Psychology Has It Backwards

Life, as Sydney Banks described it, is "a contact sport."  In a contact sport, each player has great plays and terrible plays.  Wins and losses.  Injuries they cause and injuries that happen to them.  No one can expect smooth sailing under cloudless skies every minute of every day.  Our life is our learning adventure.  Life offers us the development of new skills, the clarity to learn from mistakes, the humility to recognize that denying our role in ups and down holds us back.  Denial sustains the uneasy experience of insecurity.  When we accept human frailty in all of us, when we don't try to evade or deny or refuse to see our part in the course of events, we are cheating ourselves from learning life's lessons, building trust within ourselves and with others, and finding peace of mind.  Denial keeps us stuck in time; denial keeps us stuck in our own beliefs about ourselves and life.  Stuff happens.  We make mistakes.  We are sometimes thoughtless and hurtful.  We are human beings.  Denial slams the door on our spiritual growth and our capacity to acknowledge and learn from our past, and the ability to take responsibility for our own missteps and then let them go.Support the show

When people are in low moods -- such as anxiety, hopelessness, grief, anger, discouragement -- the immediate response is to figure out what or who is bothering us so we can deal with the perpetrator or circumstance that we think is bringing us down.  That is the trick of our mind explained by the Principles.  We are the source of our thoughts -- but as we experience thoughts coming to life, it looks like things are happening TO us.  As we understand that we are the thinkers creating our experience, we find our natural power to navigate ups and downs and realize our power to change.Support the show

Optimism is looking for the best in people and looking for the beauty in life, and trusting we'll see solutions when faced with challenge.  Hopelessness is insecurity about whether people will accept or like us, seeing risk or danger in life, and focusing on analyzing what is wrong when faced with challenge.  Those opposite states are not the result of life; they are the result of how we are using our thinking to describe life.  Hopelessness and Optimism are both habits of thought that we adopt without intent.  Understanding how we think and generate our own unique experience gives us the opportunity to accept that ups and down are part of life, and the assurance that we can always change.Support the show

Over time, we take on ideas about who we are and how we are.  We start to see them as our personality, our character.  Maybe someone we respect has frequently referred to us as a hard worker.  Maybe a friend has commented favorably on our looks.  Maybe a sibling has called us stupid.  Maybe a counselor has diagnosed us as anxious or depressed.  Whatever "labels" have affected us become the story we believe about ourselves.  Without understanding the way Thought works, we can hold ourselves back -- or exceed beyond our dreams -- depending on how seriously we take our labels and whether we recognize that we can decide what thoughts to take to heart, and we can change our minds.Support the show

We don't always realize that the only source of our feelings and experience about life is our power to think and our thoughts coming to life as our personal reality.  So we often "blame" our experience on what other people say or think, or believe that we need others to say or do things to make us happy.  The Principles explain that our experience is generated from within ourselves.  When we see that we can change our minds and change our experience, we know we do not live at the mercy of life circumstances, but we live from the thinking we do about them.  That is the freedom to make the most of life.Support the show

It's natural for people, groups, nations to have differing ideas, and for them to believe in them.  This only creates conflict, hostility, or anxiety when the people involved become attached to their ideas and take them personally.  That can lead to polarization and hostility, rather than interaction from the understanding that every person's thinking looks real to them.  If one party thinks "A" is the answer and another party thinks "Z" is the answer, the solution arises from understanding the power of thought and respectful exploration of each others' ideas, with an eye to possibly finding common ground or even discovering new ideas. Support the show

When events leave people feeling hopeless or afraid, the inclination we have is to share our fear, or to follow people who feel the same.  Yet we know deep down that hopelessness and fear do not solve problems or inspire solutions.  Events have no power to make feel bad or good -- how and what we THINK about events creates our feelings.  As the thinkers, we always have the power to clear our heads and find fresh thoughts.  When things are difficult or confusing, we still have wisdom within us.  If we look towards our innate wisdom, we see what we can do to be helpful, not hopeless.Support the show

