Insight out of insecurity, part 3
“When we’re going along and something is unknown to us, it looks complex. And then we have a realisation and it looks simple.” — Sydney Banks
There is a Chinese proverb that goes something like - you don’t know whether something is true or not until a long time has passed. This is particularly apt for a spiritual realisation since it is formless with real world implications and applications.
So it’s either going to be true, partially true, or complete nonsense. We cannot know either way until we have explored the implications of that insight and see how it plays out in the world of form in generally and particularly how it impacts us.
In this article I shall share a simple yet profoundly practical approach for overcoming insecurity and many other psychological problems.
This understanding is not new and Sydney Banks, who first uncovered it in the 1970’s, did not any make claims otherwise. He spent his life sharing and mentoring many people in what he saw. Among them were several people who held PhD’s in psychology and medical psychiatrists. They have shared their understanding of the principles, with extraordinary results, over the past four decades.
This understanding has also been shared, with great impact, throughout the prison system, slums, gang violence, addictions, youth, activism, human performance, business and spirituality.
I am among an increasing number of practitioners are now looking to see how that understanding applies to the field of health, healing and spirituality.
Spiritual truths, their implications and applications in the everyday world.
When we have an insight into something, we can begin to see how it practically impacts our life.
Consider the realisation that Sydney Banks had which he called the three principles and that can be summarised as,
The formless intelligent energy of all things gives us the capacity of awareness via consciousness and to create via thought.
Sydney named the formless intelligent energy of all things, the principle of universal Mind which has two aspects giving us the capacity to be aware via the principle of Consciousness and to create via the principle of Thought.
Mind explains the intelligent energy that is all of creation. Thought refers to the human capacity to take that energy and create ideas, images and impulses and other things in our own personal mind. So we use the energy of the universe to create everything in our life and that starts with our ability to produce a thought.
Consciousness refers the natural way that thought becomes a reality and comes alive for us through our sensory ability. Once we create a thought we experience it, we feel it - that’s one aspect of consciousness. The other aspect of consciousness is that we can know, are aware, that we are doing that. We can become conscious of the fact that ‘I am the thinker of my own thoughts, I am not the thoughts’, as well as being part of creation.
The principles explain how experience is created - everybody’s experience moment to moment. The principles understanding explains how experience is being created in everybody every minute all the time, no exceptions. That becomes a unifying approach to the field of psychology because to date there isn’t an understanding that underpins all the approaches.
Take the example of when you go to see any cardiologist. While each one may differ in their approach and individual variations of each person’s heart, they all know how the heart fundamentally works. The same cannot be said for the field of psychology which focusses on what’s created, rather than how it’s created. Since psychology doesn’t yet have a unifying understanding of how experience is created, it can only deal with what is created. It looks at the content of thinking and tries to change the content of thinking. It looks at emotions and tries to manage feelings or try to do self-regulation of emotional experience. It also tries to change behaviour by thinking about things differently, changing it in one way of another - tinkering with the contents. These approaches do produce results but are short lived and disproportionate to the amount of effort involved and which needs to be maintained.
The principles understanding is a new paradigm that explains how experience is created and which seeks to procure innate mental health rather than looking to analyse and fix problems. Over the past four decades, it has produced astounding results in the fields of psychology and psychiatry as well as further afield. It is also a spiritual understanding that contains the essential realisations of all religious traditions - love, compassion, tolerance, wisdom and freedom.
When I first heard this, I thought that they were pretty bold claims. I have read extensively how they have been applied, to great benefit, in diverse situations and all types of people for the past 40 years, particularly in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. I have also experienced transformations in my own life and work. So far, those claims are standing up to that scrutiny.
What is the essence of who we are and of all things?
The essence of who we are and all things is known by many names through the millennia and across many cultures. For instance, the ancient Chinese called it Dao, the native American Indians, the Great Spirit, Akua in Hawaiian, God in the Abrahamic religions, Brahman in Hinduism, and Waheguru in Sikhism, to name a few. These names are of course metaphors pointing us to a creative intelligent force that is eternally nameless, mysterious, formless and connects all beings and all things, pervading all time and space. Quiet astonishing really.
The late David Bohm, wrote that
Space is not empty. It is full, a plenum as opposed to a vacuum, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves. The universe is not separate from this cosmic sea of energy.
