Alex Linares describes herself as a lifelong seeker. She has always been curious about how life works and what it means. When she stumbled across the Three Principles she realized that there was no more need for seeking, or even for self-help.

You can find Alex Linares at CanaimaCoaching.com and on Instagram @alexcanaimacoaching.

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

Show Notes

• On the dawning realization that we are not our thoughts
• If we are not our thoughts, feelings, or behaviours what are we?
• On the sense of loss we can experience as we explore this
• Thought as a function of memory
• How liberating it is to know we can’t get life ‘right’
• What does life need us to be?
• Playing with letting go in places where the stakes are low

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• Alex’s podcast with Amanda Jones, The Wonder Land, available wherever you get your podcasts

Transcript of Interview with Alex Linares

Alexandra: Alex Linares. Welcome to Unbroken.

Alex: Thank you. So happy to be here.

Alexandra: Thank you, thank you for being here with me.

Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background? And how you heard about the three principles?

Alex: I love reflecting on this question, because it changes every time that I kind of look back there. And see, how did how did I get here.

I am a scientist professionally, been in research for a very long time. And just have always been a really curious person. Since my earliest memories was always around just finding out how things worked, and where things came from, and just really trying to understand. I think that kind of translated into my professional life looking into the scientific world moving in that direction, but also into this seeking side that started really early on for me from the earliest years of being in Sunday school.

That religious learning, it wasn’t a passive thing. For me, it was a very active interaction that I had with that knowledge and the information that was being provided and really questioning what was coming my way and kind of looking around and realizing that not a lot of people that were six, seven years old, were doing that. So yeah, it was just really interesting that it became a really big identity for me really early on that I feel like I need to know more. I feel like others are okay with a certain threshold and of knowing, and they’re happy with that. I never really felt like I reached that. So I think it’s kind of permeated my whole my whole history.

And in that same kind of path I went through the religious and path and looking at different types of religions. Kind of comparing and contrasting that we do a lot when we look at the Western religions, or the Eastern religions, and through that a lot of the philosophies and a lot of the things that kept coming up, the same themes were so interesting to me. It seemed like we were all pointing at the same thing. And we had different life experiences and words and histories.

As the beauty of seeing the similarities across all of that just became something really fascinating and very unifying for me. To the point where I didn’t feel the need to find the one dogma or the one method that would work for me, just because I felt that it was all pointing in the same direction. Which I think fits right into the Three Principles that part of your question, which is, the Three Principles really brought that all together in a very secular way, which was really interesting. But in a very deep spiritual felt sense, which I was very unique.

I think psychology has tried to do that. A lot of the Buddhist meditation psychology has tried to do it. But the Three Ps just had a different spin to it and it really resonated, it came to me at the right time in my life, which was actually through Amy Johnson. I read her book at the end of 2020 all the things were happening, not just a pandemic, I was moving out of state and reestablishing my life in a completely different place. And it really felt like a different planet, late 2020 In terms of what life looked like, and what the world I thought I was moving into versus what it was. It just really resonated for me to see the simplicity of experience as mind and thought and just really being able to have a tangible word for experience in the manifestation of experience. So that’s how I came to find the Three Principles.

It’s mentioned in Dr. Amy Johnson’s book, The Little Book of Big Change in passing. It’s not really a three principles book, but then I of course, I started looking into it and then I started reading a lot of the Sydney Banks work and a lot of the other Three Principles practitioners. So it really opened up a whole world of speaking again, about the same thing, the same kind of unknowable experience. But the language really resonated with me.

Alexandra: Many people who are guests on the show were searching for a specific answer to a question or trying to heal themselves from something when they went on that search.

Was that the same for you?

Alex: Yeah, it definitely was. It’s very specifically to Amy, like how I found Amy Johnson. And the Three Principles was around eating. There was this kind of big, heavy eating thing that seemed like an issue, and I needed to find solutions. And so that was definitely the portal there.

But when I reflect back, and I really look at what preceded a lot of the issues that I was trying to fix, it was always this more generic emptiness, like a missing something. There was this very early on, I just had this sense of like, there’s something more here that I’m missing. And I think that kind of longing, that that emptiness, then turned into, oh, I need to fix my food issues, or I need to be more disciplined, or I need to be a better parent.

I’ve seen how it’s changed, but because I think it’s because it was so early for me as a child, I remember that there was this, like, non-content longing, that that then obviously, the mind filled with plenty of content for me to chase and fix.