"Panic" crops up a lot in conversation. "I realized I forgot to finish that report and I panicked."  "Tests always induce panic in me."  "She panicked when her brother uncovered her secret."  The actual experience of panic -- racing heart, shaking,  sweaty palms -- is unpleasant.  We tend to think events and things induce that feeling in us.  But panic is just the feelings arising from the build-up of distressing thinking.  It's an alarm waking us up to a flood of non-constructive thoughts.  As soon as we're onto ourselves and quiet our minds, the feeling of panic dissolves.Support the show

Most people are taught that productivity makes us feel good about ourselves, proud of our efforts.  It gets linked to well-being.  In truth, when we're not at peace with ourselves, we can't force productivity and if we do a lot of work, it usually leaves us tired and depleted.  When we are at peace in our own minds, feeling at ease and connected to the moment, we are naturally productive because we are focused on what we're doing, not on ourselves and trying to feel better.Support the show

Because thinking is how we make our way through life, we don't realize that we are always making a choice which thinking to follow and which thinking to turn away from.  When we get caught up in negative thinking, and keep focused on it to try to get out of it, we are innocently holding it in place.  That leads to defining ourselves as negative.  We come to expect it.  With understanding of how thought works, we can decide to quiet down and turn away from those thoughts.  As soon as we look in a new direction, new thoughts occur to us.  It's natural to change.Support the show

Why does it matter that we know we are always creating our own experience of life and that only our thinking generates our reality.  No two people create the identical experience.  Realizing this provides us valuable information about how to sidestep disagreements, how to understand other people better, and how to "read" our own and others' moods and reactions.  When we know that thinking is a creative power, we recognize it is a spiritual gift that allows us to change, and find fascination with, rather than reaction to, others' realities.Support the show

"Ego" is whatever we think about ourselves.  Believing those thoughts can result in acting on idiotic ideas.  Such thoughts are illusions we create about what we are or how we should be.  Our thoughts appear real as we're thinking them, but they are no more than illusions we have created.  There is no need to be frightened by illusions that will disappear as soon as we stop thinking them and turn our thoughts elsewhere.  We all live in the same reality, but our experience of it is how and what we think it is, unique to us moment-to-moment.  Recognizing ego-thoughts for what they are -- just fleeting images we are making up in our own minds -- helps us not to become discouraged or frightened by negative thoughts we have about ourselves, and not to become arrogant or boastful about positive thoughts we have about ourselves.  We are all just human beings using the gift of the Principles to think our way through life.  Because thoughts are illusions, images passing through our minds as we create them, we are not prisoners of our own thinking.  We're always just a thought away from creating a different experience.Support the show

People often think that the Principles explain why we are tempted to act on negative past thoughts when they come to mind.  We try to assign blame, or rationalize that we were insecure at the time.  We engage our intellect (our memories) to see how/why thinking and behaviors we wanted to put behind us came back.  We find ways to use the Principles to sidestep accountability and acceptance of what is.  We miss the possibility of going deeper and learning from fresh insight.  Yes, thought creates our experience; but when we are thinking a reality that we don't want, our true gift is we can let any thought go.  Our true guide is the feeling state that comes with thoughts.  If something occurs to us that gives us an uneasy, negative feeling, we know to stop; slow down, remember we are the thinkers and we have the power to take thoughts seriously or let them go.  The experience thought creates is a feeling state; that is what guides us to know whether our thoughts are helpful, constructive, inspiring, or not worth keeping in mind.  Every moment is a fresh start.Support the show

It's true that the only "reality" we experience is created by our thoughts.  But it's not an excuse for acting on any and every thought we have.  We've heard people who have exposure to the Principles say things like, "Yes, I probably shouldn't have done that.  But when it came to mind, it was so real and compelling to me."  We can't forget we have free will to act or not to act on any thought that comes to mind, and we have wisdom to guide us towards or away from our thinking moment-to-moment.  It's important in the understanding of how the Principles work to see deeper than "our thinking becomes our reality."  That alone bypasses the fact that if the reality we're experiencing creates bad feelings, or doubts, or compelling but uncomfortable ideas that might be hurtful to ourselves or others, we can let those thoughts go and see the feelings they're creating as information that tells us we need to quiet down and wait for a clearer head and wiser ideas to come to mind.  Our feelings are a navigational system that guides us to turn away from low mood negative thinking and use our intuition (common sense, judgment) to make choices about thoughts to ignore and thoughts to follow.Support the show

