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Update

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since I posted here. Life has been busy recently, but I wanted to share what's been happening with me of late.

It's three years and three months into the looking for me and I have to say that over the past six months to a year I've noticed a profound change. Many of the psychological mechanisms that have made my life quite miserable in the past seem to have fallen away or are in the process of falling away. Many of the things that I felt would never change have indeed loosened their grip and made the process of living intelligently much easier.

As someone who spent the first three years of this ride terrified that I hadn't done it right, that I hadn't seen, who felt that every time John said that you can't do this wrong that those words just didn't apply to me... I now realize that those thoughts are just part of the defensive structure created by the fear and the truth is that this process just takes time. I have wanted to speed it up, wanted assurances that it was working (the thought that I was just letting time pass in misery while not DOING anything to make my life better just made me crazy), wanted to compare my recovery to other people's to see if I was behind. Again, those feelings have eased and if anyone reading this now can relate to this craziness, I say to you—just hang on, take a deep breath and trust that things will get better.

Life is still life, and it seems to make some grand pronouncement about how much better things are now is somehow missing the point. Yes, a lot of the neurotic mechanisms that have made me crazy in the past have eased of late, I'm still aware of many of them… and the most honest thing I can say about the process of recovery is that there's just an ever-so-slight shifting of perspective that doesn't change the life itself but rather the urgency and desperation with which I viewed it.

I cannot stress enough how much John's recent commentary about the importance of moving your attention to the breath when the mind starts to get crazy has helped me. Besides the act of looking, I think it is the single most insightful thing he says. In the Open House Meeting broadcast of July 17th, he has a particularly helpful conversation with Don about the fact that there is nothing to be done about the craziness of the mind. It's not personal, it's purely mechanical, and moving one's attention away from crazy-making thoughts is the only sensible thing to do. I highly recommend listening to it if you're struggling.

So, in short, as someone who has haunted these forums looking for some report from anyone saying that this works—I can now say I can see it working in my own life. I have no doubt that my understanding and experience of life will continue to grow and evolve and I look forward to seeing it unfold.

Hope this helps somebody. Thanks for being part of the community-- I'm glad that we are all here.

Take care,

Ansley

Thanks

Thanks for your post, Ansley. It is heartening to see someone else experience what I am experiencing. I especially liked the part about making grand pronouncements......which is exactly what I did on a spiritual forum the other day! I then went in to have one of the crappiest days I've had for awhile. I love how life gives me adjustments! But even in the middle of the crappy day I knew who I was and the crappy circumstances were external to me.....in the past I would have responded to crappy external circumstances with extremely negative internal recriminations and the external circumstances would have been proof as to what a lower tier loser I was.

It was just a crappy day in the midst of a lovely life stream. I think I've learned my lesson on grand pronouncements, too, at least until I do it again. ;)

On a side note, I am working the spiritual forum to put John and Carla's name out there. I have had some positive responses and I'm sure at least a handful of people tried the looking.....and maybe many more.

Sanity

Hi Ansley.

Nice to hear about your process. I recognize it very well. I see this community as one of the very few places that I can find, both on-line and off-line, that is about sanity.

Thank you for your contribution to it!

Welcome back...

Niklas

 

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