**This article was originally published here in October 2014**
Imagine that you wrote yourself a really mean letter, detailing all of your flaws and faults. 
You put the letter in the mail, addressed to yourself. A couple days later, it arrives in your mailbox.
You read the letter. While it probably doesn’t feel good—it might bring back the shame and judgment you were feeling when you wrote it—I bet you’re not offended by what you said to yourself.
You don’t feel insulted by your own insults because you realize that you wrote the letter. Those are your opinions and judgments you’re reading. You intuitively know that those opinions were created by you, and so it’s virtually impossible to become too offended or hurt by them.
In their book Slowing Down to the Speed of Life, Joe Bailey and Richard Carlson say it this way:
“It’s easy…to remember that our voices are the product of our ability to speak. That’s why it’s almost impossible to scare yourself with your own voice. You can scream all you want, but you still won’t be able to frighten yourself! You simply are too aware that the sound you are hearing is being created by you. It is interesting to note that young infants will scare themselves with their own crying until the moment that they realize it is their crying that is producing the noise.”
We aren’t fooled by our voice or by the nasty letter because we know we are the source of those things.
But do you know that you are also the source of 100% your own feelings and experiences?
You are equipped with the amazing gift of consciousness. Your consciousness brings everything that runs through your head to life, making it look as if what you’re feeling is coming from outside and all around you.
Consciousness is referred to as your mind’s “special effects department” because it takes the conscious and unconscious thoughts in your head and brings them to life as your full color, high definition, 3D, emotional experience.
You feel your specific combination of thought + consciousness in each and every moment, while it looks and feels as if you’re feeling the job you love, the fact that your dog isn’t housebroken, or that you’re tired, hungry, or alone.
You think, “when is that dog going to learn?!” over and over and the more you do, the more it looks like the dog is the problem.
Or you think, “this job/location/person makes me feel amazing. If I only had more of this, I’d be happy” over and over and then wonder why you feel great with the job/location/person and horrible without it. You’re feeling the thinking you’ve made habitual, not where you are or who you’re with.
When you come see that you are the true source of all of your experience, it’s like seeing that the nasty letter in the mail was written by you, or that the scream you’re hearing is your own.
Your understanding provides the opportunity to step back from that thinking.
When you step back from what’s in your head, new thoughts and options appear. Circumstances don’t have to change because circumstances aren’t creating your feelings after all.
Just like the baby, you realize that you are the source of all of that “noise” and just by realizing that, it changes a bit.
When you see that your own thinking is the creating your every experience, your mind naturally slows down a bit. You’re no longer a victim of circumstance. Hope returns…
…all by looking back at yourself as the one true source of every mood, emotion, or experience you have ever felt.
