![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The primary goal of positive psychology is understanding and facilitating optimal mental health. However, absent fundamental causal principles that explain human psychological experience, positive psychology is unlikely to achieve this goal. We posit that fundamental causal principles may already have been uncovered, and we offer a study that tests the process from exposure to these principles to improved mental health. The results appear to support our prediction that insights regarding “thought recognition” and/or “innate mental health via a clear mind” gained through understanding these principles will show a significant positive relationship with hedonic well-being, eudaimonic well-being, social well-being, and optimal mental health. Of participants exposed to the understanding grounded in these spiritual principles, 88% were diagnosed as “flourishing.”
Notes
1. The three principles are not meant to be viewed as a theory or philosophy, nor is this understanding meant to be seen as derived from other theories or philosophies. Rather, these principles are meant to represent psycho-spiritual facts—the essence or core of everything, including all theories and philosophies. (For a detailed explanation of how the three principles relate to other spiritual theories and philosophies, see Pransky & Kelley, Citation2014).
2. Donald Klein (Citation1988), described Sydney Banks’s transformation as follows:“Several years ago, the director of a community mental health center in Oregon … suggested that I look into the positive effects on people’s physical and emotional well-being being achieved by a spiritually enlightened man in British Columbia. A few years before, this man … had suddenly entered into a vastly different level of awareness, a form of spontaneous spiritual transformation about which William James had written in the early 1900’s. … It was obvious that this man had achieved a state of understanding and grace, based on no particular religious philosophy or practice … his discoveries … were obviously worth exploring from the standpoint of preventive mental health … something very important was taking place … our most basic assumptions about human behavior were being challenged” (pp. 311–312).
3. According to Banks (Citation1998), these principles are formless and any attempt to describe them therefore must be limiting. Therefore, it would be best to see our description of the principles as pointing in a direction of their vast meaning.
4. When the terms, mind, consciousness, and thought are capitalized they are meant to depict formless, universal powers, abilities, or faculties. When these terms are not capitalized they are meant to refer to personal mind, personal consciousness and personal thought or thoughts.
5. White people are consciously aware of a number of the thoughts they generate; the vast majority of these thoughts, however, are hidden from them. Some schools of psychology call this the subconscious or the unconscious. No matter what they are called they remain unseen or unobserved, yet they still register in people’s consciousness and therefore become people’s psychological experience. For example, some people who grow up in an abusive family may end up with a series of abusive partners or spouses. They may not be aware that their thinking, working in the inner recesses of their minds, has led them to feel a certain amount of comfort in those situations, and they may not trust a partner who displays healthy behavior. They are not aware that this hidden, habitual thinking drives their attractions and behavior. Once they are helped to see the three principles at work in this situation and have an insight that brings the hidden, habitual thinking into the light, they see it for what it is—only thinking they picked up from childhood but now is not serving them well—and, once revealed, this brings them to a higher level of consciousness. They may still get the same thoughts but now they know they do not have to believe these thoughts, trust them or follow them. This relaxes the mind and they have more of a tendency to have insights from wisdom into what type of relationship would serve them well. This entire process derives from people’s inadvertent use of these three spiritual principles.
6. The world of physics acknowledges that there is formless energy behind all life. This is what Sydney Banks refers to as Universal Mind. They are two different terms for describing the same thing. Many religions speak of pure spirit or the great spirit. Banks is equating the two. Every human being makes use of this pure spiritual energy and in fact would not be alive without it. Some part of this spiritual energy is used by humans—probably by all animals—to create thoughts. When thoughts are thought they come into form. Einstein said all matter is nothing but energy in another form. Banks said consciousness is what makes these forms appear real through the senses. It brings these thoughts alive, so to speak, and then it allows people also to be aware of the forms it creates. People can either be “caught” in their thought forms, or they can observe them, or they can see them for what they are. Each will give people a different experience. The three principles of Mind, consciousness, and Thought are all spiritual powers of which people make use to create their lives, whether they know it or not. The pure energy of Universal Mind comes into each human being’s soul or pure consciousness, and because it contains pure peace and pure love, this is what human beings truly are at their spiritual essence, and because Universal Mind is also the intelligence of life our spiritual essence also contains pure wisdom, for which people only need to listen deeply and will hear when their minds clear.
7. For an in depth comparison of the assumptions and interventions of positive psychology with those of the three principles, see (Kelley, Citation2004).
8. The three principles intervention is not about changing people’s thinking; it is about helping people realize that when their thinking changes, their experience and their feelings will change along with it. Nor is this intervention meant to help people find techniques to clear the mind; it is about helping people realize that when the mind clears, mental health automatically appears. Nor does this intervention suggest that people create their life circumstances, nor that there is a fixed reality externally about which people should attempt to think differently; rather, it suggests that people use the three principles to create their own reality.
9. While the Three Principles Inventory was originally constructed by Kelley (Citation2011), the Three Principles Inventory items used in this study were selected and categorized with the invaluable assistance of Jack Pransky.
10. H1 and H2 were supported in a forthcoming article in Spirituality in Clinical Practice. However, we deem it essential to repeat these findings here because they represent a major component of our proposed process from 3PU to improved mental health as measured by the variables tested in this study.
11. We do not mean to imply that techniques such as meditation and/or activities such as those that induce flow shouldn’t be practiced. We are positing an alternative view of what makes techniques, interventions, and activities work for some, which might lead to a deeper understanding.