The three principles have been created by Sydney Banks. He was a Scottish welder. Not an educated psychologist or religious teacher. During a remarkable experience he had an epiphany. It was a simple insight that wasn’t actually new because it merely describes how human experience works. Many religions and philosophers write about this too, all using different words to describe the same thing. In America and the UK the principles are already well known, and are used by psychologists and psychiatrists. The three principles are Mind, Consciousness, and Thought. These three words may mean nothing to you, but every human experience only exists because of these three principles, you experience things through these principles.

You came into this world

You probably didn’t ask for it but still you are in a specific place. You have a body, and there is a life force within you, your heart beats automatically, your lungs breathe, your food is digested, cuts and grazes heal, and this all happens without you having to think about it. This life force or life energy also exists in everything in nature, a lavender seed does not become a tulip, a lavender seed becomes a lavender plant. Maybe you don’t understand what I’m getting at, but everything in nature has a specific path. And you are specifically you, you may (metaphorically) be a tulip, or a rose, but if you try do be a daisy, your life might become tricky. You are a soul, an essence, and you are connected to everything in nature that also has this force of life. You may think you can exist all by yourself, but that isn’t true. Because if your parents hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t have either. If there weren’t any trees, we couldn’t exist or breathe. We are all part of a whole, a planet that everybody needs to exist. Without bees there’s no pollination, because of that there’d no fruit, because of that there’d no food for the animals. It is a system in which everything is dependant on other things, and everything has its place, or role to play. You and I serve a specific purpose in this life as well, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.

Human beings have also been given the capacity to think

This is a beautiful and powerful tool for creating things. You can create your life from the inside, and apply it to the outside world. What do I mean by this? Imagine two people sitting on a bench, and they are both looking out at the park. They could both be seeing or interpreting things differently. One of them might see a grumpy neighbour, but the grumpiness could be an interpretation that was created on the inside. The other might see a man ‘lost in thought’. Thoughts make us feel a certain way. Sometimes we feel joy, sadness, fear, anger, repulsion, love, or guilt and shame. Thoughts we accept as truths become our beliefs. But these thoughts and consciousness can also make us feel really special. Our body produces all kinds of

substances, that can make us feel rushed, or rather, calm and peaceful. This realisation that you transfer everything from the inside to the outside world, has been a huge eye-opener for me.

I didn’t have an easy childhood

Between the ages of 12 and 19, I suffered from bouts of depression and anxiety, and was admitted for long periods of time. I used to think things like ‘I am worthless’, ‘I can’t trust anybody’, ‘life is hard’, and ‘I am too complicated’. These thoughts made me very unhappy, but I had accepted them as my reality. It made me feel really gloomy, about everything. I also had physical complaints, like a shortage of serotonin. No matter what people said to me, I didn’t process any of it, because I was so focused on everything that went wrong and everything that caused me pain.

These days, there are many methods that focus on positive thinking

But actually, that is very unnatural to a person. We have around 60.000 thoughts a day, sometimes they’re nice and sometimes they’re not. Some thoughts put us into action, and some don’t. Thoughts just occur, you can’t do much about that, but the realisation that you are the one who chooses whether to act on a thought or not, really changed my life. It really brought me home, is how I would now describe it. Things just happened automatically, without me having to work very hard for it. As I wrote before, everyone is a soul, an essence, and valuable. Only we also have the capacity to think we aren’t. We are like diamonds, and we have thoughts, feelings, and experiences that can cover the diamond like mud. Coming home was wiping this mud away, and realising that these thought weren’t necessarily true. Mind you, this wasn’t always an easy process. Sometimes I felt pain, sadness, fear, or anger, but I could cope with it if I thought of these feelings as mud. These emotions went straight through me, and sometimes I felt like I got swept away by them. But every time I was reminded that this was the mud, not the diamond. If someone reminds you of your essence, your inner wisdom, your physical well-being, then all thoughts and emotions can be experienced, and you become more resilient.

By now I have been happy for twelve years already

But that doesn’t mean I never feel sad, or angry, or scared. But it is different than before, because I can feel happy and sad at the same time. I can look at myself and think: ‘OK, what thought is making me feel so muddled up?’. And sometimes I do get carried away by the mudslide of thoughts and momentarily lose my essence. And that is fine as well, because it is all part of my human experience.

Translated from Dutch by SGM Taplin

foto creative commons (pixabay)