Many people struggle with decisions.  What to do, what to do?  The usual approach is to mull it over; consider all the options, think carefully, solicit a lot of information.  Our tendency is to engage our intellect in analysis of pros and cons, advice and considerations.  This kind of thinking is exhausting and frustrating.  For every pro, we can think of a con.  There are always new ways to look at an issue.  We easily forget to depend on the gift we have for natural insight and clarity: a quiet mind and confidence that from that state of mind, we'll get the answer we need.  We'll "know" and the answer will be obvious.  When we trust our innate wisdom, the experience of decision-making is simple.  We approach life with a clear head and recognize common sense when it occurs to us.  Experience with quieting down and waiting for inspiration when we face new challenges teaches us that answers will always come to us, and the feeling of certainty we get when they do assures us that they are right for us.  We all have what our colleague Christa Campsall calls "our guide inside" — the ability to listen for our own wisdom.Support the show

People sometimes assume that if they really "saw" the Principles, they would always be happy.  The truth is, understanding the Principles that describe how we create experience does not lead to any particular emotional outcome; it simply leads us to accept the rollercoaster of life's ups and downs and the range of emotions we feel as they occur as natural and ever-changing.  We do not need to think ourselves into reaction to our own states of mind and responses to life events.  We don't need to "pretend" to be unaffected by negative events.  We ride the waves without worrying about them.  So, even when we are having negative feelings, we don't get frightened by them, or worried that they will never pass, or concerned that people will judge us.  Life, as Sydney Banks told us, is "a contact sport."  We're meant to take part and experience the thrills, the spills, the wins and the losses, the hurt and the joy as grateful participants in the experience of being a human being.  It's not necessary to fight our feelings when we don't enjoy them; they will pass as life continues to unfold.  Pain is pain; suffering is the way we are thinking about the pain.Support the show

Innate Health is a description of the effect of The Three Principles in action.  Everyone has Innate Health; it is the pure spiritual energy of creation that is aliveness in us.  It is the pure energy we bring to our experience via our power to think.  The Principles have no role in what we think; they describe that we think.  Innate Health is the state we experience when we are in the present moment, with a quiet mind.  It is "innate" because it is natural, neutral life energy, before we add ideas and images that then appear to be real to us in that moment.  Once people see that until we think, we are in neutral, we realize that the power to think again, to get a fresh perspective with one new thought, to have faith in the universal gift of Thought, is the power we have to come back to neutral and clear our minds and think again.  Innate Health is the fact of humanity that allows us to forgive ourselves and others for thoughts we regret acting on, or for getting stuck in negative thinking about life or people.  As soon as we "see" that, we are able to come to peace and open our minds to insights and fresh ideas.Support the show

It seems like anxiety is a plague of contemporary life.  Anxiety is a feeling generated from our habit of constant access to an overload of information and entertainment, and the fear of missing out (FOMO in today's internet shorthand).  We've lost our appreciation for stillness, for quiet moments of appreciating beauty and the delight of presence in the moment.  We check our phones constantly; when we have a little time, we often open up a game or puzzle, rather than noticing our surroundings, or chatting with others.  When we keep our minds racing through a thicket of thoughts, we start to feel the pressure of a busy mind.  Did I miss something?  What have I forgotten to do?  Is that my phone?  I need to check my texts.  Exhausted mind.  Anxiety.Support the show

