A user’s guide to being human

I want to share a simple understanding of how you can be happy, feel well and thrive more of the time.

People normally seek my services to help them find a solution to a problem or heal from a health concern.

While my clients end up feeling better, find a solution to their problems, or heal from a particular health concern, my focus is no longer on trying to make them feel better, heal or fix them. That power lies wholly within them. Instead, my focus is on creating the conditions that make it easier for them to have the insights that will make the biggest difference on their health, happiness and thriving.

This approach, called Sovereign Insight, is grounded in an understanding of how humans work. Knowing how we work makes us work so much better. It takes a lot of thinking off our minds, making it possible to see solutions with utmost clarity, greatly elevating our experience of life and heals us.

Waking up to your natural birthright

You see, each of us without exception has built in wisdom, resilience, creativity. We have a remarkable capacity to discover, create and find ways through any problem. We also have an astounding ability to heal ourselves. All we need to do is wake up to that inner source of wisdom and innate health. There are many ways to do this.

My job is to create the conditions necessary for my clients to see the truth of that for themselves. When that happens it does all the heavy lifting - consistently and reliably.

When necessary, I recommend, advise or prescribe a course of action or treatments that can support them. However, most people invariably end up finding the solutions to their problems or take the necessary steps to heal from sickness by themselves.

A false premise based on an innocent misunderstanding

My main goal used to be on helping my clients have a better experience of life, find a solution to their problems, and to cure them of a particular health issue. I had assumed that it was my duty, what was expected of me and ultimately what I got paid for. However, unknowingly, that was where a lot of the problems began. Why?

The tacit premise was I had all the answers and that I was the gate-keeper of special knowledge that could solve their problems, make them feel better, heal or fix them. 

However, this premise was not entirely true and was ultimately disempowering for both myself and the patient/client. It was based on a misunderstanding that:

• all our problems and sickness come from outside ourselves.

• our bodies, thoughts and emotions are inherently broken and needed patching up or fixing.

• we lack the ability to solve our own problems and to fully heal ourselves.

There is a prevailing view, based upon an innocent misunderstanding of who we are and how our experiences are created, that we are limited to physical existence and that our experiences come from outside ourselves. 

While there are many theories and ideas about who we are and where our experiences come from, a clear understanding of the universal principles of how humans work is not yet in general circulation.

And while this misunderstanding remains, it will never really lead to a full and satisfactory resolution of our outer or inner problems or health issues. It can also create a cycle of dependency and loss of personal agency. So can we end up giving over to an external authority to solve our problems and heal us. This often leads to a great deal of stress and disappointment as both the practitioner and client fail to get the results they wanted. Based upon what I now understand, this approach is no longer viable nor sustainable for myself or my clients. Here’s what lead to the shift in my approach

Grounding in a new understanding of how humans work

Back in the 1970’s a Scottish welder living in British Columbia, called Sydney Banks, uncovered the pre-existing constants or principles behind our psychological or spiritual life. That one insight changed everything for Syd and subsequently the lives of countless people who came into contact with his teachings.

The spiritual nature of our existence and how reality is created by consciousness was not new to me. I had studied and had some understanding from my lifelong studies of Buddha’s teachings, meditation practice, Far Eastern philosophy, Daoist medicine and the healing arts. However, that understanding and personal experience did not always translate to how I could practically help others heal themselves. I was not able to give my clients a concise, reliable and coherent explanation of who they are and how their minds created their entire experience of reality. The actual mechanism had eluded me until now.

I became preoccupied with how I could help people with no background in spirituality or meditation to understand how their minds work to create their unique experience of reality. It was also a personal quest to see this more clearly for myself. I intuitively knew that this understanding was key for solving all our problems and healing ourselves. At that time it hadn’t occurred to me that words do not change us, only our own experiences do. So for a while my spiritual and daily life remained unintegrated.

Along the way I acquired an eclectic tool kit ranging from meditation techniques, the latest self-help methods, depth psychology, qigong, dietary modifications, nutrition, meditation, various styles and traditions of Chinese medicine and practices, Byron Katie’s “The Work” etc. These techniques and practices would work for while, but the effects would not hold for long. Sooner or later, people ended up repeating the same patterns that made them unhappy or unwell. Later I realised that, through nobody’s fault, we hadn’t uncovered the hidden forces that kept us locked in a cycle of unhappiness and sickness.

So while Sydney did not uncover anything new, he did however clearly and succinctly describe the pre-existing constants or principles of how the mind works and how we create our experience of reality. What was remarkable was that he didn’t have a background in religion, spirituality, philosophy, psychology, medicine or the healing arts in his lifetime. Prior to uncovering the principles that changed the course of his life and countless others, he was a welder by profession with a basic high school education.

So far, this understanding has lead to insights that help me integrate my spiritual with daily life and has greatly impacted my work. It has given me a clear and simple way to help my clients have the insights that lead them to finding their own solutions and heal themselves. I have also healed from a long standing medically ‘incurable’ sickness. Life is no longer experienced as a tussle between the spiritual vs the material world, of the heart vs the head.

How human nature works

A principle is a scientific word for a force or foundation behind life.  Sydney named the principles that create our experience of reality, Mind, Consciousness and Thought. 

Mind is the energy and intelligence behind all things whether in form or formless (which are actually not separate).

Consciousness is the universal power to be aware. It’s not WHAT we are conscious of, but THAT we are all conscious.

Thought is the universal power to create via thought. It is not so much WHAT we think but THAT all we think.

Another succinct way of expressing how our mind works to create our experiences via the three principles is that we are alive (Mind), we are aware (Consciousness), and we think (Thought).

Although this understanding is spiritual in nature, it is not a religion. It has no guru, practices, initiations, charismatic leader or a physical HQ. Any attempts to do so was highly discouraged by Sydney Banks during his lifetime because the true centre is the formless essence within all of us.

In summary

Whilst I care and do not wish people to suffer, my focus is no longer on what’s wrong with my clients, help them solve their problems, fix or heal them. I do not have the power to fix, heal or change anyone. That power lies solely within them.

My role is to create the conditions that catalyse life changing insights within my clients. So when people seek my help to heal their specific health concern or other issues, I point them upstream to see the source of the problem. This not only removes the problem downstream, but also clears up the misunderstanding and so problems no longer recur.

I work with individuals and groups of people from a variety of backgrounds including doctors, healthcare providers, acupuncturists, alternative medical practitioners, coaches, healers, artists, executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, spiritual teachers and change workers.

In short, what I essentially do is help my clients see that the quality of feeling, energy vibration or consciousness they inhabit is where they create their life and health from.

In future articles I shall unpack these principles and examine their implications and applications in creating human happiness, health and thriving.