Memories are stored thoughts, like all information we have accumulated.  They have no "power" until we focus on them.  Otherwise, they are like books we've already read on the shelf, unimportant unless we take them down and start reading again.  They have "invisible" power only because, when they come to mind, Consciousness brings them to life and we re-experience them.  If they are good memories, we call that reminiscing.  If they are painful memories, we call it suffering.  But no matter, memories are just thoughts, not things that are happening in the present.  We decide how much time and attention to give them.  When we turn away from them and come back to the present, they are gone.

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We often encourage our clients to "reflect" rather than "think about" or "figure out" life situations.  Reflection is a quiet mind in a peaceful feeling; it is when we turn off the spigot of our personal thinking and listen for the natural flow of the stream of wisdom.  Wisdom comes to us directly from the unknown, before thought, and it is our source of guidance, insight, fresh ideas, and just common sense.  Wisdom informs the intellect but the intellect has nothing to offer wisdom.  When our minds are quiet, regardless of what is going on around us, we can count on wisdom to give us the thoughts we need in that moment.  Quiet is our natural state of mind, the default setting we return to when our personal thinking stops.

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When we talk about living a happy life, we are not talking about living in denial of the facts of life events, we are not describing a life miraculously free of trouble, we are not suggesting a strategy of avoidance.  Happiness is a deep feeling of well-being, of confidence in our moment-to-moment access to the guidance of wisdom and insight, of faith that we have all our resources to address life issues available from a quiet and content mind.  Happiness shines from people; we are all drawn to people with that bright life force.  Happy people respond to life moment-to-moment.  They do not dwell on the past or worry about the future, but create the best possible response to life in the present.

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Unlike other therapy approaches, The Three Principles has one primary goal for therapy: Happiness.  While that seems counterintuitive to people who seek therapy to address problems or resolve issues, it is the expression of the profound truth of the Principles: Before the formation of thought, we come into the world at peace and content and living from wisdom.  As our intellect gathers memories, we have the free will to look for answers there and to try to figure things out.  But the intellect only knows what we already know.  From a quiet and content mind, confident that we can access wisdom and insight in the moment to address all life situations, we live from happiness, not at the mercy of distress.

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Traditional psychologies diagnose what's wrong with clients and help them "fix" issues.  To us, that does not lead clients to a deeper understanding from which they can access their spiritual power to think, and to recognize our shared origin from the intelligent, formless energy of life, the source of wisdom.  We point to the deep feelings of peace and security that arise from touching our spiritual essence and trusting wisdom to guide us through life.  Our intellect, our personal thinking, then becomes a resource for wisdom, not a frustrating means of trying to use our memories to "figure out" how to deal with life, rather than getting fresh insights in the moment.  We see the freedom to create our experience as we go.

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For 50 years, since Sydney Banks first shared his profound insight into how the intelligent energy of creation manifests in human beings as the power to think, to create our unique experience of life, some people have called us a cult.  Mr. Banks spent his life telling people not to be followers, but to find their wisdom and insight to guide them through life.  He shared what he saw about the innate health within all people.  He refused to give advice, and avoided any situation in which people tried to make this about him personally, not about his discovery.  We are people who all see the beauty and power within everyone, and point people to their innate capacity for peace and joy.  No one tells us what to think or do.

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"What do you mean by 'change is one thought away'?" people often ask us.  "Isn't change a hard, long process of working through stuff?"  As we come to understand the inside-out nature of thought, how our thoughts create the moment-to-moment reality we experience, we recognize that change occurs when we realize something we didn't know before.  For example, in 3 Principles work, many people's lives changed completely as soon as they realized their feelings were a reliable guide to the quality of their thinking, and they didn't need to "figure out" ways to get rid of negative feelings.  All it took was quieting their thoughts and allowing new thoughts to come to mind.

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Those who have spent their lives accumulating knowledge and working hard to figure things out have, without realizing it, gotten lost in the Memory Library.  Our personal thinking, a product of active, busy minds, lives there.  It can only work with already-thought thoughts, what we already know, which is why we get frustrated going over and over the same problems with no new solutions, or asking the same questions, with no new answers.  Inspiration, insight, fresh ideas, aha! moments all come to us when our active thinking quiets and we are curious and open to see something new.  Then wisdom, the spiritual source of fresh thought that is our inner guidance system, comes to mind.

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