The Three Principles Discussion Thread

[Pie]

Hi All, Finally joining in here, though I've been reading all along. Just dipping my toe into some of the resources posted, yielded next to nothing in the way of understanding The Three Principles. Then yesterday, I spent a few hours watching videos, and re-reading posted comments, examples, and analogies.

At this point I maybe understand some bits and pieces, but far from most of it, and certainly not the "so what" of it, which is what I really want to get. That, the thoughts I choose to focus on create my experience, is an easy enough concept, but not a new one. Is it that once I let go of attempts to entertain all of the 60,000+ daily thoughts, it frees my mind up for greater clarity?

NS, to your example of upcoming travel concerns, since you know your thoughts about possible flight delays are independent of whether they actually occur, does letting go of those thoughts free your mind for other endeavors?

Thanks for starting this thread! Looking forward to more discussion.

[kuya]

Hi All, Finally joining in here, though I've been reading all along. Just dipping my toe into some of the resources posted, yielded next to nothing in the way of understanding The Three Principles. Then yesterday, I spent a few hours watching videos, and re-reading posted comments, examples, and analogies.

At this point I maybe understand some bits and pieces, but far from most of it, and certainly not the "so what" of it, which is what I really want to get. That, the thoughts I choose to focus on create my experience, is an easy enough concept, but not a new one. Is it that once I let go of attempts to entertain all of the 60,000+ daily thoughts, it frees my mind up for greater clarity?

NS, to your example of upcoming travel concerns, since you know your thoughts about possible flight delays are independent of whether they actually occur, does letting go of those thoughts free your mind for other endeavors?

Thanks for starting this thread! Looking forward to more discussion.

What we all do initially is to try and relate 3Ps to something we know.....

"It is mindfulness...."
"It is positive thinking....."
"It is meditation......"

But it is NONE of these.

It is about understanding HOW the mind works, HOW we construct reality.

In this way our core self is then profoundly modified by that understanding.

In contrast, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, positive thinking, NLP, EFT are using practices/methods to improve/modify our reality as already constructed.

ALL of your reality, All of the time is created by your thoughts and whilst some people will say

“Yeah, I already know that”

truth is they go about their lives as if it only applies SOME of the time. But “you” and “your life” are 100% thought, and nothing else.

This also includes ALL of your feelings (as well as everything you see, hear, touch and smell) NONE of these things come from the outside, they are ALL constructed from the inside as thought.

This is why people make terrible witnesses for crime.....they "see" what they expect to see, and report what they "THOUGHT" they saw. The eyes saw a neutral scene which the mind then interpreted as thought.

We see our parents look of disgust when they change our diapers and we learn to find the smell of faeces disgusting, whereas our dogs (who don't have our 'civilised' prejudices) find the smell of faeces quite yummy and are totally indifferent to the 'wonderful' smell of roses! :happy2:

It is also why a cup of tea tastes "horrible" if you were expecting to taste coffee. The liquid is exactly the same but your mind constructs an expectation which changes the taste.

The smell of faeces or roses, the taste of tea/coffee are neutral....our minds create a judgement and construct our own unique 'reality' of those things.

In a similar way it is then easy to see how we also 'create' our egos/personalities from a very young age.

Many of us here at MWO have absorbed/created self images that are more 'faeces' than 'roses' and because we don't know that our thoughts are simply made up and NOT real we swim in a soup of our self-created delusions.

Some people believe they are 'bad' (I am unlovable, bad, useless, unwanted)

Some that they are 'perfect' (I am too smart/perfect/good for this world)

Either way these delusions lead to internal discomfort because they are untrue.

We have simply created a "self" based on what we CHOSE to believe from many sources (parents, school, magazines, friends).
Genetics may lead us to have greater tendencies one way or the other, but we can all agree and accept that NO baby was BORN a future “addict” or "needing" therapy.
We were all born innately happy and then our society chipped away at it to a greater or lesser extent.

Furthermore we also created a delusion that how we feel is created by outside circumstances.
It is a by-product of being born so helpless and being dependant on adults for so many years. (Most mammals are up on their feet, sourcing their own food within hours/days of birth)

This delusion stays with us and is why so many of us are victims to life, believing that our partner (surrogate parent?) our boss, our kids, the traffic, the weather, the government etc are the source of our unhappiness.

How often have you said

"I would be happy if I had........(money, job, ideal weight, holiday, house, etc) “?

