Passing Through Neutral

Release the old story before you ask a new thought to create your future.

You find a thought that is creating pain. You understand that your thinking is optional. Immediately, you want to replace it.

You search for the right positive thought and try to believe it hard enough to make the old one disappear.

But the old thought is still there. Now the new thought is working against it, trying to compensate for a Model you have not released.

Passing through neutral gives you another way to do this work. You can own the Model you have, allow the emotion, release the language, and create from a clean place.

Your story is different from direct experience

Pure circumstance is an experience without the words you use to describe it. It is different from your interpretation of that experience.

You have a concept of yourself in your mind. You also have concepts of other people. If I ask what you think of me, you will have ideas about who I am, what I teach, and whether you agree with me.

Those ideas are different from a direct experience of me.

We often forget that difference. We have relationships with our stories about people and treat the stories as the people themselves.

The purpose of pure circumstance is not to abandon language or live permanently in a meditative state. It gives you a place to rest between Models, so you can return to thinking deliberately.

Neutral thoughts are a useful beginning

I have taught a simpler version of passing through neutral for years. If you hate your body, immediately believing you love it may be too far away.

You can begin with the thought that you have a body. A neutral fact can give you relief from the negative interpretation and become a place to move through toward a different thought.

That skill still matters.

Sometimes even factual language is loaded with emotion. I coached a client who was upset about her husband's ex-wife. The term ex-wife itself was charged for her.

We worked with different words, such as describing her as a woman in the world, to find a more neutral place. We were still using language, but language that did not carry the same interpretation.

The next layer is releasing language

Pure circumstance takes the practice another layer deeper. For a moment, you let go of the words themselves.

No explanation. No judgment. No sentence about what should be happening. No attempt to make yourself feel better with another sentence.

You are present with the experience before you add the story.

You can notice words arriving and let them go. Your brain may object because it likes thinking and explaining. You can recognize that you will return to thinking, but first you are practicing a moment without it.

This is passing through neutral, rather than using a new thought to wrestle with the old one.

First, recognize the Model

Begin with awareness. Your feelings can help you identify the thinking that is happening.

If you feel worthless and discover the thought that you are not good enough, look at the whole Model. What actions does that feeling drive? What result does it produce?

Do not immediately push it away. The thought is yours to see and understand.

When you refuse to own it, you may try to cover it with better thoughts while it continues underneath. Owning it gives you authority to release it.

You can recognize that you are creating the emotion with a thought without using that recognition to criticize yourself.

Be willing to feel before moving on

The next step is allowing the emotional experience. You do not have to rush to a new thought because the current feeling is uncomfortable.

Be present with the Model for as long as it takes. Let yourself feel the effect of the thought and recognize what is creating it.

There is a difference between wanting to change your thinking and resisting your thinking so urgently that you cannot look at it.

Trying on different thoughts can be powerful at the beginning of this work. But this deeper practice asks you to become willing to experience the emotion you already have before attempting to move away from it.

Notice the loop in a relationship

Consider the example of the client and her husband's ex-wife. The client describes the other woman as terrible and thinks about the things she has done.

Those thoughts create anger, hurt, or a desire for revenge. From those feelings, the client becomes defensive, avoidant, or unkind. Now she sees even more evidence of terrible behavior in the situation, including her own.

She might try to feel better by thinking it will all be okay or that the relationship with her husband is worth it. But if those thoughts are only defending against the original Model, the old interpretation remains in place.

Passing through neutral asks her to release the words about the situation, even the labels for the people involved, and notice the direct experience without the story.

She is not waiting for the other woman to change. She is examining and releasing what she is adding in her own mind.

Create from the blank page

When you release into neutral, you can begin to see the difference between what is there and what you have been saying about it.

From that place, you can choose what you want your relationship to the circumstance to be. What thoughts do you want to practice? What feelings do you want to create? What actions and results do you want those feelings to drive?

You are not trying to improve the old story by covering it. You are choosing a new Model.

With my client, I invited her to consider whether she could eventually feel love toward her husband's ex-wife. Love would feel different from hate. But that feeling would come from her thinking, rather than requiring the other woman to behave differently first.

If the new thought does not feel believable, return to neutral and practice again. You may need to move through it many times.

This is not the same as pausing inside a Model

I also teach pausing while you have a feeling. Passing through neutral is a different process.

You are releasing the entire Model for a moment and resting in pure circumstance without language. You are in the space between two Models.

It is also different from buffering. Buffering can become an escape from the emotion. Here, you first become aware of the feeling, allow it, and find the words creating it. Then you release those words.

The sequence matters. Awareness, willingness to feel, and willingness to let go are all part of the practice.

Return to language deliberately

Your life includes interpreting the world. Words are not the enemy. They let you create, imagine, connect, and choose.

The opportunity is to stop forgetting that you are interpreting.

For a moment, ask what this experience would be like without the words. Notice them, allow the emotion they have created, and practice letting them go.

Then ask what language you want to bring back. What story serves the life you want to live? What Model do you want to create?

You are already giving meaning to your experience. You can learn to do it consciously, without making every new thought responsible for fighting the last one.