Alexandra: Speaking of this, you mention on your website that you had three big insights that changed the trajectory of your life.

Could you share those with us, please?

Alex: I have a big smile on my face when I think about that, because it’s just been such a beautiful experience to have a sense of expansion. And sometimes that expansion feels like progression. Because I want to give it a direction. And I want to feel like I’m getting somewhere. But what it’s been, it’s just this kind of clarifying of orientation, the way I will put it.

So when I first started searching, it really felt like whatever words and images were in my head, that’s where I was. I’m this thinking. I’m these words, I’m these images. And then, for those first kind of years, realizing, Oh, I’m not my thoughts. When we think of someone like Byron Katie, which was The Work was one of those big portals for me. And just realizing like how obvious that I wasn’t my thoughts there’s some activity up here seemingly around my head, and then I’ve identified with it interesting.

And then then moving into like, well, then what is this body that feels without language? What is his body that that goes towards and away and then realizing that I was then identifying with that as his body that was solid and it was moving and reacting to the world.

When I looked at that closer, realizing that that wasn’t that either. I wasn’t the thinking and then almost like, I’m thinking with my body like that’s kind of an extension of food. Which is kind of, of huge opening for a lot of people. And then I was left with who am I in the world. I’m obviously acting and it feels like I’m affecting other people. And then I must be my behaviors. I must be the activity of being out in the world.

And then realizing how arbitrary that is, what I who I am out in the world is through the filter of who I think I am through the thoughts, through the feelings and then just having all that collapse like wow, if I’m not what I’m thinking, and I’m not what I’m feeling and I’m not what I’m doing, what am I?

And there’s not a lot that comes back from that and I think that’s the point. I feel like when we really shed a lot of that, then there’s not a lot of questions left, I guess, when those things are kind of obvious and self evident.

Alexandra: Was there an experience of grief when you realize you weren’t your thoughts? You weren’t your feelings? You weren’t your behavior out in the world? Was there a sense of loss?

Alex: That’s huge. I think we don’t talk about that enough, not as coaches and not in this, because there was a huge, huge wave of grief. And there still are every time that I realized that something that I identified with is not it, whatever it is, there is grief. And it’s a sadness of, there’s a little bit of like, I’ve spent so much time doing that, and thinking that and yeah, like all of that, but it’s almost this vacuum, of like, oh, life on like something, it wants to be filled with something with more information.

If I’m not this, I’m that and Whoa, look at that you should have done this earlier. But then there’s just this vacuum. I think that is what for me is the grief is that open space that sometimes just wants to remain empty. And we have so much momentum into not having that emptiness be that has this going back to that word, that longing, that that sadness that there’s a little bit of a tinge of sadness to it for a bit, sometimes for a long bit.

I love that you bring that up, because I have coached quite a few people that feel like something’s gone wrong with that, because they’re like, Well, I thought this was going to be unicorns and rainbows. I’ve been investing money and time and my entire life, and then all of a sudden, it’s lighter. Life is lighter, things feel clearer, perhaps. And I’m sad, or I miss it.

I think if we point to like, yes, and you’re going to feel that because that’s the full experience of being alive. I think it can really help. I can really help.

Alexandra: Thank you for saying that. I appreciate hearing your take on that very much.

You have a blog post on your site, where you say that all we ever are is memory.

Alex: That’s like a fresh one for me. I was down one of those YouTube rabbit holes that one can get into and I was cleaning or doing something and it was Krishna J. Krishnamurti was just having one of his big talks and he said thought is a function of memory. It slowed me down a little bit and I was like thought is a function of memory, okay, I can follow that.

In order to have a thought that is known there has to be information somewhere. That then is a thought have a coherent thoughts. I was like, I can follow that.

And then he said, everything that we can know is memory.

I had to really slow down with that. And then my mind went to Okay, I’m going to find the exception. What is in memory? You can try it yourself. I actually highly encourage that you try it yourself. You cannot find anything that can be known, that is not memory, because everything has been learned. The shapes, the colors, the just even the sense of knowing that the idea of this is site versus this is touch, all that has been learned and not like actively, like sit down in a classroom learned.

But it has been how we’ve learned to be human and how we’ve learned to be people that move in this material world. It was so tangible like, because when we can say it out loud and say, Oh, everything’s memory. It sounds a bit like I don’t know about that like, but really sit with it.

What you’re holding in your hands right now, this pen that I’m holding, is only memory because I remember what a pen feels like. What it looks like the shape of it, the colors of it, what I do with it, like I can’t hold the pen. In its raw experience. I don’t know how to anymore because I’ve learned how to re experience my memory as thought.