Whereas another person, with exactly the same circumstances (job, house, money etc) is perfectly happy.

This is because our feelings do not come from the outside circumstances but how we CHOOSE to feel about them.

We similarly believe that drugs can change how we feel, a misunderstanding often created as teenagers...

"I got drunk at the party and had fun; therefore alcohol makes me have fun".

"I was feeling unhappy and got drunk and then felt happy; therefore alcohol makes me happy"

The truth is teenagers usually have fun in groups with music REGARDLESS of drugs and unhappy would turn to happy in any case simply with the passage of an hour or so. There have been many studies done where teenagers were given placebo drugs or alcohol and then behaved as if intoxicated since that was their expectation.

Since we addicts simply have more 'faeces' thoughts than the majority it is little wonder that our lives can feel shitty. This then leads to a desire to escape the feelings ....Bingo!...Drugs and alcohol.

3Ps awakens us to the nonsense of those shitty thoughts, the delusional nature of our “reality” and the REAL source of our feelings.

From there everything starts to shift

3ps is not about 'controlling ' your thoughts, it is about realising they are NOT reality and then letting them come and go as they please. Doing so creates a peace and clarity that allows insights to happen/come to you.

By allowing yourself to return to the contentment of a young child and realising that ALL your thoughts are simply constructs of your mind and NOT solid reality, you can, once again open yourself to the wisdom of the universe in the form of your own, unique, intuition.

[Pie]

Thanks, Kuya! I appreciate the effort you made to provide this feedback. In terms of trying to relate the 3Ps to things I already know...

I know that I am not a victim of outside circumstances or people. I'm the master of my own ship, and make choices and accept consequences accordingly.

I believe that disappointment is just the gap between an expectation and reality. A gap created by my thinking.

So, I'm wondering, are these understandings part of 3P? Not 3P?

[kuya]

Thanks, Kuya! I appreciate the effort you made to provide this feedback. In terms of trying to relate the 3Ps to things I already know...

I know that I am not a victim of outside circumstances or people. I'm the master of my own ship, and make choices and accept consequences accordingly.

I believe that disappointment is just the gap between an expectation and reality. A gap created by my thinking.

So, I'm wondering, are these understandings part of 3P? Not 3P?

In that your expectation was only created by your thoughts and a value judgement you simply made up, then yes.

[NoSugar]

Thanks for that post, Kuya. I don't think I would have I understood it a couple of weeks ago but think I get most of it now.

It's hard to truly understand (or even talk about) something that's always been part of us and from the very beginning, humans think.

A physical principle that often is used to explain the 3 principles is gravity. Like thought, it's always been with us and we live our lives, not really noticing it and assuming that gravity will always be doing its thing. We don't think there are exceptions to the rule that on earth, gravity has certain effects. We have a good feel for it and can use it - we know how hard to throw a ball down to get it to bounce a certain height. It's hard to imagine life without it (which I guess is one of the things that makes space movies fun). We may not know all the physical science of gravity or the equations, but we know how it works in daily life.

It occurred to me that if someone were born and raised on the space station and then moved to earth, they would have to learn how gravity works - and before they did, they probably would break all sorts of things when they immediately crashed to the ground. And the person would feel so heavy and slow. Their mistakes, bad feelings, and lack of understanding wouldn't change the actions of gravity which, as a principle, is simply how it is. And what if no one told this person that there was a principle called gravity and how it worked??? She would probably break a lot of things when she set them in the air and get hurt when she tried to leap across obstacles. Life would often be tough. She might learn some techniques to avoid breaking things or go on a diet so as not to feel so weighted down. But it is possible that she would never be able to deduce on her own how gravity works and so would experience recurring problems that she could have avoided if she'd understood the principle.

[NoSugar]

NS, to your example of upcoming travel concerns, since you know your thoughts about possible flight delays are independent of whether they actually occur, does letting go of those thoughts free your mind for other endeavors?

It's great to have you join in, Pie - the more voices the better!

I guess with flying, I've always known I had no control but I always dreaded that lack of control, had a hard time relaxing while waiting, was overly alert for every announcement, expected the worst, couldn't eat due to stress, and on and on. I thought I was an unhappy, impatient flier.

A couple weeks ago, I experienced my worst 2 days of flying/trying to fly ever but with some insights I'd gained from the 3Ps, had one of my emotionally most positive flying experiences (other than bursting into tears towards the end when I hit another obstacle but at that point, mostly from fatigue).