The higher the IQ a person has and the more they have depended on analysis and retention of information, using what they know to "figure out" what to do moment-to-moment, the harder it is for them to trust insights — fresh ideas that just pop up for us.  Many of us have rejected helpful ideas we've had, inspiring new thoughts, because we hadn't analyzed the situation sufficiently to believe we could trust an unexpected insight, even if it made sense.  Once we understand the way our minds work, and we recognize that wisdom is always available to us, it's like discovering that behind the thick vegetation we thought defined the limits of our property, a lovely river flowed, offering a constant source of all the clear, fresh water we could want.  Until we knew it was there, we had to figure out how to get water every day, driving several miles to find places to fill jugs and buckets.  But when we stumbled upon a path behind the house one day and walked through it, there was the river.  It was always there for us, but we had to discover it for ourselves to believe that we would never lack for fresh water again.Support the show

The good news about understanding the Three Principles: We are the thinkers of our own thoughts and we can create anything.  The "bad" news about understanding the Three Principles: We are the thinkers of our own thoughts; our thinking creates our reality; we are totally responsible for our moment-to-moment experience of what our life offers.  For many people who have spent a lot of time telling therapists and friends about their awful pasts, or the people who have disappointed them or hurt them or made them angry, or the many reasons they have to be cynical or depressed or hopeless... the Principles at first are scary.  But it dawns on all of us that we don't need anything or anyone outside ourselves to take care of our bad feelings.  We are the thinkers creating our lives; we can turn away from dark thoughts; we can quiet our thinking and find our own wisdom; we can think anything.  We are responsible for ourselves.  That is freedom.Support the show

Chris and Judy confess to their own habitual perfectionism.  We've learned from years of delving deeply into the Principles that it's just a thought not worth taking seriously, and harmless when we can laugh it off or let go of it.  Thoughts that seem vitally important to our happiness or impossible standards we set for ourselves, our lives, or other people, are just ideas that we adopted at one point to feel more secure.  When we understand how thought works, and the true source of and release from insecurity, then we have the option of remaining attached to habits that are harmless and enjoyable.  For example, we enjoy getting dressed up.  But if it's inconvenient, we just go where we need to go as we are.  We don't want to make mistakes, but we're over being embarrassed or crushed to discover we've made them.  Security is acceptance of our humanity.  That's the perfection that is our birthright, that comes from the peace of mind inside of us.Support the Show.

Anger is a warning that we are taking things personally.  Anger rises up when we think that someone or something is making us upset, hurting our feelings, undercutting us, not caring how they impact us.  We stop listening to what is being said and start listening to our own reactions.  We feel or express defensiveness.  Anger is no different from any other experience; OUR thinking creates ALL our experiences.  As we come to understand that our feelings reliably tell us how well we are using our own power to think, we can sidestep bad feelings that come with taking things personally and realize that everyone is speaking from their own state of mind.  If they are insecure, their "tone" might be off; but if WE are insecure, we might hear information as personal and react, not respond.Support the Show.

We have talked before about the potential harm from taking diagnoses seriously.  Diagnoses are a snapshot in time, not the portrait of who you are deep-down.  The manual of Diagnoses the mental health professionals use is a huge catalogue naming observed behaviors of people who appear to be "mentally ill."  From our perspective, they are descriptions of the individual creativity we express via our power to think, representing our most insecure thinking in low states of mind.  It is never helpful to explore the details or the content of the thinking.  When we recognize insecure feelings and understand that they pass when we quiet down and leave our thinking alone, our thinking naturally comes into balance and we no longer exhibit "diagnoses."Support the Show.

When it comes to escaping negative thinking, less is more.  As we become increasingly aware of the Principles at work, we increasingly realize that we always have natural peace of mind available to us and we don't have to manage our thinking to find it.  We know that bad or sad feelings are signals that tell us we are using that power against ourselves.  We become comfortable with ups and downs, with thoughts coming and going and our feeling states changing as they do.  We don't take negative thoughts seriously or get drawn into them.  We live in the intention to find neutral and to look towards a positive feeling because the quality of our thinking in that state of mind brings us clarity and wisdom and insight.  We don't dwell on negative thoughts or try to do anything about them.Support the Show.