Alexandra: It’s such a profound idea. And it has me thinking about things like when people lose their memory if they have amnesia, or Alzheimer’s or something like that.

What’s left there is there is an essence, of course of the person that still there.

Alex: That essence. When I think of remembering who we are we have to remember who we are. And we know that when we see those cases where someone loses either part of their function of their brain, or there’s some kind of malfunction, they will lose their personality, some essential things and that’s a huge grief process for the families like where did that person go?

And that to me is fascinating. And it points to that who we are this continuous person is based on memory, which is very fragile, as we as we know. Because it seems to be contained in this brain. And then there is this essence. And that essence, tends to be very immediate. It doesn’t reference back a lot. And I think that’s what we’re always kind of searching for, is that, Oh, what am I, when I don’t have to remember who I am? Or who I need to be?

Alexandra: I even think about when we have thoughts about the future. If there are things that are not memories, and I’m specifically thinking about anxiety, it still really is a memory, because we’re getting anxious about something that happened in the past. And we often think we’re worried about something that could happen in the future. But really, we’re worried about something we think could happen again, in the future.

That’s where we go with our thoughts about anxiety.

Alex: That’s huge, like see in the future is memory. It can’t be anything else. That’s why when you look at it, it’s fun, because what else would it be? If it’s not memory, I wouldn’t be able to know it.

I think we’ve all had that experience; you’re going about your day, and someone says something, and it wasn’t in your universe to worry about. And you’re like, Oh, now I get to worry about that. And it’s interesting, because all of a sudden, that becomes part of your memory, but a second before, that was nowhere in your universe to be projected as a worry into the future.

So it’s just kind of interesting to see that our past, our present as in a tangible, this is where I am right now. And the future is all just kind of a function of memory.

Alexandra: I’m going to be playing with that for a little while, for sure, I can tell.

You also have mentioned on your website about how liberating it is to know that we can’t get it right.

Alex: This is one that I’ve been playing around with a lot. And actually, we had a wonderful call today with a small group and this came up. And it’s this little sneaky story that that we learn early on, that there is a kind of rubric or some kind of Master Plan, or some kind of endpoint that makes our life right or worthwhile. It was really interesting to see how subtle it is.

It shows up in really small ways where you make a decision and then there’s doubt: I should have done that. Why? Why would you? Where does that come from?

it comes from this discomfort of not knowing what the right way to do life is because we won’t know. We’ll never know. But having the story that there is a right way to do it somewhere and it’s not active, and it doesn’t play out in every single part of our lives, but I think it does. And most of the things that we do in life, that we do have this really, this outline far off in the distance of what it should look like and how it looks like to move towards it and realizing that that is there.

More than I think what, what the big insight for me was that if I got it I wouldn’t know it. Because I don’t know what right looks like. It’s so far away. It’s so nebulous, it changes so much. It’s so dependent on my mood and who’s around and what stage of my life?

I wouldn’t know a right, good life if it hit me over the head. And just knowing that was really freeing, like, Oh, I’m hustling towards this perfection. But I don’t even know what that perfection looks like. And never will.

Alexandra: We can see that that’s the case, because we move the goalposts all the time. We can even have a moment where we feel like, Oh, I did it, right. And yet, there’s still that chasing feeling there, that yearning to get it right.

So obviously, it’s not actually a thing we can do. Because if it was, and we did something we would feel that.

Alex: For me, what flipped it for me was, I think in the self-help world, we hear a lot of you can’t get it wrong. Do what you got to do, and life doesn’t get it wrong.

For me, there was this connotation, my mind would finish the sentence and say, well, then everything is right. If I can’t get it wrong, then anything that happens is right. And there was movement away from the concepts of right and wrong. Its totality. Because my mind was always going to get the other half of it right.

It was going to try to complete that sentence, and when I was like, Well, I can’t get it wrong. Sure. But I also can’t get it right. Because there’s no such thing. And that just kind of collapsed both concepts for me. And there was just this freedom that I hadn’t found before in that kind of disappearance of that as a concept that I wanted that felt like I was striving towards.

Alexandra: I’m glad you shared that. That’s such a good distinction to make, that the whole thing collapses when we realize there isn’t there is no wrong or right. Neither one exists. And who’s keeping score?

