One of the simplest things Syd Banks ever said was also one of the most radical:

“If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.”

At first glance, that can sound almost too gentle to matter. But the longer I sit with it, the more it feels like it points to the heart of human suffering and freedom.

Most of us don’t suffer because of what we experience.
We suffer because we think something has gone wrong because of what we’re experiencing.

“I shouldn’t feel this way.”
“I need this to change.”
“This feeling means something about me.”

These thoughts don’t create experience, but they can make a momentary experience feel fixed, personal, and dangerous.

From a Three Principles understanding, our psychological experience is always being created from the inside out. Thought moves. Consciousness animates it. Feeling lets us know the quality of our thinking in the moment.

Nothing is broken in that process it’s working exactly as designed.

Sometimes people hear this and say, “So it’s just an illusion?”
That word can be tricky.

If “illusion” sounds dismissive, it misses the point entirely.

Your experience is not wrong.
It is not imaginary.
It is not trivial.

It is real while it’s happening.

“The illusion isn’t the experience. The illusion is mistaking a momentary experience for a fixed reality.”

The illusion isn’t the experience itself. The illusion is mistaking a temporary, thought-created experience for a fixed reality or for who you are.

This is where compassion naturally deepens.

When we see that experience is fluid, not solid, there’s nothing we need to fight. No feeling needs to be eliminated. No state of mind needs to be preserved. Even clarity comes and goes. That’s not a problem; it’s simply the nature of thought.

Trying to rest in peace, stay in essence, or hold on to insight often turns into effort and disappointment. Not because peace isn’t real, but because nothing that arises through thought is meant to be held.

And yet, something remarkable happens when we stop being afraid.

As thinking settles, experience changes on its own. Not because we forced it, but because it was never fixed to begin with. The same system that creates fear also creates wisdom, resilience, and common sense when it quiets.

In that sense, the real miracle isn’t that experience is illusory.

The miracle is that something so convincing, so intimate, so human can move through us without damaging us at all.

When we’re willing to stay close to what is, without argument or resistance, something deeper emerges. Not a better version of ourselves, but a clearer sense of who we’ve always been.

And from there, life becomes less about managing experience and more about trusting it.

Much Love,

You don’t need to get rid of your experience to be free. You only need to understand what it’s made of.