Bohm was one of the most distinguished theoretical physicists of his generation who fearlessly challenged scientific orthodoxy. His interests and reach extended far beyond physics to influence the fields of biology, psychology, philosophy, religion, spirituality, art, and the shaping of modern society. His approach to diverse issues was the underlying idea that beyond the visible, tangible world there lies a deeper, implicate order of undivided wholeness. Bohm never considered his Ontological interpretation as the last word on quantum theory and instead they were suggested as insights and possibilities for further research.
I myself, and the many people I have met and spoken with, intuit that there is something beyond our intellectual knowledge and that seems to be the source of creation and links everything and everyone. Of course, with no substantial proof, that can be passed off by some as a comforting but ultimately deluded notion. However, I am not so certain of that the spirit of it can be completely extinguished.
implications AND APPLICATIONS of the three principles
A significant implication of the three principles understanding is,
We are feeling the quality and energy vibration of thought moment by moment, not the situation.
What that practically translates to is,
The quality of feeling or energy vibration we inhabit is where we create life from.
What if that is true? What would be like to try that on for size? What would happen if we lived into that implication?
When my mentor, Rachel Singleton, first introduced that notion to me, it resonated with some intuitive knowing deep inside. It was a feeling of openness, possibility, and wonderment. That knowing had been there, dormant, for as long as I can remember. I had not seen it so clearly nor heard it articulated so succinctly until now. For the past year, I have been exploring the implications of that and seeing how it practically applies to my life, work and process of individuation.
As I began leaning into that possibility, I experienced many micro-mental shifts in consciousness. Initially it wasn’t enough to overcome my intellectual reasoning, conditioning and cleverness. As I continued to explore, and lived into those incremental shifts, I noticed the quality of my thoughts and feelings began to shift along with my behaviour, some of which I have shared in previous articles.
who we are and How experience is created
According to this understanding, the three principles are first principles.
At the heart of every scientific discovery is a simple idea that seems to explain everything and from which you can build upon. That’s what the three principles are. The words represent and point to the formless source of life. They describe things that are true, whether we know about them or not. They are the universal principles behind all of the universe, the energy that drives everything. The principles explain the way every thing in life works - that includes everything in the universe at the microscopic and macroscopic level. This includes our bodies, thinking, plants, everything.
According to this understanding, the three principles underlie every single experience, not just some, but every experience. When we see that and awakening to that allows us to help people to understand then change the experience.
So the principles are words that describe how the formless energy of life creates an experience. It’s like life allowing itself to exist and it does that through us - if you’re not alive, you’re not having a psychological reality. Mind is our connection to that life force, it is the energy that creates all things. And there’s an intelligence to that. That intelligence is so powerful and in animals we call that instinct, in plants that’s called information. In humans that intelligence comes to us through thought and consciousness and gives us the capacity to create an experience.
As I have explored and applied them to my life, I have found this understanding to be very simple yet profoundly practical.
How does that help us overcome our problems in general and in particular insecurity?
That simple understanding has very profound implications which can be practically applied for overcoming insecurity or any other psychological problems.
Practically speaking, we can notice that we are thinking and not what we are thinking. And we can also become aware that we are feeling our thinking moment by moment. Feelings are the inner barometer of our thinking and do not come from the situation.
So when we experience insecure feelings, it indicates that we are caught up in insecure thinking. Conversely, when we are not caught up in insecure thinking, we don’t feel insecure. This also applies to whatever personal problems or challenges we experience.
This is an insightful realisation not intellectual knowledge. When we truly see that, not think it, but really feel it, we will have taken ourself off the hook. We will experience much relief and live in freedom. We get to be at ease, loving and responsive around anyone in all situations. And, other that realising it, there is nothing else we need to do.
What if it is that simple?
No, really.
Of course no-one’s words, including mine, has any power to significantly convince, change or heal you. Only what you see, feel and conclude for yourself has the power to do that. And for that reason, I cannot be invested in convincing, healing, changing or fixing anyone per se.
However, I can entirely create the necessary conditions for my clients and students to have their own transformative insights. That is what I now essentially do in sharing what I have found to be helpful and impactful through various activities and going with where my passion and understanding takes me.
I shall now draw this series of articles to a close with a beautiful poem from the great T.S. Eliot. It is an excerpt from the last of his Four Quartets, Little Gidding.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.