I know that and those things are the valve right on the pressure cooker, they are a solution, they are letting pressure off. So my question becomes, okay, then tell me what, where that pressure exists, tell me not so much what I can do about it, but provide me the shift in consciousness that I need, in order to see things differently.

Sitting around waiting for that shift in consciousness, that insight just stopped has stopped working for me.

So this is what I’m exploring. Can I turn on that tap? Can I listen for insight and promote it in my life, and in my quest for peace and, and resolution of an overeating habit. And then related to this, too, so there are a couple of other things I wanted to say about that. One of them is that I think one of the reasons that the passion has gone out of me about what I’m talking about, and sharing on this podcast and elsewhere, and teaching about these three principles, is because for these last five months, I feel like a bit of a fraud.

I feel like I had it handled, and then the problem came back in a big way.

It doesn’t feel like I can be someone who can talk about resolving an overeating habit. At this point in my career, if I haven’t done that. Up until now I’ve been sharing everything I’m learning and the habit was shrinking. It was just gradually getting smaller and smaller, and these different habits that I’ve talked about were falling away, which is fantastic. I think it was great that I talked about it as that was happening.

And then and this is probably just a mental construct, but and then I was in a place last year where it felt like it was resolved. And now it feels like it’s back again, just in that very specific time of day. But still, I don’t think I can be talking about having resolved and overeating habit when I haven’t done it, when it’s come back in that way. So that makes me sad.

I can’t share what I’m not embodying. That’s not fair to talk about that kind of stuff.

Have the principles made a huge positive impact in my life? Absolutely.

And they’ve practically eliminated so many other issues that I had, one of them being anxiety disguised as urgency. So I could definitely talk about that. This overheating issue is kind of been the core thing that I’ve been wanting to resolve. And on that note, then also, the other thing I can say, too, is that I’m really exploring feedback, because it feels to me this idea that our habits are providing feedback about our state of mind, because it really feels to me and I mentioned this a couple of episodes ago, like I’m down to this sludgy part in the bottom of the cup. And so that maybe there are some really core issues there that need to be resolved. I just don’t know, I don’t know if that’s the truth.

I know that some practitioners of the three principals talk about how, and I shouldn’t maybe I shouldn’t even really say this, because I’m not really familiar with all their work. But a couple of people who have been on the show, I’ve seen them on social media talking about how the principles don’t help resolve absolutely everything and that our lives are not all made up of thought. We don’t entirely live in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our experiences.

And that’s fine. I mean, if that’s what they want to explore, I’m not judging them at all. We all have to do our own thing and explore what’s the truth for us.

It has occurred to me to wonder, is there some trauma left in my body that needs to be healed in some other way?

Is that’s why the habit is there? It’s trying to alert me to it’s trying to give me feedback about that. That’s that when I refer to the sludge in the bottom of the coffee cup, that’s what I’m referring to. I went down a trauma rabbit hole last year, at some point, meaning that I looked into somatic therapy quite a bit. And then it just felt like I was layering more thinking into a situation, and that was unnecessary. I didn’t need to do that. So I stopped looking in that direction.

All I have right now is questions. I don’t have answers.

Which is fine. I mean, that’s what life is about, right? And these are the times in life when things get tough. This is when we learn, when I I’m frustrated and flailing and failing. This is the good stuff, this is when I will really learn and hopefully have insights. And I have been having some, they just haven’t been enough to really shift that problem. And so actually, now that I’m saying this, I realized too, this is a really beautiful, important time. Maybe I shouldn’t say important, but this is a really beautiful time.

If I can find some clarity about this, then being able to offer that to the world would be would be a gift.

I saw a little movie trailer recently, where one of the characters says,

“We don’t save ourselves, we save each other.”

And that really struck me in the heart, I love that, and I’ve always felt, it’s always been so important to me, to try to share whatever I learned whatever it is, and I’ve always been that way. Even when I was a self-help junkie, trying to share books and stuff that I learned with other friends who were suffering. So that was one thing I wanted to say.

And then the other thing is that the principles aren’t a well… here’s how I’ll say this:

There ain’t no cure for life.

That’s a motto I should have up on my wall, because it’s something that I returned to again and again. Life for anyone is never ever going to be perfect and completely smooth and happy and joyful in every single minute. I don’t even think that should be our objective. I find that because of the principles now that I can really ride out the really difficult times with so much more peace and ease. But that doesn’t mean that the principles have eliminated any kind of struggle or difficulty from my life. I still have challenges. And that’s not the principles’ objective. They’re simply describing what is happening with our experience.

There is an element of that when we understand that description it really does ease our suffering because as our thinking slows down and settles down and there’s less and less and less of it, then a were just so much calmer and quieter. And we’re more open to insight.

