![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
A new spiritual understanding commonly known as the Three Principles proposes that mindfulness/flow/mental health is people’s most natural state and can be realized and sustained by everyone via insights gained through understanding three spiritual principles—Universal Mind, Consciousness, and Thought. We test this proposition for people exposed to the intervention grounded in these principles. The results appear to support our prediction that insight regarding “thought recognition” and/or “innate health via a clear mind” gained through understanding these spiritual principles will show a significant positive relationship with mindful attention, mindful acceptance, flow experience, and mental health.
Notes
1. Mind, Consciousness, and Thought are capitalized when they are meant to depict formless and universal powers, abilities, or faculties. These terms are not capitalized when they are meant to refer to personal mind, personal consciousness, and personal thought or thoughts.
2. 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.
3. We have offered evidence for the spiritual basis of the Three Principles in other articles (e.g., Pransky & Kelley, 2014). However, since this understanding is likely new to most psychological and spiritual researchers and practitioners, we will summarize this evidence here. Universal Mind or similar constructs are evident in virtually all spiritual teachings. For example, Sri Aurobindo (Citation1990) saw Mind as the power behind Thought and Consciousness and stated, “Our physical organism no more causes or explains thought and consciousness than the construction of an engine explains the motive-power of steam or electricity. The force is anterior, not the physical instrument” (p. 234). Nisargadatta Maharaj asserted that everything is One. Buddhism teaches Master Mind. Vipassana meditation teaches that Mind is everywhere. Hart (Citation1987), stated, “The whole body contains the mind” (p. 29). Walsh (1995) pointed to Mind, stating, “That which you call life … is pure energy … vibrating constantly, always … while objects are different and discrete, the energy, which produces them, is exactly the same” (p. 178). William James (Citation1891) referred to the “spiritual self” as “Absolute Mind.”
4. Consciousness is also a major component of virtually all spiritual teachings. For example, “Sri Aurobindo (Citation1990) stated, “it is consciousness that … determines the form or the evolution of form” (pp. 236–237). Siddha Yoga teaches that life is spirit. The Upanishads propose that prana springs from inner Consciousness and moves through the body enlivening its functions. According to the Pratyabhijnahridayam (Muktananda, Citation1992), “Consciousness is one with the self, so the mind is simply that aspect of the Self which has taken the form of outer objects” (p. 27). A. H. Almaas (Citation2014) stated, “The spiritual and the psychological … are two dimensions of the same human consciousness” (p. 1). Neville Goddard (Citation2005) asserted, “Man moves in a world that is nothing more or less than his consciousness objectified” (p. 4). A Course in Miracles (Wapnick & Wapnick, Citation1995) asserted that within each individual soul “is the purest of Consciousness” (p. 16). William James (Citation1891) related consciousness to thought, stating, “The consciousness of Self involves a changeable stream of thought … a thought that at each moment, is different from that of the last moment” (p. 386).
5. Thought is also a prominent teaching in many spiritual traditions. For example, “Vipassana meditation posits that all mental events correspond with sensations in the body. Hart (Citation1987) stated, “Thought is pure energy” (p. 91). A Course in Miracles (Wapnick & Wapnick, 1995) proposed that people have a choice to think they are either separate or special or connected to God. Unity (Vahle, 2002) teaches that people create their psychological lives from within using the power of Thought. Filmore (Citation2010) stated, “every man is king of his own mental domain, and his subjects are his thoughts” (p. 19). Gregg Braden (Citation2012) described thought as “the power to translate the possibilities of our minds into the reality of our world” (p. 17). James (Citation1891) connected the “spiritual self” to Thought stating, “our considering the spiritual self at all is a reflective process. …We can feel, alongside of the thing known, the thought of it going on as an altogether separate act and operation in the mind” (p. 299).
6. We do not mean to imply that meditation, mindfulness-based interventions, and activities that induce flow are a bad idea or shouldn’t be practiced. We are simply offering an alternative view of what makes these techniques, interventions, and activities work for some, which might lead to a deeper understanding.
7. The guideposts of a logical intervention to best allow this to occur were offered in detail as follows by Kelley (Citation2003): (a) Three Principles practitioners typically live and model what they are attempting to teach because they understand the Three Principles at a deep level; (b) helping learners’ minds relax so their typical or habitual thinking clears and therefore they are most open to experiencing new insights; (c) deep, intuitive listening through a clear mind to sense what clients or community members do not realize about how their psychological experience is created from the inside out; and (d) conveying or drawing out 3PU in the way a client or community member can best hear it, as derived from deep listening.
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, a more mindful state automatically appears. Nor does this intervention suggest that people create their life circumstances, nor that there is a fixed reality externally about which people attempt to think differently; rather, it suggests that people use the Three Principles to create their own reality.
9. Participants were obtained with assistance from the following organizations: The Center for Sustainable Change in Charlotte, North Carolina; Three Principles Movies in Essex, England; Santa Clara County, California; and Won Institute in Glenside, Pennsylvania.
10. 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 Author.
11. H1 and H2 were previously supported in our article published in Journal of Spirituality in Clinical Practice (Kelley, Pransky, & Lambert, Citation2015b). However, we deem it essential to repeat these findings here because they represent a major component of our proposed process from 3PU to improved mindfulness/flow/mental health as measured by the variables tested in this study.