The key for me was that I finally understood that I and all the people scheduled for that flight would have whatever experience we thought we were having. Nothing would be different in terms of waiting, boarding, taxiing, deplaning, boarding again... But while one guy went ballistic, a lady sat there calmly knitting. They were not "on the same flight"! My old thoughts of "I have to get home NOW" bubbled up but I just let them go. When I started thinking about how I couldn't "fix it", I just agreed with myself instead of getting all upset about it. It was really weird while it was happening - it was just such a different (and better) experience.

Similarly, I decided that my work load is only a problem because I think it is. I came home to 35 tasks waiting for me. I asked myself if one would have stressed me out and of course it wouldn't. Two? No. Five? No. 12? No. What number, then?? There wasn't a number that I couldn't handle - I just used to think I couldn't handle 35. I still don't like to work when I'd rather play but the feeling I have about the work is different. It's just work now and it will get done - probably better and faster if I'm not freaking out about the idea of "35"! (Which, by the way, is now down to 3 for now :wink.

[kuya]

Thanks for that post, Kuya. I don't think I would have I understood it a couple of weeks ago but think I get most of it now.

It's hard to truly understand (or even talk about) something that's always been part of us and from the very beginning, humans think.

A physical principle that often is used to explain the 3 principles is gravity. Like thought, it's always been with us and we live our lives, not really noticing it and assuming that gravity will always be doing its thing. We don't think there are exceptions to the rule that on earth, gravity has certain effects. We have a good feel for it and can use it - we know how hard to throw a ball down to get it to bounce a certain height. It's hard to imagine life without it (which I guess is one of the things that makes space movies fun). We may not know all the physical science of gravity or the equations, but we know how it works in daily life.

It occurred to me that if someone were born and raised on the space station and then moved to earth, they would have to learn how gravity works - and before they did, they probably would break all sorts of things when they immediately crashed to the ground. And the person would feel so heavy and slow. Their mistakes, bad feelings, and lack of understanding wouldn't change the actions of gravity which, as a principle, is simply how it is. And what if no one told this person that there was a principle called gravity and how it worked??? She would probably break a lot of things when she set them in the air and get hurt when she tried to leap across obstacles. Life would often be tough. She might learn some techniques to avoid breaking things or go on a diet so as not to feel so weighted down. But it is possible that she would never be able to deduce on her own how gravity works and so would experience recurring problems that she could have avoided if she'd understood the principle.

I really like this analogy NS!

This is exactly the effect of understanding 3Ps.

If the principle of gravity was explained you could move from the space station to earth without freaking out and with a small period of adjustment make the transition easily. Whether you understand gravity or not it still applies but understanding it helps you in so many ways.

Likewise you can more easily negotiate life when you understand how your mind works

[starty]

Well I am reading between the lines here but it seems the problem is that people haven't been trained properly.

How would your manager take a suggestion that 30 minute refresher sessions happen every week? You could offer to run them.

Look to what in your thinking is causing you stress .... Sounds like you know your job and feel other workers will dislike you being teachers pet (I would feel that way)

A coach would not lead you with suggestions like this , but maybe your own wisdom will kick you up an answer.

I think you hit the nail on the head Kuya. It is definitely what was/is in my thinking that caused the stress. I want a content team who all want the company to do well. It frustrates me when people do not take their work seriously and make avoidable errors. Also my innate discomfort in seeing others being reprimanded. Yesterday I was feeling ill so all of this bubbled to the surface. It is purely the way I constructed the scenario that caused the stress.

[starty]

Work stress gets me, too, Starty, and I don't even have a job that most people would consider stressful - the problem is my reaction to feeling like I have too much to do. Your job sounds more inherently stressful to me but then - is that possible? The stress only comes about in the minds of the people involved. I know a couple ER doctors who don't consider their jobs stressful ! The whole thing is so interesting. Anyway, here are links to the first parts of 2 talks on stress that I found useful when I was maxed out a week or so ago:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ux3WSmjaxQA

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OmnvLnh3ieY

Thank you for these NS. I will be watching them today.

[kuya]

G

I think you hit the nail on the head Kuya. It is definitely what was/is in my thinking that caused the stress. I want a content team who all want the company to do well. It frustrates me when people do not take their work seriously and make avoidable errors. Also my innate discomfort in seeing others being reprimanded. Yesterday I was feeling ill so all of this bubbled to the surface. It is purely the way I constructed the scenario that caused the stress.

