The Principles of Resilience
Throughout history great thinkers have tried to explain how we experience life. Or more precisely what our mental life looks like, not how it is created in the first place. I will attempt to show you how it has always been created, every moment of every day, that is the life you have now.
The Three Principles are a description of how thought works. It is not a theory, it is of a deeper order. It is a foundation that explains how the Principles of Mind, Thought and Consciousness all work together to create a paradigm of how mental life works.
It is not the content of our thinking or the form our thoughts have taken, but how it was created in the first place.
The Principles of Mental life:
- Mind is not brain, you cannot hold it in your hands, it is a power, the power of mental life. It is the catalyst of the reality we now see.
- Thought is our ability to recognize the principles. Lack of separation of the form of life and the formless. Without thought we could not recognize mental life. No words, no reality. The Three Principles are ALL absolutely necessary for us to have existence.
- Consciousness is this incredible nature of consciousness, the tangible capability of making us aware of life, allowing us to be aware of our thoughts.
- The Three Principles are profoundly connected to each other. They cannot be separated. If one element is missing we do not have a paradigm and therefore no experience of life. They point to the moment in time where experience of life is created into the life you now see.
What is a Paradigm, why is it important?
A Paradigm is a set of principles that do not exist when separated and explain something that was previously unknown. This is important because without principles we cannot accurately describe how something works. When we have a paradigm we have something we can count on. There is nothing that the principles do not explain. You can count on them to work the same way, every time, without exception or anomalies. They hold true in the way they work, and can be the foundation for research of how something works and at the same time uncovers how the same something doesn’t work.
To the average listener, the Principles sound like something they already know. The reason for this is because mental life has always been created this way, we just didn’t know how to talk about it from a principled perspective.
We have studied and talked about the manifestation or form that thought has taken, the life we now see, with all of our beliefs, behaviors and circumstances we are living in. However, we have been looking at it from the wrong direction.
After the thoughts have manifested not how it started. From a Principled understanding of mental life, we now have the ability to insightfully understand where our experience is coming from prior to the form life has taken.
When we begin to insightfully understand how our thoughts/feelings create our life experience. It begins to make sense that everyone in the world is doing the same thing as us, we begin to get a sense of what has been going on all along. Everyone is living in a separate reality between each other and within ourselves.
To get a feel for why the Principles are a true way of describing mental life and why it is different from current understanding, it requires you to listen with an ear to hear something new.
Listening is the willingness to be changed by what you hear! Willingness to be touched by, changed by, created by what you hear. Insight is the change in our understanding of how the Principles work.
It is a deeper order of listening than we are used to. The Principles, when seen for what they are, as neutral powers of Mind, Consciousness and Thought, it allows us to use our personal thoughts and feelings to create a life of purpose and meaning.
If you can “hear” the truth of the principles, the profound nature of them, and can see how we are using them to create our life, it helps us to settle down in our thinking and become present to our life experience.
In that space we can have involuntary thinking which can allow us to have new thinking and solutions to our problems that we did not see before. This creates a richer, more meaningful experience of life.
In contrast, when we have voluntary thinking, over thinking, or intellectualized thinking about our problems, we become stubborn or rigid in our thinking. In our effort to “solve” the problem and try to figure out why something is happening in our life or try to fix our problems from this perspective, we become stressed.
Dissatisfaction, anger, depression, fearful thinking appears. This thinking creates more problems for us, and often our mental and physical health suffer. We are now living in a misunderstanding of where our experience is coming from. It doesn’t seem to be important at first, but it is the difference between suffering and thriving.
When you notice that you are suffering, be gentle with yourself. Know that it will pass. Thoughts always change. We do not have to do anything to change our thoughts. But, we can realize that we are simply living in the feeling of our thinking, and that is all that is going on.
There is something in the power of the Principles that stirs up something in people. They have a ring of truth that cannot be denied. And because the Principles are not a theory, concept or belief, it gives us a feeling of connection.
The insight into how they work comes with a feeling, a knowing, that helps us see the truth of them. When seen at a deep level, our thinking settles down. Unnecessary thinking subsides. We experience a quieter mind and greater ease in life than we have previously had. We are guided by involuntary or new thinking. Our stress level decreases as a result. We begin to be guided by, helped by this new thinking that helps us. The result is tranquility, more peace and joy.