When we have a lot of negative thoughts on our mind, they look very real and upsetting to us and we get the feeling we have to do something about them to get away from them.  Or we get the feeling there must be something wrong with us, and we have to figure them out or discuss them with others to resolve them.  But, as a colleague of ours often used to say, "The life of a thought is as long as you think it, not a moment longer."  The strategies we come up with to escape our negative thoughts or get rid of them just hold them in place, exacerbating the frustration of negativity.  As counterintuitive as it seems, we never have to "deal with" the content of thoughts to get it off our minds.  If we leave it alone, look away, don't take it to heart, it will pass.Support the Show.

We created this podcast live with an audience at the Three Principles conference in London.  Chris was on stage in London; Judy was being broadcast from her home in Pittsburgh, appearing on a big screen on stage with Chris.  People often ask how we develop ideas, how long it takes to prepare our material, etc., so we decided to show them.  We asked for a subject from the audience.  Someone responded quickly that he would like to hear us talk about how people know when they're ready to share their understanding of the 3P.  We chatted about it for a couple of minutes, then we started recording the podcast.  We did our usual 25 minutes or so, sharing what we see about the topic.  The point was if we talk from the heart about what we truly know, if we listen deeply to each other, we're ready to share.Support the Show.

Clients normally seek mental health help when they are facing "problems" they feel they can't resolve.  A question others ask us is, "If you're not paying attention to their problems and helping them to solve them, then why do they keep coming to you?"  Some people are concerned that we "brush off" problems and don't listen to our clients.  Grounding in the Principles makes it natural for us to listen for and touch the innate mental health in our clients, even as they are describing their problems and concerns.  We try to hear beyond the details to the understanding natural to all people.  It doesn't matter what we're talking about with clients, we move in the direction of health and wisdom.  We don't see our clients as broken or damaged by events in their past or their lives now.  We speak from our trust in innate mental health and our understanding of how the mind works to draw out their health and help them realize the nature of thought, and the gifts they have to awaken to their own wisdom.Support the Show.

When people become curious about the Three Principles, they often think of our work as a tool to add to their tool kit.  So sometimes it seems confusing when we make a point about not "mixing" the 3P with other approaches.  The reason is that, although there are well-established approaches that do help people, the assumptions of other approaches are that people are affected by circumstances that have to be dealt with.  We assume that people all have innate mental health as a birthright, even if they've lost touch with it, and our goal is to awaken it within them and guide them back to their innate wisdom, peace of mind, and contentment.  Once they understand how their thinking creates their experience and see how to recognize their own common sense, they get insights about their life situations.  We are not offering information and answers or methods to help them; we are eliciting and explaining their own ability to find clarity and recognize their power to see beyond any circumstances to the answers they need.Support the Show.

There are many expressions that are used when people are sharing the Principles that are easily grasped and interpreted by our intellect, but do not mean what people commonly think they mean.  Our intellect, the repository of everything we have learned or know so far, is quick to jump in and give us easy answers.  That is why we tell people to listen for the feeling, or listen beyond the words.  Here we offer some examples of this.  A common one is the word "listen."  The intellect listens to remember information.  A good listener, to most people, is someone who can retain and repeat information they've heard.  When we talk about listening, we're talking about having nothing on our mind at all as we take things in, and then, from a clear mind, "hearing" what we have taken from the experience.  Listening is not thinking about what another person is saying as they talk; listening is a deeper experience of understanding.  Our words do not do justice to the depth of the Principles.Support the Show.

When we decide we want to change or we feel we need to change, we often work at it.  We try really hard to change.  We come up with strategies; we seek advice; we read self-help books; we go to courses, thinking we'll find a technique, or a means to fix ourselves.  Too often, that leads to hopelessness and discouragement.  Too often we monitor ourselves and force ourselves and get ourselves so stressed and anxious that we give up.  Trying hard, despite good intentions, rarely works for long.  True change does not come from more intensity and greater effort from the same level of thinking; it arises from wisdom that guides us in a new direction from the quietude of our own minds.  We can't think our way into a different experience of life, but when we look to quiet our thinking and "allow" fresh thought to occur to us, we find inspiration and clarity and a new direction easily, and change is natural and effortless.  Sometimes we hardly realize it until someone else notices that we are different.Support the Show.

