How a Quiet Mind Creates Healing; and How the Principles of Sydney

Banks Help People Have Quiet Minds

--Annika Hurwitt Schahn, Ph.D.

There has been a shift developing in the field of psychology for some time now, away
from seeing outside factors as the cause of our experience, to a focus on our mental life.
Cognitive therapy, for example, teaches people to reframe attitudes and beliefs from
negative to positive, in order to have better outcomes in life. This way of viewing life –
from the inside out rather than the outside in - represents a paradigm shift away from
seeing our problems as being caused by outside factors, such as our genetics, past
experiences or the circumstances of our lives.

All over the world, people are seeking mental quiet. In the east, yoga and meditation are
traditions that go back for many centuries; in the west there has been an explosion of interest
in these activities in the last few decades. What is it about a quiet mind that has become so
appealing? The answer, on one level, seems obvious: when peoples’ minds quiet, they feel
better. When peoples’ minds quiet they find that their stress and other mental conditions
melt away. They have experiences of calm, and if they stay in mental quiet long enough will
tap into progressively deeper and richer feelings such as contentment, well-being, love,
gratitude, and inspiration. The more a person’s mind is settled and calm, the deeper and
richer his experiences tend to be. This of course is healing in itself.

For most people, however, experiencing mental calm is situational. People allow their minds
to quiet when they meditate, do yoga, or in other situations that they have earmarked as
places to let go psychologically; golf or other sports, knitting or other hobbies, travel or
vacation. In order to escape from stress or deeper mental issues, they have to do these
activities as much as possible. Rather than living in mental well-being, people visit it.
Peoples ‘ minds are never quiet or settled for long enough to become grounded in these states
of mind. They return to the mental habits that create stress, anxiety, depression and worse
after their visits to mental calm and well being, and they see life through the lens of these
thought patterns. This makes peoples’ psychological diagnoses look real to them. In “real
life” they’re stressed, depressed or worse, and then they get breaks from “real life” when they
practice mind-quieting techniques or activities. The more people spend in any given state of
mind – happy, sad, inspired, depressed – the more they experience that state of mind as real.

There are people for whom this way of life is being reversed – they are experiencing life more
through mental calm and well-being, and visiting mental stress and debilitating mental habits,
so that those habits become more the exception than the rule. There has been a shift
developing in the field of psychology for some time now, away from seeing outside factors as
the cause of our experience, to a focus on our mental life. Cognitive therapy, for example,
teaches people to reframe attitudes and beliefs from negative to positive, in order to have
better outcomes in life. This way of viewing life – from the inside out rather than the outside
in - represents a paradigm shift away from seeing our problems as being caused by outside
factors, such as our genetics, past experiences or the circumstances of our lives. As is often
the case with a paradigm shift, however, this one has remained a mixed paradigm of the old,
outside-in way of viewing things to the emerging view that our experiences come from inside
our own minds. Psychotherapists work on their clients’ thinking at the same time as they
point to outside factors, such as genetics, upbringing, past experiences and current challenges
as causing their experiences. This is a cause for confusion. If experience comes from both
within us and outside of us, where should I put my focus? What is it that really matters?
Where are my fear, anxiety and insecurity really coming from?

When principles come into a field, they tend to unify the thinking of that field, because
principles, unlike theories, are constant and universal. In the 1970’s a man named Sydney
Banks – a very simple man with little education and no previous experience in the fields of
either psychology or spirituality – had an enlightenment experience. Many people throughout
the centuries have become enlightened, and it appears as though it is always a miraculous
event, changing their lives profoundly. Many of these people devote the rest of their lives to
trying to teach others what they have learned from their enlightenment, often creating
exercises and techniques (such as yoga and meditation) that help people touch into that
overarching field of consciousness where you have experiences of oneness, and of mental calm
and well being. What was unique about Sydney Banks’ experience of enlightenment was that
within this experience he realized the principles that underlie enlightenment, and all other
experiences in life. Rather than trying to share his insight, and give people ways to tap into it,
he found the principles that govern having insights, so that people can have their own. He
saw that this realization would change the field of psychology, although at that time he had
no idea why or what that meant.

The principles that Banks discovered are at the same time very simple, and endlessly
profound. They are: Mind, the universal, formless energy behind life, Thought, our capacity
for mental activity of all kinds, and Consciousness, which is awareness generally, and
particularly the capacity to be aware of, to experience what we think. These principles help
people awaken to their mental life as it unfolds in the moment. When people become aware
that thought is the only place to look for their experience, it simplifies things. When they are
having problems, they know where to look. Peoples’ awareness begins to build around
thought – they become more aware of their mental life and how it functions. When people
see thought arising in the moment in their own minds, it becomes more obvious to them
when they think in ways that cause them pain, or give them experiences they don’t like.
Seeing that, people naturally do less of it. Similarly, it becomes more apparent that our minds
quiet when we allow them to – that it is the nature of our minds to settle when we don’t stir
them up with thought. For the many people who have been introduced to these principles,
this awakening to how their thinking is functioning moment-by-moment has allowed them to
live with much more mental calm and well-being. This in itself frees people from a large
majority of the mental ills that plague them.