I wish I had discovered this years ago, because in my I guess, 30s, especially I really struggled to accept that I didn’t want to fit into a mold. I felt like there was this mold, especially around work that I was supposed to fit into, and I didn’t and so then I felt like I was doing it wrong all the time.

The permission to just be myself would have been so helpful.

Alex: For me, actually, this insight came to me around parenting and how there was this like, Okay, well, what if I can’t get it right? Most people who have older kids, I have smaller children who still love me and adore me. We haven’t hit the teenage years with a resistance yet. I know some amazing parents who their kids are like, Nope, no, you did it all wrong.

I just remember playing with that. What if I can never get it right? When it comes to parenting, it’s always going to be through the lens of them and their freedom to interpret regardless of my motives, my motivation, my anything, they’re going to conclude whatever they’re going to conclude about these interactions. So if I hustle and try to get it right, then that’s kind of a losing battle.

And I was like, what if I never can? Or how do I show up as a parent, as a mother, day in and day out? Not trying to get it right, but trying to just be with what’s showing up in that moment, and just really tracking true to the experience that’s showing up without that need for continuity. How do I become the kind of parent that does it?

Alexandra: Oh, wow, that’s really great. As you say, liberating was the word you used. Wow, amazing. So now, I would like to quote you back to yourself. This is a quote from one of your blog posts.

“All life needs as me is here now.” Can you talk about that a little bit? And what you mean?

Alex: I think what that means for me listening back to it, is really about the wisdom of the immediate moment, however it’s showing up. And you get a second behind it or a second ahead of it, and you’re judging it, and you’re like, No, this is wrong should have been different.

The moment that’s showing up for us right now is the culmination of everything that’s happened before, what we remember, what we understand, what our bodies have felt, and really leaning into the fact that this mind will never know everything that came together to culminate in this moment. But I have the best proof that it is exactly what life needed it to be. Because it’s what’s showing up.

To me, it can be a mental analysis of like, okay, yeah, things were meant to be. And it can be this kind of unsettling. That’s very humbling. Because it’s really a complete surrender. It’s a complete surrender to what’s showing up The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly, what we want to change the next moment what we’re going to regret when we come to, but there’s just this liminal space. Before all that shows up. That I think we know, just that perfection.

Alexandra: Given that a lot of our listeners are dealing with an over eating habit, then could you put what you’ve just said in the context of having a craving and a desire to over eat?

Alex: This is funny, because this actually came up yesterday for me around cravings, and I had a good laugh about it after it came.

I was fighting a craving, I should know that all the noise. And in the immediate moment of giving into the craving, all I said was, this feels so good. And it was the most honest thing I had said to myself in such a long time. That giving into that craving felt good. And of course, I’m going to do it if it feels good.

That was the part where I was like, the right like, I’m trying to make a big deal out of like, Oh, what do I still want this? And it’s it was so simple for me in that moment. Why did I have it? Because I wanted it and I liked it when I had it. And then the next moment, a lot more information came to me. Interesting, why do I like this so much. But it was coming.

I was like driving and all of a sudden; you know when you drive and you just kind of look at the other parts of the map and then you kind of lose where you are and your GPS is still going. But you don’t know where you are, you’re like, where’s the dot? And then you recalibrate, you press that button that centers a whole GPS.

That’s what it did, all of a sudden, being honest in the moment with what was showing up for me, regardless of whether I liked it or not, it reoriented me into, oh, I’m here, I’m here. And then I felt a wave of openness into Okay, now you’re here. Where are we going? Where do we go next? Where do we go next with what you’ve known not mentally, not through my judgment, but fully physically embodied? Knowing in that moment that that craving and giving into it felt good. Does that make sense? It does is really this just happened like 12 hours ago? So I’m processing it as we’re talking through it.

Alexandra: I think it’s such a good point to be reminded about is that we’re always well, this is one thing I got from what you say is that we’re always wanting a good feeling. We’re always wanting to connect with a good feeling. So it’s perfectly natural, that we treat ourselves to some sort of food because it does feel good.

I get so much out of the fact that demonizing that takes us way away from what’s actually happening.

Alex: Demonizing it, interrupts what’s happening. I think a lot of us have this experience, which I find that bizarre, but it’s so common for a lot of us, which is, as you’re eating it, as you’re eating something, you’re like, Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’m eating this, I shouldn’t be eating this, and still the action is happening. It’s almost like this out of body experience.

I’m not liking it. And there’s this conflict, right. I feel like in the conflict, and when we’re so in our heads about the conflict of worry, they’re in the conflict of doing it, or in the planning of how we’re not going to do it again. We’re in either of those cases, we’re not present with the information that that we’re getting in that moment as to why that action is taking place.

