Three Principles Living

Judith A. Sedgeman, EdD

Life is spiritual

Life is spiritual

For years, as a member of the faculty of a medical school, I would answer doctors’ objections to talking about the spiritual with this question: Can you tell the difference between the living and the dead? Of course they could! That difference is the spiritual. The dead body has all the parts that make up the form of a living person; it is missing the formless, spiritual energy that gives it “life.”

The Three Principles of Mind, Consciousness and Thought explain and describe that energy, placing our focus on the power of creating our life moment-to-moment, rather than living at the mercy of thinking we have created without realizing it. It’s really very simple, and although those of us who are dedicated to sharing the Principles have certain ways of putting it, we are hardly the first people in the world to point in that direction. The idea of formless spiritual energy underlies the philosophies and spiritual practices of all of mankind. The insights we share, which arose with the profound moment of truth experienced by Sydney Banks, simplify, clarify and offer the logic of the obvious.

Without spiritual energy, we would not be participants in the movement of life. Because we are alive, we are filled with potential to create and experience anything we can bring to life through our imagination. Because we are using that spiritual energy to create our own personal journey, we can change, we can evolve, we can transcend, or we can descend into a trap of our own making. The point is, we have the gift of life and the free will to use it however we see to use it.

People seem to back away from discussing the spiritual because they confuse the idea of spirituality with a belief system. Spiritual energy is both before beliefs and beyond beliefs. Without that gift, there would be no beliefs. But the beliefs different people create with the energy of life are completely arbitrary; we can use our power to create thought and see it as real to create anything.

If we sidestep the truth that life is spiritual, whatever we are talking about has nothing to do with the Principles, and with the true nature of the human experience. The profound explanation for everything that appears in our lives that is offered by the spiritual Principles is the breakthrough that lifts us beyond all the cognitive teaching in the world today. Once we understand where our thoughts come from, that they arise from our own power to create, it doesn’t matter what we think. It doesn’t matter what we think. That is crucial. As we glimpse the spiritual Principles at work within us, we can no longer frighten ourselves with our own thinking. We are free.

When we see the Principles more and more clearly, we always know what we are doing. When we use our power to think to bring bad memories to mind, we know we don’t have to hold them there, but we can use that same power to allow them to pass and bring new thoughts to mind. When we use our power to think to bring cravings and habits to mind, we know they are just our thinking and they will pass if we don’t take them seriously. When we use our thinking to bring negative emotions to mind, we know they will affect us for only as long as we continue to think them. That is the point. With understanding comes the power to live at peace, recognizing that our thinking is variable but our understanding that we are thinking is the constant recognition of all the thoughts we create as temporary illusions. We live from spirituality, not from the aftereffects of misunderstood thinking.

Mental health is the unconditional realization that our thoughts have no power; we are the power behind them.

The life force beyond all things has no form, yet it gives form to all things.

Sydney Banks, The Missing Link, p. 68.   sydney-banks

 

4 Comments
  • Lately I have been on a journey of rediscovering the principles, this illuminates beautifully what I’ve been seeing for myself. Something I’ve avoided that was always with me. Thank you!

    November 5, 2014 at 11:04 am
  • Patty Tanji
    Reply

    Thank you for bringing me home.

    November 3, 2017 at 7:34 pm
  • How we can heal our diseases knowing these principles. Can we heal our self through Spirit- that is always inside us .

    February 23, 2018 at 2:12 am
    • Judy Sedgeman
      Reply

      I don’t have an answer to this. I know when people are deeply quiet and see the Universal Principles at work behind life, whatever their experience is, it is less difficult. I know that people get relief from chronic pain when their stress level diminishes, and that all of the resources we need for healing are available to us when the body is not dealing with unnecessary stress and upset.

      March 10, 2018 at 7:40 pm

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