I was reflecting back on, for example, Episode 22 of Unbroken when I talked to Maryse Godet Copans. She has been a person who has always really struggled with anxiety and symptoms of anxiety. And for a long time those symptoms because of her understanding of the principles really reduced or went away. And then in the episode we talked about how she had a period where they came back. And so does that mean that that they failed that the principles failed her? No it doesn’t seem to me and she didn’t seem to feel that way either. Life was just happening.

And she says that in the episode, life is just lifing. And it really it seemed that the return of her symptoms really deepened her understanding of what her experience is made of, and what her suffering is made of, and how that suffering can be alleviated by understanding where her experience is coming from. If you haven’t listened to that episode, I highly recommend it.

So in other words, she can be a person who can talk about reducing anxiety symptoms, I think, completely fairly and a completely authentically. So is it the same? Is it the same for me?

Can I talk about reducing an overeating habit without having completely resolved it?

Here’s the analogy that I talked about earlier in the episode that came to me that I want to use. First of all, I’m going to interrupt myself, and say that so many unwanted habits are things that we can let go of entirely, and there’s a real bright line there. That’s a legal term. But you’re either doing the habit or you’re not.

So for example, binge eating; you’re either binge eating or you’re not, and then you know the difference. You’re either smoking or you’re not. If you’re had problems with alcoholism, you’re either drinking, or you’re not. And there’s a real black and white essence to that.

Overeating isn’t quite the same.

But I would say, for any, maybe you can relate to this, if you have an overeating habit. I know the difference when I’m eating just for even for pleasure, or I’m just having breakfast so that I can get on the road or do whatever it is, I’m going to do. I know the difference between that feeling versus when I’m eating because of this drive to overeat that I feel within me that feels compulsive, it feels a little bit out of control. I feel like a bit of a bottomless pit.

Alcoholics sometimes say one drink was too many. But 10,000 was not enough. It’s that kind of a feeling like there’s not enough food in the world to soothe this feeling that I’m having. So in a way with an overeating habit, there is a bright line. But at the same time, eating is not a habit that we can give up.

We can’t just stop eating the way that someone can stop smoking.

So there is that element to it. And along so along with all of this sort of thinking, I had this analogy the other day, and imagine that someone is a smoker, and that they smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. And they’ve tried for 30 years to quit. And the smoking problem really drives them crazy. And then imagine that they discovered the Three Principles. And over a period of years, it really changes so much about themselves and about their anxiety, which is one of the things they were using the smoking to deal with.

They end up going from smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, to just smoking three cigarettes a day. So at the end of the day, before supper they have a cigarette, after separate they have a cigarette, and then before bed, and that’s it. And whereas before they were smoking all day, every day, all the time. That is a huge change that that person has gone through. It is so much better for their health. You know what they’ve done all that change that they’ve made, they’ve clearly had huge shifts inside to be able to make such a dramatic difference to their smoking habit.

And throughout the rest of the day. They don’t care about smoking at all. They don’t think about it. They don’t crave it. It just doesn’t matter to them at all.

Is that person entitled to say that they’ve resolved their smoking habit?

So that’s the analogy I’m using about myself. And in my mind, I don’t think so. Is that person still a smoker? Like I say, have they experienced huge change? And is our thing so, so much better? Yes, of course. Absolutely. Can they say that they’ve resolved that habit? No, they can’t. So that’s kind of where I’m at.

I can’t, at the moment really say that I’ve resolved this habit. And with symptoms, like I talked about with Maryse in episode 22. I don’t know, this is something I’m wrestling with lately. Is that different? Are symptoms of anxiety different than the drive to overeat? And I want to say, no, they’re not. That’s life coming to life in both cases, inside that person. And it’s a thing that can make the person feel broken, or like there’s something wrong. Hmm, this would be a good topic, maybe for a future episode, just comparing and contrasting those two things.

So in other words, let me say, I think that Maryse is perfectly entitled to talk about her anxiety that she used to have, and the fact that it came back isn’t a failing on her part. I think she’s still entitled to teach and share about the principles. But for somehow, somehow, for myself, I’m not giving myself that grace, which is interesting.

It’s been good to talk this through with you today. Thank you. I knew some of what I wanted to say today, but not all of it. So that’s really helpful.

This is all just such a mystery, isn’t it? Life can be so mysterious, and so simple yet at the same time, and I guess I’m just feeling at the moment, like I don’t have any answers. And I’m feeling you know, in the soup, myself, and in the back of the spiral. But as I say, this is the place for learning.

So anyway, that’s, that’s all I have for today. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. This has been really good for me to share. I hope that of course, as always, I hope that you have found it helpful. And if you have any questions or comments or anything about anything I’ve said, Do you want me to clarify anything?

If you want to add anything, please do so you can go to go to AlexandraAmor.com/questions. And fill out the form there and I will answer happily for you.

Until next time, take care. I hope you’re doing well. And I will see you next week. Bye.

Featured image photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

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