That to me is going back and pointing to the immediacy of the moment where all the wisdom is, it’s not in the plan that comes out of it. It’s not in the regret, it’s in that moment. What is showing up fully, including the judgment and all of that, that may come later.

Alexandra: And given that we just talked about presence and what life needs from us, I’m trying to connect the dots with those with those two things and the awareness that’s within us. We’re not our thoughts, like we talked about at the beginning, we’re not our thoughts, we’re not our feelings, we’re not our behaviors.

I don’t have a question, but I can just feel myself bringing those things together.

Alex: I think it’s about that seamlessness of life, when we can be in the immediacy of the moment without the need for the memory of who we are, we should be a need to be and we can be in the immediacy of the body as it seems to move through this environment. Then all of it kind of comes together: the thinking the feeling.

There aren’t all those separations to me. I think it we are always that seamless movement of life. That is in itself the culmination of life, moment to moment, not toward something, not because it has an agenda, not because it’s moving towards that perfect next but just the aliveness. The arising of aliveness. Exactly as it shows up.

Alexandra: I guess with my brain, I spend so much time trying to control that rather than just letting it happen. I’m sure I’m not alone.

Alex: We all go back and forth, like sometimes we’re like, oh we’re I’m really trying to control this. And then you realize, can I control it? And that’s the question that when I was like, Well, what if I just let go? I was like, No, I wasn’t doing much in the first place. So how about you then you start being more willing to try it? When in small ways, you see, like, oh, I wasn’t driving this bus anyway.

Little by little, you’re like, oh, okay, what else can I let go? What can I be softer around? What else is none of my business here that I could just kind of be easier around? And it’s easier to do in certain parts of our lives, I think when it comes to our big issues it’s hard to do that, but playing around with it, where the stakes feel low. I love starting there. Because then it’s, it becomes a felt sense, then then you don’t need to know it. Or, or kind of point to it or have a method for it is more of a way that that your body, your system, wants to show up around the experiences.

Alexandra: That’s such a good reminder to play with this where the stakes feel low.

For someone who’s struggling with overeating, that might not be the place to begin but there are other places in our life where we can just play with this and see, see what happens.

Alex: There’s something so incredible about eating and food being what brings us to this conversation. Sometimes, for some people, it feels trivial, like, I’ll relate to food for me some people have relationship issues or, and, and then on the other side, it’s in our face day in and day out.

Food is so integral to life itself. And I am just always in awe of the people who come to this conversation through the portal of food and eating and eating disorders, because it takes over our lives in such an amazing way. I think there is a beautiful opportunity. And how all-encompassing coming to this through food can be in a whole lot of compassion. That is where it feels like we’re fighting nature or survival or there’s so many ways that that we come to the table when we’re expanding through this lens of food.

Alexandra: Thank you for saying that. That was really beautifully said. I appreciate that.

As we get closer to the end of our time together, is there anything you’d like to share that we haven’t talked about yet today?

Alex: I think what I would share is that really there’s going to be this battleground for this expansion in this conversation. Like we’re talking about food for some people, money for others and that’s going to have its tightness and its resistance and a lot of these qualities.

There could be a playground next to that battleground, where we can explore in a playful way. Some of these things that we are learning right through our experiences and just being able to say hi, let me just play, let me see what I see because it doesn’t matter Let me be curious.

Let me be the child who takes this thing apart because it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to break it. Holding those two things. Like yes, some things are going to feel like a battleground. But then be curious about where is that playground? Where you can expand in in that’s more softer, supported way. Making a conscious effort to bring that compassion and that softness into a lot of things.

Alexandra: Lovely. Thank you for that.

So Alex, where can we find out more about you and your work?

Alex: You can find me on Instagram. You can find me on my website. CanaimaCoaching.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Alexandra: Perfect. And you also have a podcast with Amanda Jones.

Alex: The Wonder Land comes out every Wednesday at 3:14am. Amanda Jones and I have been recorded our 45th episode today for The Wonder Land. Just a lot more of this exploration. Very dreamy, open format. I hope people who join and listen to us get to daydream along with us. So yeah, give it a listen.

Alexandra: Nice. Okay, great. Thank you so much for being here with me. I really appreciate it.

Alex: Thank you for having me, Alexandra.

Featured image photo by Jason Ortego on Unsplash

The post The Wisdom of the Moment with Alex Linares appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.