Psychology Has It Backwards

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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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