A new understanding of how humans work, part 2

Continuing from part 1, I shall share with you what I have seen to be helpful in understanding the nature of the Three Principles that Sydney Banks uncovered.

Knowing about the Principles intellectually has little power to impact us.

Sydney Banks said that this understanding is a matter of the heart, not the intellect. 

The principles are spiritual and universal in nature. Spiritual here conveys that they are both form and formless. They are universal in that they apply to everyone and everything under all circumstances. The words that Sydney used to express the principles are signposts pointing to that nature.  We are free to switch up the words to whatever makes most sense to us, it doesn’t change their nature.

It is only when we see and feel the nature of the principles for ourselves, through our own insight, that they become transformative. As such their understanding cannot be taught to others in the traditional sense - through intellectual or memory based learning. It is more effective to be grounded in and share what we have seen as a fellow human and not by positioning ourselves as experts. 

Only you have the power to heal yourself

Here’s an important point I wish to make clear upfront. I am sharing what I have seen to be helpful and has touched me, to the best of my ability, as a fellow human being and not as an expert or ‘guru’. They are my personal views and opinions. So take only what you have seen to be helpful or has touched you and park the rest.

I have come to see the projection of expert of ‘guru’ on both myself and others, whilst perhaps an inevitable part of the human experience, are not helpful to any of us. No projection is.

As a client or student these projections place undue responsibility and pressure upon the practitioner or teacher for our healing or transformation. It also disempowers us. 

As a practitioner/teacher, taking on the responsibility for the healing or transformation of our clients/students places undue pressure on us. In the long run that can only lead to burn out and ends up hindering our own and others’ progress. 

When we see projections for what they are - unhelpful thinking - both practitioner/teacher and client/student are let off the hook.

It is worthy to note that this is an essential component in what Jung called individuation - the process of becoming integrated as one whole being. These projections are understandable if we believe that healing or change comes from outside of us in another person or ideal. But if we check, that premise is nuts. Why?

Because no one else can ultimately be responsible for living our life, heal us or give us insights. That power lies solely within us.

My mentor, Rachel Singleton, shared a very helpful reminder to myself and which I say upfront when I work with clients and students. 

I will create a deep listening space.  It is a space that is quiet, deep, safe and vibrant with possibility and wisdom. I shall be here for you in that space. I will give you my clear attention and presence. I will wholeheartedly listen to you and listen for your loving wisdom. You have my full acceptance of where you are, a deep curiosity about where you wish to go and how you wish to be. I am not here to guide, heal or fix you. I am not here to correct you. And I am not here to live your life for you or be your medicine. Only you have that power. I am here to help you find that medicine and freedom in you.

This message now forms a key part of my clinical work, mentoring agreements and teaching activities.

Insightful understanding not intellectual learning

So if learning the Principles intellectually won’t cut it, how the heck does one go about learning them?

Through insightful understanding.

This approach is experiential and based on having our own insights and drawing our own conclusions. In this context, the role of the professional, facilitator or educator is to create the necessary conditions for drawing out those insights from within the client or student. That does all the heavy lifting.

Transformative insights into the nature of who we are and how experience is created can occur at any time, anywhere and in anyone. In practice, certain conditions can catalyse and make it more likely for us to have those insights. 

One of those conditions is looking at implications of the Principles and how to apply them. Also being facilitated or mentored by someone who embodies that understanding and has developed the necessary skills to support you can be most beneficial. 

How insights occur in practice

It's simple.

Listen carefully.

When you truly listen, you are present.

In presence you are not caught up in your intellect which is the repository of past knowledge and the seat of ego.

In presence you are not looking to be right or wrong. You suspend judgments and comparisons. You are open and receptive.

As you listen, you may hear something that touches you.

This can be experienced as a shift into a more peaceful state of mind; your personal thinking slows down. There is a clearing of the clouds of confusion and a settling of the heart. Sydney sometimes used the word soul as a metaphor for the state of pure awareness that is ever present within us and reveals itself when we fall out of our personal thinking. 

This is very commonplace and occurs several times each day and during sleep in pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to about this. We were simply not conscious of it until now. And when we begin to see that it does happen for us and how commonplace it is, we begin to notice it happening more of the time. 

When we find ourselves in that state of mind, fresh new insights come in. At that time we feel a deeper sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves. We are full of love, creativity and wisdom. 

The more we settle into that state, the more we experience its transformative effects. And something very interesting also occurs in that state, our neurophysiological functioning also shifts. We first feel and then become well and whole.

Incidentally, that is the clarity of mind that many meditators experience. Paradoxically, at least for me, the more I tried to achieve that state of clarity during meditation, the less I experienced it. It sometimes took me hours to get anywhere close. By which time I was too exhausted to continue and just went to bed! Later I understood that the act of trying was thinking. Instead of listening, being present and relaxing into that inner space of clarity, I was pushing for an experience. 

The implications of the Principles

One implication is that without these spiritual principles functioning we would not be alive, have any experience, perceive, think or feel anything. 

Another implication is that all our experiences are entirely created by the power of thought in the moment. 

As I explored those implications in the context of my lived experience, I came to see that situations in and of themselves had no power to make me happy or unhappy. It was only the way I was thinking about them that did.

I have found this understanding to be as true for my everyday experiences as for extreme situations and for letting go of past traumatic memories. No doubt, some situations were more intense that others, but I realised that they had no power to make me feel stressed. It was only the belief that I had, inadvertently, placed on my thinking that had that power. The moment I saw that fact, I dropped out of my thinking, into the clarity of my mind and saw fresh new possibilities to navigate through the situation at hand.

Something that I came to see and that was really very helpful is - I had innocently misunderstood that feelings come from the outside rather than created from inside by my thinking. That misunderstanding made me believe that I was unhappy because of the situations I was in, or the past I had. And so it logically followed that I believed that I could only be happy if those conditions changed. That carried through as a belief that I could never be truly happy because of what happened to me in the past.

I also saw that when I was in the midst of a tirade of suffering and confusion (aka a funk), I did not realise that I was caught up in a stream of thinking (usually about the past, future or my wellbeing) which I was feeling in that moment. I believed the experience was ‘real’ and coming from outside of me. Until I didn’t.

Indeed thinking may not always be blaring away. I came to see that they may lie in the back of the mind as a core belief but were functioning to colour my underlying mood. As soon as I saw that the nature of these beliefs were formless thoughts that I was experiencing in the moment, it was easy to drop them.

In other words, moment by moment, we are not actually feeling the situation but our thinking about it.

There is no special type of thinking, theory, methods or techniques required. You only need see the fact that you are feeling your personal thinking about the situation and not feeling the situation itself. That realisation takes a lot off your mind.

Continues in part 3.