This is the first installment of occasional podcasts we are going to make with Hawaii Counseling and Education Center (HCEC) intern, Spirit, to track his journey from traditional psychological training into becoming a counselor whose work is grounded in the Principles.  Chris started HCEC 40 years ago, the very first clinic in the US founded on the Principles, and has sent many interns out into the world over time.  Their journey into lifelong learning reveals how this work differs from traditional psychology.Support the Show.

A listener of this podcast asked us to explain what we mean when we tell people to "reflect."  When we're trying to understand ourselves and life, we tend to ask ourselves "why" questions.  Why is this happening to me?  Why can't I come up with an answer?  Why did so-and-so do this to me?  The list is endless.  "Why?" takes us in the wrong direction because it gets our personal thinking going -- we start scrambling through the memory library looking and feeling worse and worse.  Reflection means wondering, being curious about what we don't know or see yet, keeping our minds open for insights, inspiration, fresh ideas, staying in the present moment.  Everyone can recall "effortless" times in their life when things just flowed.  Those times seem "magical;" they are the actual magic of living naturally in the present, in a state of reflection, trusting that you'll know what to do and knowing, when it comes to mind, that it's right.  Answers that emerge from reflection feel obvious and simple, no second-guessing.Support the Show.

We are all "lifelong learners" but we are taught early on to "figure things out."  Everyone can remember being told as a child, "Think about it.  You'll figure it out."  As we move through life, we spend more and more time going over and over life situations in our minds, trying to come up with answers, or asking other people for answers and then trying to figure out how to follow their ideas.  This takes us away from the most wonderful resource we have:  the ability to have original thought, ideas that occur to us out of the blue in a quiet state of mind.  When we are looking for what we don't know, we won't find it in our stored thought (our personal mind), which only contains memories, things we DO know.  But we have a safety net, the capacity to stop trying to come up with an answer and wait, in a quiet state of mind, to see what occurs to us.  Fresh answers come from before our personal thought; they arise from a deeper wisdom, before thought, always accessible when we have faith it is there for us.Support the Show.

We are very dependent on our intellect (everything we already know that is stored in our brain) for a lot in life.  It allows us to remember how to run things, where we put things, what we've learned, how to find our friends' houses, how to do our jobs, phone numbers, people's names, etc.  Sometimes people hear us talking about looking to live from original thought, wisdom, and common sense rather than from memory as if we had to reinvent the wheel every day.  Or they hear "wisdom" as something really special and hard to attain.  Original thoughts are fresh ideas we get that are perfect for that moment in time, or for the problem at hand.  They come to us out of the blue and they come with a feeling of certainty that they're just what we need to know.  If we spend our lives in our intellect, applying what we know to seek new answers, trying to figure everything out, it's exhausting.  If we accept everything we know as a resource and look for wisdom to keep life fresh, in-the-moment and interesting, we live at peace.Support the Show.

We might awaken from nightmares frightened or sad, but as soon as we wake up we realize it was just a dream.  Even if we find our dreams disturbing, we know they are dreams.  Yet when we fall into low mood thinking or get stuck on troubled memories or entertain fears during the day, we don't call them "daymares."  We don't realize we can "wake up" and put those thoughts behind us.  We're always thinking.  Thoughts come to mind.  If they are distressing, they affect our feeling state and we can hop on a train of negative thinking.  But when we know we just got caught up in some negative thoughts, they have no more power than nightmares, just temporary intrusions into the moment.Support the show

Low mood thinking is always compelling because it generates strong feelings and it arises from insecurity.  So it looks like we have to do something about it.  It is habitual thinking that comes to mind from our memories with a familiar feeling, which gives it more weight.  People complain about being "plagued" or "haunted" or "frequently visited by" negative thoughts, and the need to "deal with" them.  The Principles show us that thoughts are nothing more than images brought to mind by our own power to think.  As the thinkers we are always at choice.  Turn away from them.  See them as signals to quiet down and let our mind rest.  Not take them seriously because they have no power but the power we give them.Support the show

