Psychology Has It Backwards

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.