There is more, though, to how a quiet mind creates healing. When peoples’ minds quiet, they
experience the world differently than when their minds are active. Our consciousness shifts
from awareness of what is in our personal minds – our memories, future projections and
mental habits – also known as our ego-based world – to a more multi-dimensional experience
of life. As one of my clients puts it, it’s as if he goes from being below the water in a
submarine, where all he can see is what is right in front of him, to having the telescope of his
mind suddenly raise above the water, to where he gets a wide angle view of things, and a
feeling of freedom and perspective. We suddenly feel as though we’re here. There’s a sense
of a feeling/sensory experience of the moment – suddenly becoming aware of sounds or sights
you hadn’t noticed before, and of the feeling of that moment. Within that consciousness
shift, our thinking becomes more open and receptive. Rather than dipping into and
experiencing thoughts we’ve had before, we become open to the unknown, that unified field
of consciousness Banks describes as Mind. This is when people tap into fresh thoughts,
creative breakthroughs, and insights. These insights are often what are needed to break out of
mental habits that create unwanted, repetitive life patterns, relationship issues, or blocked
creativity. People find that the more they look toward mental quiet, the more likely they are
to have these insights, which free them from unwanted experiences and can bring resolution
to painful thought patterns that may have developed a long time ago. Insights help people
get over life events that were traumatic or that they were otherwise unable to heal from.

When I was first introduced to these principles in 1993, I didn’t really believe that all
experience could come from thought. I specialized at the time in working with women
survivors of trauma, and had studied many different approaches, both conventional and
holistic, to what it took to heal from trauma. It seemed like an outlandish claim to say that
this one thing – the understanding of these principles – could successfully address the after-
effects of trauma. But my philosophy was to take the good and leave the rest. I could see a
tremendous amount of potential for good in the approach I was being introduced to, primarily
because of the presence of the therapist couple – George and Linda Pransky – who presented
it. It was the first time I had been around therapists who were genuinely relaxed and happy
people. They were clearly having a good time while they introduced these principles to the
group of psychotherapists I was in, in spite of our skepticism. They were present to what was
arising in the moment in a way I had only experienced at meditation retreats. Their presence
deeply affected me, and I found that even within the four days of the seminar, I was changing.
I was getting more relaxed and more present than I had ever been – yet they weren’t leading
us in any techniques or exercises that would quiet our minds down. I was intrigued, and had
a strong sense that I had finally found what I had been looking for for a long time- the link
between spirituality and psychology. I decided that while what they said couldn’t possibly be
true – that these principles worked for any and all psychological conditions – that I needed to
learn them for myself, so that I could become a calmer, happier person in my everyday life,
outside of my experiences of meditation, yoga and exercise. Then I would see what if any
benefit these principles had for my clients.
I took a sabbatical from practicing psychotherapy for about a year, while I learned and
practiced these principles for myself. During that time my habits of mental worry decreased
substantially; I slept much better, and found my experience of daily life becoming richer. I
awakened to how thought functioned in my own mind – I saw how when I thought in ways
that were stressful, I experienced stress and anxiety. The more I saw thought arising in the
moment, the easier it became to do less thinking that gave me experiences I didn’t want. It
also became apparent what I did that allowed my thoughts to settle themselves, so I felt more
calm and was present more of time. Meditation, which had been my way of alleviating the
stressful experiences I got from my own thinking, now became something I did for pleasure –
to deepen my experiences of calm and well-being – rather than a necessary route to alleviating
mental tension. I was getting a lot more joy out of life, and things were improving all the way
around – my work, my relationships – everything. I began to see clients again, and was
curious to see if what I was experiencing would hold true for them.

I soon found that it was true – that a quiet mind does create healing, no matter what issue or
psychological diagnosis a person has. People with anxiety disorders, sleep problems and
phobias found that when they became awake to how their thinking functioned in the
moment, they could catch themselves creating those experiences, and do less of them. As
soon as they had experiences of calm where they habitually had not been calm before, it gave
them hope, and eventually confidence, that their “disorders” were of their own making, and
that they could catch onto the thinking that created them and do less of it. Similarly, people
with depression – even years, sometimes decades of clinical depression – began to have
awareness of moments when their thoughts lifted out of those depressed modes, and noticed
that when that happened, they felt better. This gave people with depression the inkling that
their depression really might just be coming from thought, that it wasn’t a disease or
something that came into them from outside themselves, and that in-itself gave them hope.
They began to allow their thinking to move out of experiences of depression to ones of mental
well-being. Frequently they would have an insight, or a series of insights at some point that
would further free them from the mental tendency toward depressing patterns of thought.
These insights are like an ever-developing path of growth, where our egos dominate less of
our mental life, and we have more experiences of psychological freedom, of tapping into that
world before thought, where we have greater perspective, the potential for insights, and a
sense of well-being and optimism.. People move from lives of mental turmoil to ones where
joy and well-being become their touchstones, the place to which their minds naturally return
on a regular basis. This experience of mental well-being builds on itself, gives people hope,
and eventually the confidence to turn away from the thinking that has been causing them so
much pain. People begin having lives of joy and psychological freedom. These are the
benefits of a quiet mind.