People are often confused by the power we have as thinkers to create our experience of reality.  It does NOT mean that we can stare at a new car in a showroom and manifest it in our life; it does not mean we can wish for an outcome of a situation and make it happen.  Life is happening; there is actual reality in which we live.  But what WE see of it, we see from our own thinking.  So in a low state of mind, we might look out at a rainy day and feel glum about having to go out in it.  In a different state of mind, we might just remember to take an umbrella and feel grateful that the rain will help the flowers grow.  Reality does not create what we think and feel about it; we create what we think and feel about reality.Support the show

When we recognize the simplicity of living in the now, following our wisdom as things come to mind, we live at peace.  We benefit from a flow of insight which allows us to see more clearly our own power to think and create our experience of reality and understand life.  We learn as we go, finding the lessons and blessings in disappointment as well as in great outcomes.  We are inspired by fresh thought, and we start to see that we can't figure things out or force a plan to work out; but we always get the thought we need when it's needed and we are guided through life.  When we ruminate about the past or worry about the future, we accidentally abandon our natural peace of mind to things outside our control.Support the show

The definition of changing our minds is "having a new thought."  It is natural to allow thoughts to come and go, responsive to the moment, without attachment to any thought.  If we get stuck on a thought, though, we hold onto it.  We think some things so often for so long that they seem more "real" to us.  We all have ideas we assume are true because we've always thought them.  We easily let go of passing thoughts and we change our minds all day long without even realizing it.  In the face of habitual thoughts, though, it takes an insight to change.  As we understand the true nature of thought, we increasingly lose attachment to our thoughts and live in the moment, easily changing our minds.Support the show

Each one of us is always creating our own experience of reality with our unique power to think.  So there really is no such thing as objective reality.  We all see what we see; someone looking at the same situation will see it differently.  Indeed, in a different state of mind, WE may see it entirely differently.  So our experience of life is unique to each of us, and what we see for ourselves looks compelling and true to us.  The Principles explain this.  Seeing the truth of this reveals why disagreement and conflict occur and why they are understandable and forgivable.  We're all acting on what appears to be true or right to us; no one else sees it exactly as we do.Support the show

A lot of people talk about "doing the Principles," or "using the Principles," or "combining the Principles with other 'approaches,'" or thinking the Principles are a "really interesting method."  That downplays the power of Principles as words that stand for and describe formless power, the essential energy, from which all creation takes form.  We use words to represent the idea of what that energy means.  But the Principles are the understanding of how life works that wisdom brings us when we look away from the form and deeper within our own soul or consciousness to gain "insight."  Long before we had words for them, before we "knew them," the Principles were the eternal laws of creation. Support the show

When you hear about the Principles, you hear of "Levels of Consciousness."  What does this mean?  Our ever-changing "level" is the degree to which we have insights that lead us to realize that all thought is illusion, merely what we make up in the moment.  All of it, even though early on, much of it seemed "real."  The more we realize that the power to think is what sets us free and the content is variable and transitory, the higher our level of consciousness.  The level is our ability to live at peace, knowing that everyone's thoughts are unique.  It allows us to find love and understanding for all people because we are all the same before we create the illusion, just thinkers making up our experience of what we see.Support the show

Listening to others in neutral is difficult until we understand how thinking works in all of us.  Everyone is creating their own experience of every moment in life.  No two people see anything exactly alike; we all think our own thoughts and draw information from our own memory and see things in our own way.  And we express what we see to each other.  Knowing how the power of thought works allows us not to take things personally, but to listen to each other without judgment.  We can learn from others' ideas when we can truly listen; and we find compassion for others who may appear to be harsh or critical or emotional because we understand it is their state of mind and thinking we are hearing, not anything about us.Support the show

Many people ask us whether encouraging people to find a calm state of mind and contentment isn't just positive thinking.  Our state of mind is BEFORE what we think; when we are at peace and our minds are quiet, the quality of thoughts we produce is a much higher level than the thoughts we produce from a negative or upset state of mind.  The problem with the technique of Positive Thinking is that is doesn't come from our own level of Consciousness; it's a technique we impose on ourselves to try to feel better.  We don't truly SEE or believe those thoughts.  When we address our state of mind and quiet down, more positive thoughts naturally come to mind; we don't need to read them from a list.Support the show

