Talk Therapy or Listen Therapy?
When most people hear, or see, the word therapy, they typically think of a process of talking to a therapist about their problems, who will then offer “tools” strategies and techniques to deal with these problems. In this model, the client does most of the talking and the therapist does the listening. Even though this model is limited in it’s sustainability through future problems, it is infinitely better to unload on a therapist who is ethically committed and legally bound to maintain your privacy than to share too much with friends and family or — even worse on a public forum such as, social media.
The only time any of your personal information would be revealed by your therapist is if s/he is subpoenaed to testify in court, or in the interest of safety, therapists have a “duty to warn” if their client states they have plans to harm themselves or someone else. Otherwise you can tell your therapist anything under the sun and it will be kept private between you and your therapist. Sometimes people feel better after they have unloaded their problems, and they stop seeing their therapist, until the next problem pops up.
Listen Therapy And The Three Principles
What I refer to as “listen” therapy, for the purpose of this blog, goes a step further and can go many degrees deeper. This type of therapy has been called: Psychology of Mind, Health Realization, Inside-Out Coaching, Clarity Coaching, Transformational Coaching, Innate Health and Principle-based Therapy. Whatever it is called, it is based on the understanding that all people have innate-health which gets covered up by varying degrees of self-limiting thoughts that people believe to be true and accurate. Principle based therapy focuses on drawing out the natural health that already exists within the client/student. By realizing the capacity you already have to live in a healthy state of mind more of the time, regardless of your situation or circumstance, you’ll naturally steer yourself in the direction of your health and mental well-being. It’s one of those things we call a “no-brainer” in life - who wouldn’t want to feel better if it was possible? Well, not only is it possible, it becomes more the norm for clients/students of the Principles, who become curious to understand how we all operate at the most fundamental level. They begin to recognize within themselves when they get caught up in the non-productive thinking that takes them away from their innate health and well-being. Our free will allows us to choose if we want to follow our negative state of mind thinking, or if we want to look for a nicer feeling.
Students are often amazed at how easy it is to shift gears, although they are not doing the shifting; a simple recognition of what is going on within them allows them to take the focus off of their non-productive thoughts and their innate health bobs back to the surface, all on it’s own.
A Metaphor for Innate Health:
Imagine being at the beach and you submerge a beach ball in the Ocean with your hands - you know what will happen when you take your hands off the ball. The ball bounces up to the surface. Clouds covering the sun is another metaphor. The sun is still there, it is just temporarily covered up. Our innate health is always within us, it only gets temporarily covered up, for whatever length of time we’re caught up in problematic, stressful thinking.
Principle based therapists are not interested in looking at what you think about the details of your life as much as they are interested in helping you see how the human experience works. The human experience works the same for everyone; hence the word principle - a principle is true for everyone, everywhere, all the time. You might think of it as longitudinal movement, rather than lateral movement. Looking at and dealing with “problems” would necessitate strategies and techniques to manage the problem - lateral movement. Looking at the “mechanism” behind the experience shows us how to maneuver through life better, just like the rudder of a boat helps us go in the direction of our choice, we’re no longer out of control flailing about in an Ocean full of rocks!
Given an understanding of how we operate psychologically offers a natural and immediate shift at the point we realize we just got caught up in negative thinking. Now, of course there are things that need to be discussed and worked out. We have to figure out how much money we need to bring with us on a vacation and how much we should save for the down-payment on a house. Our brains come in very handy for that sort of thing. On the other hand, using our brain to figure out what the other person meant or why we’re not treated well, keeps a person stuck at the level of problem thinking. It’s recycling past, negative thinking, and then round and round we go, feeling more like an ever present spin cycle. However, when our mind quiets down, there is space for a fresh new thought to emerge. When I’ve asked participants in a seminar if anyone has experienced taking a problem off their mind and then later the solution to the problem emerges out of the blue, moments or hours later, everyone’s hand goes up. The key is always settling our personal minds down so that a fresh new thought can come to mind from a deeper wisdom.
