When Insight Isn't Enough

By John El-Mokadem

Can a feeling become so familiar that we forget what else is possible?

As some of my readers might know, there has been a lot of grief in our family recently, which has had me revisiting something I used to teach.

In my work with the Three Principles, we always talked about how the feelings we experience are created through thought in the moment. And because thought is transient, our feelings are too.

We used to share an analogy about thoughts being like passengers getting on a bus and why trying to fix a feeling doesn’t really work.

Think about it this way. The nature of a passenger is to eventually get off at a stop. But imagine the conductor (don’t think they exist anymore, but humour me!) starts interviewing the passenger about why they’re on the bus, which is what we often do when we feel an unwanted emotion. Before you know it, there’s an argument going on, and the passenger can’t get off because they’re too busy explaining why they’re there in the first place!

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First published on our Substack, Breakthrough That, on 17 October 2026.