The Principles describe the way the formless energy behind life manifests in the creation of form.  They describe the way creation works.  Divine Mind, formless intelligent energy, is the force behind all of creation.  Divine Thought is what allows us to bring ideas and images to life within our own minds.  Divine Consciousness, the energy behind awareness, allows us to see our thoughts as true, as the reality we experience.  The Principles are descriptive of what it means to be alive and how we navigate our way through the world in which we live.  They are not a Theory.  They are the true explanation of the inside-out nature of our experience of life; we are living what we think and thus see as real. Support the show

Discernment is not judgement.  We can speak up if we see a friend heading down a dangerous path, or if we notice a client shading the truth, etc.  The difference between the negativity of "judgement" and exercising our common sense with good will and a loving feeling is the difference between harboring negative opinions and speaking from wisdom when we see something of concern.  It would not be an act of love or a responsible service to others to fail to reprimand a child for stealing, or try to stop a friend from entering a bad deal.  As long as we are coming from a good feeling and sincerity, we should be true to wisdom and be able to express concerns without harm to others.Support the show

Not being judgmental does not mean not using common sense to speak up or act honestly when we see people we care about or people we serve doing things that are contrary to living at peace, in harmony with life.  Syd says "a non-judgmental mind is a mind at peace."  That refers to things like personal judgments -- resentments, attitudes towards certain types of people or negativity, things that carry a bad feeling.  But, for example, if you know someone you love is using dangerous drugs, the loving thing to do is to exercise your judgment that you will not encourage drug use or overlook it.  It would make no sense to support the person's drug use to avoid looking judgmental.Support the show

People often express confusion about Sydney Banks' advice to "just be yourself; be ordinary."  They hear it as if it means "mediocre" or "not realizing your potential."  Actually, the deeper meaning of "ordinary" is "part of the order of things," and that is what we point to with the Principles.  Everyone comes into life with extraordinary gifts: the divine universal energy of Mind powers us to be able to create Thought and become Conscious of our Thoughts as our reality.  To be ordinary is to be comfortable in your understanding of the order of things and the power you have to use these gifts to create the life you want.  That's special, but it's available to all people, so it's ordinary.Support the show

It's that time of year again when we're all expected to be joyful and enthusiastic, and a lot of people just feel stressed, pressured, and anxious about doing all the things they think they have to do for the holidays. We forget that we're making it up. It's our own thinking about holidays, our own exaggerated ideas of what we need to get done, our own pressure to make everything perfect for friends and family, that creates a lot of worried, stressful thinking. We don't lose our natural resilience during the holidays; we simply forget to depend on it and get caught up in thinking and planning and striving. When we start feeling the tension build, it's a good time to stop, clear our heads, and quiet down. It all works out.Support the show

(We are re-sharing a podcast from last year during the holiday season because it feels timely to us to remind ourselves and all of us that love and understanding are the answer to to human suffering and the problems of the world.)The universal energy of creation finds expression in human beings through our ability to think and experience our thinking.  It moves from perfect formlessness into the forms we create via thoughts.  We "see" thoughts come to life as our personal reality.  We remember our thoughts, which become our personal "library."  But each moment is a moment in which we choose to recall and reconsider memories or bring fresh thoughts from formless energy to form, so every moment offers the possibility of a fresh start.  When we discover our true spiritual nature, formless energy at the essence, we are in touch with pure, unconditional love and understanding, the source of life and the forms we give love in it.Support the show

Many people struggle with the painful feeling of shame.  Perhaps we were told as children that we "should be ashamed" of something.  Perhaps we suffered mistreatment that we interpreted to mean we were not worthy of love and care.  Perhaps we did things for which we harbor shame.  Shame is nothing more than a negative thought about ourselves.  As we understand that people are always doing what makes sense to them at the time, given their level of consciousness, we realize that there is nothing to be ashamed of.  We can see beyond negative situations and learn from them, but there is no shame in being human.Support the show