Here is the kicker, and that is that YOU are now the most enlightened one to see a way to deal with this problem.

SO.... Bearing in mind your boss already solicits your help to deal with these problems you need to accept that your help is required.
I truly think it is your chance to put a 3P spin on this and engage your manager in a 'best way forward for the team' approach.

You , training, educating and reducing team stress ? Listen to your own wisdom.

[starty]

I have constructed myself as a follower and not a leader. See that is another idea that is debunked

[kuya]

I have constructed myself as a follower and not a leader. See that is another idea that is debunked

Damn Starty.....it would appear that since your manager requires your input to lead then, actually you ARE a leader.

From what I see and hear you are a wonderful and kind leader who cares about others. All you need to do is share that kindness. You already have power in your organisation.... You simply need to realise it and employ it with intelligence

[NoSugar]

I have constructed myself as a follower and not a leader. See that is another idea that is debunked

How fantastic to realize that some things we believed are just "how we are" and we can't change (but try to control via all the applications we've discussed such as therapy) are really just definitions that were assigned to us (and we internalized) or that we constructed over the years! We are free to keep the ones we like and just let the others go - they aren't real anyway. I've done this over the years but didn't know this was how it was working. At one point when our kids were small, I just decided it was ok not to change the sheets every week despite having been raised to do that without fail. It sounds trivial but it actually was tough (and totally liberating!!!) to change. I also decided to dance even though I had convinced myself I was awful and just "not a dancer". But my husband loves to dance and at weddings and such, he was always out there with many women, dancing away and having fun. Turns out, I love it now (as long as there are no "steps"). I don't know if I'm good or bad but it doesn't really matter. I also decided to quit being shy when I went to college. I'd hated that I was "smart, but shy" as if that lessened being smart. It was amazing that as soon as I decided not to be shy in a new environment with new people, I wasn't! So, I really believe it all can work just as the 3Ps dictate when we let it and get out of our own ways.

[NoSugar]

As I spent the entire day interacting with a 10 month old (with exploring the principle of gravity with things and his body a key activity :wink, I had a lot of time for thoughts and ideas to move in and out of my head. His approach and response to life are pretty much what I'm aiming for, with the added benefits that come from simply having been alive for a long time.

It occurred to me that when I gave my 3 rather trivial examples about how we truly can be 1 thought away from health (or contentment or happiness or whatever we're looking for), I didn't mention the most important one - stopping drinking. For me, it was that sort of go big or go home, 100% committed kind of decision. Unlike being more deliberately outgoing or dancing in spite of self-consciousness, I didn't really know how to do it - which is why I also decided to become immersed here, tell the truth about the mess I was in, and just do what I was told by successful people I admired, regardless of whether I understood them or truly believed it would really help. My thinking had changed but I needed help to actualize those thoughts. I'm so grateful I found it here.

I've read some posts today by people who fear relapse. I hate to think of them not being able to relax into this way of living that doesn't include addiction. The thought that came to me each time alcohol was offered or I was tempted was a quick "I don't drink". It worked because it cut off the endless cycle of low level thinking that used to wear me down until I gave up to have one glass of wine - followed by several more. As the 3p'ers say, you go towards whatever you're looking at and I was always looking at "just one glass of wine".

I honestly don't worry anymore because I react so differently now to the 'oh, you can have a drink' kind of thoughts. I almost chuckle at them because I know how ludicrous they are. Alcohol no longer fits in my self-made reality and it hasn't for almost 3 years. I know that's not a long time in the greater scheme of things and I'm fully aware that I have to not become complacent, but I don't doubt myself anymore. I believe people are making this much harder on themselves than it needs to be. I wish I had the words to explain how I think (and feel) about it in a way that would help others simply be done with it.

[NoSugar]

Sorry about totally hijacking this thread with my musings but here's something that might be useful to someone: The Three Principles - Three Principles Movies: Three Principles of innate health and wellbeing. It was posted a couple weeks ago and is either the clearest presentation I've heard or I was in the right frame of mind to hear it. Maybe it helped that I listened while soaking in an epsom salt bath :wink:. In any case, I really liked it after they got going (the beginning is a bit unfocused and slow, in my opinion).