Principle-based work is designed to draw out of you an understanding of why you’re suffering rather then what is making you suffer. When you understand how the principles work you see pretty quickly that no one and nothing can “make” us suffer. The only thinking that can ever cause us to suffer is our own thinking. We all know that we don’t suffer in the moments we’re not thinking about the event or person.
Principle-based therapy is based on the therapist doing most of the talking, as a teacher, also known as a mentor, who guides a client inward, to their innate well-being, by sharing their understanding of the three principles of Mind, Thought and Consciousness as first articulated by Mr. Sydney Banks in 1973. A therapist who provides this for a client has either been a student of the late Sydney Banks or has been a student of one of his first generation students. The training is rigorous, in that no one who is not well grounded in the understanding, will be recognized as a teacher who remains true to the original understanding as articulated by the late Sydney Banks. People have referred to him as the founding Father of this paradigm, but in actual fact it was more like the principles found Mr. Banks - he wasn’t looking for a solution to humanity’s mental problems. Additionally, a Practitioner’s grounding is evident in the way they articulate the Principles and in the manner in which they conduct their own lives. These practitioners are recognized by the not for profit organization: Three Principles Global Community. You can find a map of therapists and coaches, world-wide, on the bottom of this page that will open when you click on the link.
Clients find they naturally move up levels of consciousness as they see how the principles work within themselves and, through insight, they find their emotional life, interactions with others, and their overall behaviors improve with an ever deepening understanding and insight into the workings of the mind which an understanding of these principles offer. There has never been a person alive who does not have the capacity to look within themselves and realize how they operate, simply by being curious and aware of the fact that they can only ever feel their own thinking, and seeing that it is easy to believe whatever we think because the feelings are so strong. Since we are conscious beings, we are conscious of whatever we think: good, bad, or indifferent, and whether we know that fact or not !!
This is why this form of therapy has been called a paradigm shift, in the field. Rather than look at what people think, trying to fix it, or change it, or deal with it, or explain it….we explore the NATURE of thought - the FACT that we think. When people SEE the powerhouse of that capacity, they realize the products created by that powerhouse does not need fixing, because every thought creation is an illusion in one form or another. The power to think is what creates every experience (our personal-in the moment- illusion of life) that we have, or will ever have. As long as the thinker realizes it… they find no need to analyze their experience, figure it out, dwell on it, or try to change it. The thinking that creates our moment-to-moment experience of life always changes on it’s own, just give it a moment and you’ll see how it works with no effort on the thinker’s part. Thoughts naturally flow, sometimes very fast, and sometimes slow. No one in the history of humanity has lived their whole life having just one thought on their mind throughout!
With an experiential understanding of how the Principles bring about an experience of reality every moment, from birth to death, clients/students begin to pay closer attention to the wisdom that is deeper, rather than their moment to moment thinking. When we recognize the enormous value of listening for wisdom, in our lives, everything begins to shift across the board. It is customary for a student to look back on their lives and have a distant memory of feeling insecure, anxious, depressed, or angry. They realize that they know too much now to revert back to those difficult feelings - it no longer makes sense to them. That’s how it looks from a higher level of consciousness and they know their newfound feelings of well-being will only increase over time, since that’s been their experience already.
It’s very difficult to hear something new that will lead to an insight when our mind is full of our own personal thinking that’s why it is best for you to clear your mind of “worries, problems and difficulties” including thoughts about what you think this paradigm is! Before going for a 3 Principles counseling or coaching session so that you can hear something fresh and new bubble up from wisdom, while you’re listening to your Mentor. That insight is something you will likely not arrive at by regurgitating what you are already thinking about. Go as a student of life (also referred to as a student of the Principle) since the Principles are our life - they explain how we experience life every single moment, whether it looks like that or not. When you approach life as a student of it, you’re more interested in how it works for all humans - hence the word “Principles” which means that the gift of the human experience works the same for everyone everywhere on the planet. The outcome, for people who see this, is that they live a more contented, stress-free life. They are not looking anywhere beyond themselves for the experience of happiness, love, awe, and inspiration.
