Listen to this post now on Beyond Everything Radio!

I’m going to try something slightly different this year for my podcasts. Instead of lectures and sermons, I’m seeking to combine the teaching with an experience. It’s all about experiential knowledge.

In 2015 I wrote a book entitled “Getting Better When You Can’t” . In it I offered an alternative perspective to psychology, medicine, and religion for behavioral change. The framework below reveals the workflow and architecture below the surface of our behaviors revealing why other frameworks fall short of lasting transformation.

(For those listening the flow of behavior is as follows: Truth > Intellect > Affections > Will > Behavior)

Let’s begin:

Get comfortable. Take a few deep breaths. Sit with a humble, receptive posture.

Begin reflecting upon a significant change you desire in 2026. It could be in health, finances, relationships, a healing, or freedom.

Focus on the main one. Do you have a clear, conscious awareness of it?

Next. Who says that you have a problem? Is change being “forced” upon you? Is change what you truly want? This question helps us identify our source of authority and Truth. Is this a change that society or some community is requiring of you? If left completely to yourself, would you bother changing?

Can you perceive the deeper motivators? Can you see why change usually changes right back? How many of life changes come from our sense of agency? Who’s running our life? This exposes our trusted source of truth and this is where our exploration begins. Is it our family, friends, faith system, career, society, emotions, assumptions, addictions, confusion…? What has the steering wheel of our life.

Would you like a way to see these in real time?

No problem exists in isolation, but one usually stands taller than the rest. Our deeper, less visible problems are aggregated with surface problems because each shares the same headwaters, meaning each is healed in the same location…the sanctity of our minds.

The Question is: Do we have our own minds? Are we conscious of what’s happening within? Usually not.

I define change as “bare minimum improvement.” Change is barely conscious, but it’s a start. Change helps us lose a few pounds but it’s usually temporarily because an unconscious mind isn’t stronger than our appetites. That’s why change just changes back.

We need transformation, not change. Returning to that area of focus. If you’ve tried to change unsuccessfully, what makes you think this time will be different? Who are you kidding? Merton uses a term called “soul force” to describe the efforts of self will masquerading as faith. No amount of soul force will help us if we are oblivious to our operating system. We need new applications and software, we need rescue (salvation) from ourselves…from our self will.

Only within the depth dimension, do we discover transformation. We have to be able to “see” ourselves in our own self-deceit. We must catch ourselves when we believe something that isn’t true, which means we must first know the Truth of ourself. The self we “will” ourself to be is a pseudonym and doesn’t truly exist, so soul forcing from the will is futile. Imagining yourself to be someone you aren’t, is to live from the affections and your change will last only as long as you feel a certain way.

We need transformation, but our world knows little about it. None of us have problems with weight, drinking, spending, discipline, or lust. We only have truth problems: we either don’t know the truth or we won’t apply it. We don’t know who we are, and we don’t know what we want. Our efforts at change are mere distractions.

We need transformation. We need rescue, but will we receive it?

Transformation is not an event, it’s a practice which begins by agreement with our Rescuer. Only our Designer knows how we are designed, thus only God gets to say who we truly are. He has said we are far worse than we realize while also being more loved than we can possibly imagine. We are a dynamic (not static) flow of immeasurable potential for both redemption and ruin, not just of ourself, but of the entire cosmos. Thus transformation goes far beyond looking and feeling better, it’s becoming a new creation which then creates the New World.

Try that as your framework for Truth.

That area we hope to change becomes visible for what it is with five minutes of stillness and humble agreement. This spiritual practice (contemplation) is to join Reality by observing all the noise, thoughts, emotions, planning, memories, dreaming, that activate a million distractions and prevent us experiencing how horrible and beloved we actually are. In the sanctity of being…in Presence…the facade and pretenses vaporize, and insight returns.

Rescue stands ready at any moment, from our humble, receptive position. Just sit still. Ask for God’s grace and rescue. Notice every intruding thought and let them go. Sit wordlessly in God’s grace and help, and just “be.” Once you realize the thoughts aren’t “you” (who is observing them), you’ll have a new ability to “see” this process occur in real-time. As you gain skill, your thoughts, emotions, agitations and twitchy nervous energy will work its way through, and you’ll finally find stillness…in the Truth that rewrites your intellect, affections, will and actions.

That’s transformation.

Taking thoughts captive isn’t easy, but it opens the depth dimension to us. The Bible is right, we are transformed by the renewing of our minds as we know (experience) the Truth. We discover God is always with us, and so long as we’re paying attention, we’re awakened to the next thing to be redeemed in our life and world.